Chapter 5
The wedding was quick and uneventful, although they were bombarded by the press as they left City Hall.
“How did they know?” Hugh whispered to Jane.
“Weddings don’t count unless they make the papers, don’t you know that?” Charles joked.
“You called them?”
“The studio did. I merely informed the head of the studio that their two biggest stars were finally making it legal.”
“So, Jane, how does it finally feel to be Mrs. Hugh Ainsley?” A reporter called out.
“Aren’t you supposed to ask me that tomorrow morning?” Jane teased them.
The crowd whistled. “Say, that’s a side we don’t get to see in your pictures!”
“Sounds like you’re in for quite a wedding night!” One of the newshounds joked.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Hugh said.
“Care to show the folks at home?” One of the photographers asked.
Jane and Hugh smiled for the cameras, adding the obligatory hugs, and finishing up with an exaggerated kiss that lasted just long enough to ensure gushing copyspace about the newlywed lovebirds.
“Aw, it’s enough to warm even the cockles of my jaded heart,” Melvin Martin, the notorious gossip columnist said, as Hugh leaned toward Jane again.
“Think it’ll last?” One of the reporters nudged a photographer.
“Two movie stars?” The photographer asked. “Doesn't usually.”
“But, when there’s that kind of an attraction--”
“True. The look on Hugh’s face whenever he finds poor Jane, tied up in another abandoned warehouse in another one of Charles‘s nefarious schemes— no one could ever deny the strength of his feelings.”
“Women swoon over that look.”
“I wish women swooned over me.”
“Hey, look behind them— it’s Charles, Charles Porter, America’s most dastardly villain. Hey Charles, you aren’t here to try to break up Hugh and Jane, are you?”
Charles smirked. “Would that be a properly villainous thing to do? Perhaps I should swoop in and--”
“Except that Mr. Charles Porter is now very much spoken for,” the brunette next to him spoke up, raising her hand for the cameras to show off a dazzling diamond ring.
“Hey, a double wedding! Now that's an even better scoop”
Several more popping lightbulbs later, and they were in a taxi cab.
A few trips around the park to lose the reporters, and then the cab took them home, pulling up in front of two nicely appointed brownstones on a quiet side street.
“Home sweet home,” Jane said, and Hugh nodded. He could see himself growing old here. Growing old beside the one person he had always wanted.
“I’d say you did rather well for yourself,” Charles said.
“Oh, you think so, do you?”
“Not as well as I did, but nothing can be done about that now. Stuck with your partner for life.”
“Promise?”
Charles nodded. “Villains are very obsessive. Once we fixate on something—“
“You might want to go inside the house,” Marjorie said. “Otherwise not much point to our little show at City Hall.”
“Shall we go consummate our unions?” Charles asked, leading Marjorie up the front steps, Hugh and Jane right behind them. “The papers did want to know how it feels to be Mrs. Hugh Ainsley,” Charles said as they entered the empty house.
“Except there isn’t ever really going to be a Mrs. Hugh Ainsley. Except on paper,” Hugh grinned. “So what should I ask you in the morning instead?”
“What I would like for breakfast.”
“And what would you like?”
“For you to ask me that question every day for the rest of our lives,” Charles said, squeezing his hand.
“That doesn’t sound very villainous,” Hugh said. “In fact, it sounds downright tender.”
“Give me a minute and I’ll think of something,” Charles said, his eyes shining with emotion. “Ah, there,” he said. “Tender. Let us see how very tender I can make you for our very first night together. All night,” he said, reaching for the connecting door to the next brownstone.
“It’s going to be a very long night, isn’t it?”
“And a very long union.”