For the first time that day, Oliver's expression darkened at Edmund's summons. "You are not a dog to be summoned to follow at his heels," he whispered to Connie, under his breath. He didn't really care if Edmund overheard, but he didn't want to start a scene at his best friend's wedding.

"I am lower," she murmured back to Ollie. "I am just his wife." She pressed his hand gently, lifting her smile back onto her face for Lawry's sake as she turned to take Edmund's arm as he lead the way out of the chapel to the waiting carriages.

Louisa skipped cheerfully into Oliver's line of sight. "I do believe, Mr. Blackwood, that you have to escort me to the breakfast," she declared sweetly. "It seems I cannot be trusted not to annoy the bride and groom if I travel with them."

Clare laughed at her sister's comment. "Louisa King, you are going to scandalize Europe if you don't calm down."

Oliver's gaze momentarily followed Connie's retreat before turning back to the bride and groom, an amused smirk on his face as they were joined by the younger of the King daughters. "Ah, Miss King," he greeted her, offering her an arm. "It would be my privilege to escort such a lovely young lady as yourself."

Beside him, Lawry rolled his eyes and chuckled, despite the obvious annoyance both men were keeping just barely restrained at Edmund's behavior. "I refuse to let Edmund spoil the day."

"Yes, well, you aren't his wife, are you?" Oliver remarked.

Refusing to let confusion reign her, Louisa glanced between the two men, taking Oliver's arm with her bright smile firmly in place. "I would be rather worried if Lawrence was someone's wife, Mr. Blackwood," she pointed out. "That would rather make the procreation of children part of my sister's marriage a little troublesome, wouldn't you say?"

Clare colored at her sister's forward words, taking Lawry's arm with a smile of her own. "I feel I should apologize for my sister, but she is bound to say something worse the moment I do."

"Nonsense," Oliver replied, as he tucked Louisa's hand in the crook of his arm, a wide grin for both the bride and her sister. "I have always found the King women to be as charming as they are lovely, and that includes their mother," he added with just enough teasing to get away with it. The subject of Edmund was that easily dismissed for now, in the wake of such a happy event as a wedding. "Now, as we have been so kindly reminded, breakfast awaits. Shall we?" he asked, gesturing toward the carriage that awaited them.

"You have always had a pretty tongue, Mr. Blackwood," Mrs. King smiled at Oliver fondly, inclining her head as she and her husband moved toward the carriages waiting at the gate.

Louisa snickered softly. "You almost made her blush," she told Oliver as they, too, headed in that direction. "Try again at the breakfast, Father might even crack a smile."

"So long as he doesn't crack the whip," Oliver intoned as he led Louisa away in the direction of the carriage.

Behind them, the bride and groom lingered, left alone for a moment longer. "I should like to kiss you again, if I may," Lawry teased his new wife.

Aware of the vicar leaving to remove his vestments so he could join them at Arden Manor, Clare blushed as she looked up at her husband, her smile brightening at his teasing request. "I should like that very much," she agreed softly. "Though I do not believe you need ever ask beforehand again."

Lawry's smile widened at the reminder from his new bride and the realization that he no longer had to follow the constraints of society, at least where courtship was concerned. "Must we really join them for breakfast?" he asked, as his arms found their way around her waist. He had held her like this a few times before, when they'd been fortunate enough to find a few private moments here and there, and he felt as though he would never tire of the warmth of her embrace.

She laughed in her quiet way, rising onto her toes to touch the tip of her nose to his. "Yes, we must," she assured him, thrilling to his embrace as she always did. They had had relatively few private moments together throughout the course of their courtship and engagement, and yet, in just a couple of hours, she would be wholly alone in his company, traveling to the little cottage Constance had rented for their honeymoon. "If Louisa is not allowed to catch the bouquet, she may never forgive me."

"Darling, Louisa is the only unwed female in attendance!" Lawry pointed out with a chuckle. Also, the only female under the age of seventeen. Before she had any chance to reply further, he silenced her with a kiss that was markedly more passionate than the first.

