His Secret Duchess

“Elizabeth,” she whispered. His gaze rested on her features a long time, and then returned to the figure portrayed in the stained-glass window above their heads.

”…take thee, Mary Elizabeth, to be my wedded wife. To have and to hold, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…” The soft words faltered again. He was unable to remember the rest, and so he finished. “From this day forward. Forever more. Amen.”

He turned to her again, waiting, and fighting tears, she raised blind eyes to the jeweled lights of the window.

“I, Mary Elizabeth, take thee, Nicholas William Richard, to be my wedded husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death us do part. And thereto I plight thee my troth.”

“Amen,” Nick demanded. A talisman, perhaps, a charm to make the spell complete.

“Amen,” she echoed obediently.

He released her hand. There was no kiss. She shivered suddenly, and he pulled her against the heat of his body, tall and strong, enclosing her in his strength.

“Where’s the register?” he asked, his lips against her hair.

“I don’t know,” she said truthfully, leaning back, sniffing, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“We have to find it,” he said, no longer the tender lover of the clearing or the ardent maker of vows. He was again the arrogant nobleman, Wellington’s officer, confident and demanding.

“Why?”

“To record the marriage.”

“But—”

“Think, Mary.”

Instead, again obeying him without question, she moved behind the altar to the small vestment cupboard. She struggled a moment with the stiffness of the clasp, and when she had succeeded in opening the door, she found only an ancient leather-bound register. Its vellum pages were filled, she knew, with the scrawling signatures of previous village priests recording the important events of the parish when this building had served as its spiritual heart. The current register, where any marriage should now be recorded, rested in the chancel of the new church.

“Everything was taken to the new sanctuary when it was consecrated,” Mary said, shaking her head. “There’s nothing here but the old.”

“Is there room, Mary?” Nick asked.

“Room?” she repeated, puzzled.

Stanton strode to the cupboard. Without hesitation, he lifted the massive book from its resting place and brought it to the fading light of the window. He laid it on the stone altar, opening it to the last page.

“Here,” he said, pointing to the blank space at the bottom. “Now all we need is pen and ink.”

“Nick…” she protested again, knowing in her heart that this was wrong, against all the church held sacred.

He didn’t listen. The point of the pen he found in the cupboard was sharp enough, but the blackened smudge of dried powder, which was all that remained in the well, was unusable.

He carried the pen back to where Mary stood, still watching. He smiled at her before he pushed its point into the pad of his thumb, squeezing the flesh to encourage the welling crimson drop.

Following the pattern of the previous entries, Nick began to inscribe the circumstances of this marriage that was no marriage. His signature first. Then he handed the pen to Mary, his eyes compelling her, and almost against her will she obeyed, carefully inscribing her name.

“This isn’t a marriage, Nick. There’ve been no •banns and no clergy. We can’t marry ourselves. And there must be witnesses.”

“Of course,” he agreed, the gray eyes calm, and again he began to write, using still his own blood.

She watched, horrified because she knew the penalties for what he was doing—counterfeiting a church record, falsifying the required documentation of a marriage.

“No, Nick,” she said, catching his hand as he finished the scrawling signature of his father, an arrogant hand he could copy out as well as his own, having seen it a thousand times. “This is felony.”

“Who will charge us? My father would never deny me, Mary. Nor Charles,” he said, freeing his hand from her clutching fingers to add the name of his brother, and then his title. “They would suffer a traitor’s death rather than betray me.”

“And the priest’s signature. Will you forge that, too? My father won’t lie. He would never agree. You don’t know his hand,” she added, glad she had thought of something to stop what he was doing.

“But you do,” Nick suggested softly. It was true, of course. She knew she could produce a reasonable facsimile of her father’s scholarly penmanship. “Would he deny you, Mary?”

Would her father condemn her to the cruelty of the courts if she falsified this record? Into her mind came the image of his well-loved face. “No,” she whispered, certain of the truth of that, no matter what the cost to his conscience. “No,” she said again, more strongly.

“For me, Mary, my heart. Have I asked you for so much?”

The words hung between them like the perfume of the incense. He had asked for nothing. What she had given him had been offered freely, born of her own love and her need.

“You have asked me for nothing,” she whispered.

She took the pen from his hand, and fingers trembling, dipped the point again into his blood. This is my beloved. She added her father’s name, another lie, to go with the ones Nick had already written on the page.

She stood silent when it was finished, the enormity of all they had done weighing down her soul. Gently he took the pen from her hand and closed the book. He returned them both to the cupboard where they had lain undisturbed for so long and would lie again.

He walked back to her, the heels of his boots echoing across stone floor. He took her hands in his, enclosing their trembling coldness in his warmth. “Tell your father when he comes home. Tell him what happened.” Looking into the troubled blue eyes, he knew what he had tried to do here had not been enough and knew again the guilt of the clearing. “There wasn’t time. Not enough time to make it right. We’ve done the best we can, Mary. I’ll write my father and explain.”

“But it can’t be legal,” she argued, wondering why he had been so determined on this farce. It almost made it worse, she thought. A mockery of all that should have been.

His eyes rose once more to the lines of the figure crudely delineated by the colored panes in the window behind her. She turned, and her gaze found the blessed hands, outstretched to sinners.

“Intent, Mary. This is our intent. He understands what’s in our hearts. Our vows are real, signed in my heart’s blood. Those are what is important, and in them there is no deceit.”

And finally, wordlessly, she nodded.

It was dark now, only the crescent moon silvering the earth below. Mary stood beside him in the stillness. They had not spoken after they left the chapel. There had been nothing to say. All their vows, physical and verbal, had been made. Nothing, then, of any importance remained that needed to be given voice.

She put her hand over his sleeve, the tips of her fingers still shaded with the juice of the berries she had picked a hundred years ago. His fingers, long and brown and restless now, for he was eager to be off, closed around hers. The crested ring he wore was briefly touched with moonlight. Seeing the glint, he slipped it off his finger and onto her thumb.

“Take it to my father if…” The sentence trailed, unfinished.

She nodded.

“I love you, Mary Winters,” he whispered. “I will always love you. Dearer to me than my own soul.”

Again she nodded.

He felt the small tightening of her fingers over his forearm as she leaned to place her lips against the roughness of his unshaven cheek.

“God keep you safe.” She whispered the prayer and stepped away, releasing him, freeing him to fulfill other vows, as compelling to his honor, she knew, as these they had made here together.