“This arrived from your mother,” he said, handing her an elegantly appointed cream-colored envelope.
Francesca slid her letter opener under the flap and removed the missive, which was, she noted with surprise, a full four pages long. “Good heavens,” she murmured. Her mother generally managed to say what she needed to say with one sheet of paper, two at the most.
“Is anything amiss?” Michael asked, perching himself on the edge of her desk.
“No, no,” Francesca said distractedly. “I just…Good heavens!”
He twisted and stretched a bit, trying to get a look at the words. “What is it?”
Francesca just waved a shushing hand in his direction.
“Frannie?”
She flipped to the next page. “Good heavens!”
“Give me that,” he said, reaching for the paper.
She turned quickly to the side, refusing to relinquish it. “Oh, my God,” she breathed.
“Francesca Stirling, if you don’t—”
“Colin and Penelope got married.”
Michael rolled his eyes. “We already knew—”
“No, I mean they moved up the wedding date by…well, goodness, it must have been by over a month, I would think.”
Michael just shrugged. “Good for them.”
Francesca looked up at him with annoyed eyes. “Someone might have told me.”
“I imagine there wasn’t time.”
“But that,” she said with great irritation, “is not the worst of it.”
“I can’t imagine—”
“Eloise is getting married as well.”
“Eloise?” Michael asked with some surprise. “Was she even being courted by anyone?”
“No,” Francesca said, quickly flipping to the third sheet of her mother’s letter. “It’s someone she’s never met.”
“Well, I imagine she’s met him now,” Michael said in a dry voice.
“I can’t believe no one told me.”
“You have been in Scotland.”
“Still,” she said grumpily.
Michael just chuckled at her annoyance, drat the man.
“It’s as if I don’t exist,” she said, irritated enough to shoot him her most ferocious glare.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say—”
“Oh, yes,” she said with great flair, “Francesca.”
“Frannie…” He sounded quite amused now.
“Has someone told Francesca?” she said, doing a rather fine group impression of her family. “Remember her? Sixth of eight? The one with the blue eyes?”
“Frannie, don’t be daft.”
“I’m not daft, I’m just ignored.”
“I rather thought you liked being a bit removed from your family.”
“Well, yes,” she grumbled, “but that’s beside the fact.”
“Of course,” he murmured.
She glared at him for his sarcasm.
“Shall we prepare to leave for the wedding?” he inquired.
“As if I could,” she said with great huff. “It’s in three days’ time.”
“My felicitations,” Michael said admiringly.
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“One can’t help but feel a great respect for any man who manages to get the deed done with such swiftness,” he said with a shrug.
“Michael!”
He positively leered at her. “I did.”
“I haven’t married you yet,” she pointed out.
He grinned. “The deed I was referring to wasn’t marriage.”
She felt her face go red. “Stop it,” she muttered.
His fingers tickled along her hand. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Michael, this is not the time,” she said, yanking her hand away.
He sighed. “It starts already.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said, plopping down in a nearby chair. “Just that we’re not even wed, and already we’re an old married couple.”
She gave him an arch look, then turned back to her mother’s letter. They did sound like an old married couple, not that she wished to give him the satisfaction of her agreement. She supposed it was because unlike most newly affianced pairs, they had known each other for years. He was, despite the amazing changes of the past few weeks, her very best friend.
She stopped. Froze.
“Is something wrong?” Michael asked.
“No,” she said, giving her head a little shake. Somehow, in the midst of her confusion, she’d lost sight of that. Michael may have been the last person she’d have thought she’d marry, but that was for a good reason, wasn’t it?
Who’d have thought she’d marry her best friend?
Surely that had to bode well for the union.
“Let’s get married,” he said suddenly.
She looked up questioningly. “Wasn’t that already on the agenda?”
“No,” he said, grasping her hand, “let’s do it today.”
“Today?” she exclaimed. “Are you mad?”
“Not at all. We’re in Scotland. We don’t need banns.”
“Well, yes, but—”
He knelt before her, his eyes aglow. “Let’s do it, Frannie. Let’s be mad, bad, and rash.”
“No one will believe it,” she said slowly.
“No one is going to believe it, anyway.”
He had a point there. “But my family…” she added.
“You just said they left you out of their festivities.”
“Yes, but it was hardly on purpose!”
He shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Well, yes, if one really thinks about—”
He yanked her to his feet. “Let’s go.”
“Michael…” And she didn’t know why she was dragging her feet, except maybe that she felt she ought. It was a wedding, after all, and such haste was a bit unseemly.
He quirked a brow. “Do you really want a lavish wedding?”
“No,” she said, quite honestly. She’d done that once. It didn’t seem appropriate the second time around.
He leaned in, his lips touching her ear. “Are you willing to risk an eight-month baby?”
“Obviously I was,” she said pertly.
“Let’s give our child a respectable nine months of gestation,” he said jauntily.
She swallowed uncomfortably. “Michael, you must be aware that I may not conceive. With John, it took—”
“I don’t care,” he cut in.
“I think you do,” she said softly, worried about his response, but unwilling to enter into marriage without a clear conscience. “You’ve mentioned it several times, and—”
“To trap you into marriage,” he interrupted. And then, with stunning speed, he had her back against the wall, his body pressed up against hers with startling intimacy. “I don’t care if you’re barren,” he said, his voice hot against her ear. “I don’t care if you deliver a litter of puppies.”
His hand crept under her dress, sliding right up her thigh. “All I care about,” he said thickly, one finger turning very, very wicked, “is that you’re mine.”