He caught her soft gasp with that kiss, rewarded for his passion by the the sudden grip of her hands on his sleeves, the way her lips moved eagerly with his. Inexperienced she might have been, but she did not lack for passion of her own. Even standing under the eaves of the chapel, she had no compunction in looping her arms about his shoulders, pulling herself closer as a sound that might almost have been tender moan vibrated through her chest.

He smiled into her lips at the reaction he'd elicited from her with that one simple kiss. He knew she had never been with a man before, not even to share a kiss, and knew he would have to go slow and be gentle, but her eagerness was certainly encouraging. "We should join the others before they come looking for us," he murmured quietly, though he made no move to untangle himself from her embrace.

Breathless, she lingered with him for a long moment, her breath warming the air between them as her eyes flickered from his gaze ot his lips and back again. If that was the consequence of a single kiss, what was her wedding night going to do to her? She had a feeling her mother's half-hearted attempt at explaining intercourse had left a few things out. A slow smile crept over her face as she drew her gloved fingers over his cheek. "You're a cruel man, Lawrence Grey, to kiss me like that and expect me to be patient afterward."

"It is not what I expect, so much as your family!" he replied with a chuckle. Skipping the wedding breakfast after all the arrangements had already been made would be nothing short of scandalous. "We will be alone soon enough, dearest," he told her, before touching yet another slow, sweet kiss to her lips.

She trembled at that kiss. Three kisses, all so different, and all from Lawry - she could tell she had a lot to learn about being a wife. There seemed to be an awful lot more to it than just running a household. Even when his lips parted from hers, she stayed close, her eyes closed as a smile played about her lips. Then abruptly she opened her eyes, swaying back. "The breakfast," she said, reminding herself more than him. "Connie will need us there if she's to get through this with decorum."

He drank up that kiss, like a man dying of thirst, eager for whatever small bit of affection she might offer him. "One week, my love. I will be here. I promise," he told her, clutching both her hands and drawing them to his lips for a kiss. By God, she would be his, one way or another, or he'd die trying, for he could not bear life without her any longer. To hell with Edmund Stanley. He had his fortune and mistresses a-plenty. He could not have Constance, too.

She clung to his hands a moment longer, dragging herself away to return to the party in the dining room. Edith King took her arm immediately, drawing her into conversation with Louisa as though she had never been gone. With luck, Edmund would not have missed her at all.

As for Oliver, he did not return to the dining room, but prepared to take his leave. Now that the bride and groom had gone and Connie had joined the others, there was little reason to stay, and all the more reason to leave before he and Edmund came to blows or worse. There was business he needed to discuss with Alfred King, but that could be done elsewhere, and so he found his way to the door without bidding the family farewell.

Edmund would not care that he had gone, and the Kings would understand. That family had seen very quickly that Constance Stanley was the reason one of their hardest working captains found so many excuses not to take to the shore. And indeed, the party would not remain together for more than another hour. With the departure of the bride and groom, there was little to keep them at Arden Manor, and they had their own homes to go to.

While one couple was making covert plans for the future, another couple was making their way to their honeymoon destination. It was three hours from Warwickshire to Lake Windermere by train - three hours that seemed like three years to a pair of newlyweds eager to begin their honeymoon.

There was relative privacy in the compartment where they journeyed together, but Clare did not dare to risk losing sense of her surroundings by indulging in her husband too much. Still, their arrival at Windermere did not go unremarked upon - the locals could spot a newly-wed couple a mile off, and if Connie had not already arranged for them to be collected by the groom attached to the cottage where they would be staying, they would likely have been whisked away to the inn whether they wished it or not. As it was, Jimmy Mullins was there to set their trunks on the carriage and take them along the winding roads beside the lake to the Old Parsonage cottage, where a housekeeper and two maids waited to welcome them in with a good meal on the table after their long journey.

As much as Lawry had thought Clare might have enjoyed a trip to Paris or Rome or some other bustling city, he found that the simple cottage at Windermere was the perfect destination for a couple newly married who wanted to enjoy the peace and seclusion it had to offer. Their welcome was warm and friendly, and the meal that awaited them was satisfying and delicious. They could not have picked a better place, and he had to remember to thank Connie when they got back for helping make the arrangements.

