“That is what I hoped you would think,” Lord Mere said, “and, because I know it would make you happy, we will be married not here in my Chapel, but in a small Catholic Church at the far end of my estate where I hope we can keep the ceremony a secret.”
He smiled before he added,
“In fact I am sure that even the local villagers will not be aware that it is I who am the bridegroom.”
Lord Mere, with his brilliance at organisation, intended to make sure of this by keeping the doors of the Church locked and arranging for the local people to be told that the marriage was between two foreigners.
As far as he was concerned, the God who had helped him save Florencia from the horrors of a marriage with a man like Vincente was the same as the one she prayed to.
He knew the prayers that had come f
