A Kiss Before the Wedding - A Pembroke Palace Short Story Read Free Page B

the core, for she
knew her sister spoke the truth. She could not meet William two
days before her marriage to another man. The words in his letter
were clear. After all this time—when she had finally given up on
him—he had come home to declare himself.
    Part of her hated him for it—for staying away so
long. For not giving her some hope before now.
    For ever leaving in the first place.
    Oh, why did she write that letter? She should
have known this would happen.
    Perhaps she had known.
    The idea that she wanted any of this frightened
her. She had been so sure of her decision to marry the duke.
    Margarite was right. Adelaide could not meet
William at dusk. If she did, it could ruin everything.
    She must accept that her friendship with
William—as she once knew it—was over. She must steel herself
against what was, and what might have been, for she was about to
become a duchess, and everything was going to change.
     
     

Four
     
    William galloped fast and hard to
reach the maze before dusk. He dismounted under an oak tree in a
sheltering copse where he could tether his horse out of view of the
palace windows.
    The heat was stifling, but he barely noticed as
he strode along the square-clipped cedars on the outside wall of
the maze. When he found the entrance, he quickly slipped inside
while struggling to comprehend the complexities of his emotions,
and his presence there—a continent away from the world he had come
to know so well in the past year. How impulsive he’d been to rush
away from all that he found fascinating—science and the study of
medicine—to pursue his dream of love. He had been so passionate to
stop this wedding. It was as if he would explode like a keg of
gunpowder if he did not see Adelaide again and claim her for his
own.
    Would she come to him tonight? Was this his
destiny, and hers? Or had he been a bloody fool to think she might
love him that way? Enough to throw aside a wealthy duke and
disappoint her father and sisters? Perhaps even be disowned?
    Would she take on all that, to marry a mere
medical man?
    A blackbird fluttered out of the cedars overhead
as he continued along the tall green hedges, careful not to venture
too deeply into the maze, lest he become lost in the dark and fail
to return to meet Adelaide when she arrived.
    If she arrived...
    Turning back, he strode to the entrance to sit
down and wait.
    He would wait all night if he had to, for he
could not lose her.
     

     
    When William checked his
pocketwatch for the hundredth time, his heart was in shreds.
    It was past midnight and Adelaide had not
come.
    With excruciating regret, he rose to his feet,
looked up at the stars, and wondered what the bloody hell he was
doing here in this dark maze, when clearly Adelaide had made up her
mind and he had misunderstood the letter she wrote.
    He turned to leave, determined to forget her,
determined to bury the past and the foolish hopes he had clung to,
but stopped abruptly when his weary eyes locked upon the most
exquisite vision...
    There, in the moonlit entrance to the maze,
stood Adelaide, her golden hair falling loose and windblown about
her shoulders, her chest heaving as if she had run a great
distance. He imagined her fleeing from the palace—running
recklessly across the wide, rolling green lawns beneath the starlit
sky—to reach him.
    His darling Adelaide. She was so beautiful, so
grown-up since he had last seen her. A woman now. A woman who was
soon to become another man’s wife.
    Anger and hostility coursed through him—along
with a barbaric desire to hoist her over his shoulder, toss her
onto the back of his horse, and gallop away with her to parts
unknown.
    Slowly, carefully, he approached. As he drew
closer, however, the scorn he saw in her eyes left him pained and
disoriented.
    “What are you doing here, William?” she asked
with a frown. “Why are you doing this?”
    Why? God ... Why indeed?
    “I had to see you,” he explained, but it was a
pathetic response, for