With This Kiss

Everything.”
    She cupped his face in her small hands and kissed him so sensually—and so lovingly—that he finally understood that he had been given the greatest gift that any man could possibly receive.
    Yes, he’d lost years to warships and battle…
    But none of that mattered because Grace was his.
    H enry Dobson, vicar of St. James Church in Piddlepenny, raised an eyebrow at the two people who had just handed him a special license, signed by no lesser personage than the Archbishop of Canterbury.
    Piddlepenny might be a small town, but Reverend Dobson did not consider that the size of his flock meant that the archbishop should infringe upon his ecclesiastical authority. He did not approve of hasty marriages.
    “This is most irregular,” he stated. He was suffering from a bad cold and wanted nothing to do with something that looked very much like an elopement.
    In fact, he was growing a bit cynical about weddings in general, having seen too many in the last years that were (in his opinion) entered into for the wrong reasons. So he ushered the couple into his study with the firm intention to turn them down, archbishop or no archbishop.
    Clearly, they were gently born, and of comfortable means. They could travel down the road to someone else’s parish. He was not the man to put together couples who married without the approval of their family or without due attention to the gravity of the ceremony.
    “Lady Grace,” he said now, repeating it. He’d never met the daughter of a duke before, but he was pleasantly surprised. She didn’t seem terribly high in the instep. In fact, she was holding hands with her beau, quite as if they were the butcher and his beloved.
    “My father is the Duke of Ashbrook,” she said, nodding.
    “And Mr. Barry,” he said, turning to her fiancé.
    “Yes.” No title. That was interesting.
    “Lady Grace, is your family aware of your intention to marry?”
    She smiled at him, her eyes clear. “Yes, they are, Reverend. My mother obtained the special license you have before you.”
    Against his better judgment, he actually believed her. He would have thought a daughter of the Duke of Ashbrook would be married by a bishop, rather than by special license. But what did he know of polite society?
    Very little.
    “Mr. Barry, do you have the means to support a wife in the manner to which she is accustomed by birth?”
    Barry met his eyes straight on. “I am unworthy of Lady Grace in every way possible. My birth is humble in comparison, my patrimony minimal. However, I was recently discharged from the Royal Navy. As captain of the Daedalus , I was lucky enough to be awarded three purses. I will be able to support my wife without aid from her family.”
    Dobson had no doubt the man had been a fierce officer. He had the look of a warrior. And again, his eye was caught by the way the two held hands, so tightly… almost desperately… certainly tenderly.
    Lady Grace beamed at him. “Mr. Barry was the youngest officer ever to be made captain in the Royal Navy. He is the adopted son of Sir Griffin Barry, and far too humble in recounting his station.”
    “So you are Captain Barry and Lady Grace Ryburn?”
    Barry shook his head. “I have been granted an honorable discharge. It’s Mr. Barry now.”
    Again Dobson’s eyes were drawn to the hands so tightly clasped before him. Barry must have been injured, some disability that didn’t show. Dobson began to feel a bit more sympathetic. “Marriage,” he observed, “is one of the most weighty ceremonies in a man’s life.”
    “Nothing will ever be more important to me,” Mr. Barry said quietly.
    Dobson cleared his throat. He wasn’t accustomed to this sort of emotion. “As it says in the Lord’s book, to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” He paused, organizing his thoughts. This pair, charming though they were, ought to return to their own parish and post banns. A ceremony without friends or family was no way to start a life together.
    Lady Grace spoke before he could continue. “Mr. Barry has received His Majesty’s highest commendations for bravery. But now the time has come when he need not defend our shores. Finally, I have him home with me.”
    There was nothing Dobson could say to that. She’d voided his argument. And honestly, even in the midst of a wretched cold, he no longer cared to refuse their request. The eyes of these two made him remember why he became a priest in the first