When the plates were cleared away, the housekeeper and maids seemed to melt out of sight, leaving the newly-wed pair to their own devices. Clare unbuttoned her jacket as she moved to the window to watch the sun setting over the wild hills and lake that made up their vista. It truly was a beautiful place - wild and isolated. She was alone with her husband. As she raised her hands to unpin her hair, wanting it loose, that thought settled in her stomach, sending a flurry of butterflies to tingle over her skin.

Lawry paused a moment to enjoy the view, not just admiring the blue and green of hills and lake and sky, but the beauty of the woman who had stolen his heart. He moved up behind her, his stomach in knots at the knowledge of what was ahead. Would she want him to be gentle and go slow, or would her passion match his in a hurried frenzy to satisfy the hunger that had been gnawing at them both' In truth, it didn't matter - slow or fast, gentle or frantic - together they would find the right rhythm, the rhythm that matched the beating of their hearts and their shared passion. He drew his arms around her waist, leaning close to breathe her in, to memorize her scent, her presence, to let her fill his senses, daring to touch his lips to the side of her neck - the first but not the last of many such caresses yet to come.

Her head turned toward him as she felt his arms slide about her waist, the coil of her hair falling free over her shoulder. Yet before her eyes could touch his face, she felt his lips against her skin, and those butterflies erupted within her, sending that tingling sense of anticipation into a rippling cascade of liquid heat that seemed to charge every inch of her body with newfangled electricity. She gasped, her eyes falling closed without bidding as she leaned back against him. "Lawry ..."

He heard pleading in her voice, but he did not think she was pleading with him to stop. At least, it seemed so, if he was reading her right in the way she leaned against him and her breath caught in her throat at his touch. Did she truly want him as much as he wanted her? Finally, they were alone and free to share their love together as husband and wife, at long last. He let his kisses speak of his desire, softly and tenderly, as his lips explored the graceful line of her neck from just behind her ear to the collar of her blouse, while his hands moved to peel the jacket away from her shoulders, the first of many layers to be shed.

She twisted about to face him as he plied her neck with kisses, soothing the natural fear that she might not please him in the way a wife should. It was a matter of moments to remove her jacket, her hands rising with tentative desire to touch him, to curl her fingers to his cheek, into his hair, and dare to undo the buttons of his waistcoat as she brushed her lips to his jaw. "I ....I do not know what to do," she warned him in a soft whisper, unwilling to be a coward and simply lie back.

For the first time since he'd first spied her from across the opera house, he let his fingers wander into her hair, sliding his fingers through the silken red tresses he'd so admired from afar. While other women were fashionably blonde or brunette, it was her red hair that had first captured his attention, but her beauty did not stop there. He smiled at her confession, guessing as much and knowing there were no rules where love was concerned. What happened between a man and a woman behind closed doors was no one's business but their own. "Do whatever you wish to, dear heart. There is no right or wrong where love is concerned," he assured her, sweeping a hand through her hair and drawing her closer to capture her lips in a kiss that was deeper and more passionate than any he'd shared with her before, claiming her with his lips as his own.

She shuddered at the feel of his fingers in her hair, surprised by how possessive an action it felt, and by how much she welcomed being possessed by him. But it was that word - love - that gave him a gasp to taste as he claimed her lips, urging her to respond with all the love in her own heart. She had not dared to admit to that feeling, not even certain of it herself until this moment, when she suddenly knew that she was not alone in that maelstrom of emotion. Her arms curled about him, pulling him closer to her until she had no breath left, cursing her corset out loud as their lips parted.

Some people confused love with lovemaking. As a widower, Lawry knew what it was to be with a woman, but he had never felt or shared the same passion with his first wife that he did with Clare. He could not explain it or put it into words, but he knew there was something different when he kissed her, some special connection he'd felt only with her. Each kiss, each caress was a new discovery as he slowly unwrapped her one layer at a time to reveal the secrets she kept hidden beneath those layers.