At the time, the idea hadn’t been repellent. While it was true that even under the best of conditions — after a good night’s sleep and an hour and a half with her make-up and her hair curlers and her very best clothes — Rebecca still tended to resemble Queen Victoria in her declining years, Brendan had felt he could tolerate one or two mutual encounters with good grace and the guise of camaraderie. He counted heavily on his ability to dissemble, knowing that every decent lawyer had at least several drops of dissimulation in his blood. What he did not count on was Rebecca’s ability to decide, dominate, and direct the course of their relationship from its very inception. The second time he was with her, she took him to bed and rode him like the master of the hunt with a fox in sight. The third time he was with her, she rubbed him, fondled him, skewered herself on him and came up pregnant.

He wanted to blame her. But he couldn’t avoid the fact that as she panted and bobbed and bounced against him with her odd skinny breasts hanging down in his face, he had closed his eyes and smiled and called her Godwhat-a-woman-you-are-Becky and all the time thought of his future career.

So they would indeed be married today. Not even the failure of the Reverend Mr. Sage to appear at the church was going to stop the tide of Brendan Power’s future from fl ooding

right in.

“How late is he?” he asked Hogarth.

His brother glanced at his watch. “It’s gone half an hour now.”

“No one’s left the church?”

Hogarth shook his head. “But there’s a whisper and a titter that you’re the one who’s failed to show. I’ve been doing my part to save your reputation, lad, but you might want to pop your head into the chancel and give a bit of a wave to reassure the masses. I can’t say what that’ll do to reassure your bride, though. Who’s this sow she’s after? Are you already having a bit of stuff on the side? Not that I’d blame you. Getting it up for Becky must be a real treat. But you were always one for a challenge, weren’t you?”