by Mary Balogh
“I suppose if I did not know him already,” Harry said, “I would be wanting to plant him a facer for so much as looking at you, Ab. And I would have you locked up in your room and fed bread and water for looking back.”
“So,” she said, “it is altogether wiser to wait and present them with a fait accompli.”
He grimaced. “I do not envy you.”
“No, I do not envy me either,” she said, leaning back to notice in some surprise that she had just embroidered a large, cheerful daisy and that it was perfect as the centerpiece for the silken garden she was creating with her needle. “But will it work anyway, Harry? Will he get his child back once he can produce me as his wife? I am not necessarily the best choice, am I? I would expect General Sir Edward Pascoe and his wife and their lawyer to pounce with eager triumph upon the irregularity of my birth.”
“You will just have to find a way of arguing back,” he said. “You are, after all, Abby, the daughter of an aristocratic marriage everyone thought was regular for more than twenty years. Who was—or is—Gil’s father?”
“Viscount Dirkson,” she said. “Do you know him?”
“Oh hell,” he said. “Pardon me for the language. Dirkson was one of Papa’s set. He is notorious for every excess and debauchery you could name—or at least he used to be. I am six years out of date with ton goings-on. What do—”
But his next few words were drowned out and the rest of his sentence abandoned as Beauty scrambled to her feet, barking loudly. The dog dashed first to the window and then to the drawing room door, at which she pawed frantically as she continued to bark.
Above the noise she was making, Abigail could hear the unmistakable approach of horses and a carriage. At half past ten o’clock at night.
Beauty made another dash to the window and her head briefly disappeared beneath the curtains. They came billowing out into the room as she pulled her head free and galloped back to the door.
Abigail’s stomach performed a great flip-flop as she threaded her needle through the cloth stretched over the embroidery frame, moved it aside, and got to her feet.
“Is he back home?” she asked as the dog turned to her, prancing excitedly and still barking her head off. “Let us go and meet him, then.”
The dog bounded out as soon as she had opened the door. Almost before Abigail had got through it herself, she could hear Beauty in the hall below, barking at the front door. The butler was drawing back the bolts and opening the door as she came downstairs.
And there he was, looking large and commanding in a greatcoat and tall beaver hat, striding into the hall. Beauty, barking and whining and panting, planted her great front paws against his chest just below his shoulders and, instead of reprimanding her or pushing her down, he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her.
“Missed me, did you, girl?” he said. “I suppose you have been locked up the whole time in a small kennel in a dark room with one bare bone and half a bowl of water?”
Beauty woofed in ecstasy.
“It was one piece of dry bread actually,” Abigail said, and his eyes came to her. “I was not expecting you until tomorrow.”
He set Beauty’s paws back on the floor and closed the distance between them, his right hand outstretched. He shook hands with her quite formally, his grip firm.
“But I want to get married tomorrow,” he said. “Unless you have changed your mind, that is. If you have, please say so without apology. You are under no obligation to me.”
“I have not changed my mind,” she said. And the realization struck her rather like a thunderbolt that this time tomorrow she would be his wife. They would be embarking upon their wedding night. For the first time she felt a touch of panic. He was so very large and dour. She did not believe she had ever seen him smile.
“Very well,” he said, and he looked beyond her toward the staircase, her hand still enclosed in his. “Are you up, Harry? Is it not long past your bedtime?”
“It is just as well I was not asleep,” Harry said. “I would have had a rude awakening. Can you not train your dog to bark quietly, Gil?”
“I will leave that to Abby,” Gil said, and released her hand as he returned his gaze to her. He patted his greatcoat close to his heart. “I have them here. The license and the ring. And I spoke to the Reverend Jenkins just after I left here yesterday. He is free tomorrow morning and the day after. But I prefer tomorrow. Can you be ready?”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
She remembered Camille and Joel’s wedding in Bath Abbey and her mother and Marcel’s in the church at Brambledean on Christmas Eve just as the first snow started to fall, the whole family in attendance. She remembered Alexander and Wren’s wedding at St. George’s on Hanover Square in London and Elizabeth and Colin’s at the same venue. But she also remembered that when the family was busy planning a grand wedding for Anna and Avery, Avery had called upon Anna one morning and borne her off to a quiet church on a quiet street in London and married her with only his secretary and Cousin Elizabeth for witnesses. Elizabeth was fond of saying that it was one of the most romantic weddings she had ever attended. And there was probably no happier marriage than Anna and Avery’s. At least it appeared happy to Abigail.
Anyway, it did not matter what sort of wedding anyone else had had.
Tomorrow was her wedding day. Hers and Gil’s.
Thirteen
Harry, looking almost too exhausted to stand on his feet, had nevertheless turned into the authoritative head of the household and brother of the bride before he went to bed.
“It might not be a family wedding with a full complement of guests the two of you are having tomorrow,” he had pronounced from the bottom stair, “but by thunder it is going to be done properly. It is going to be an occasion to remember.”
One thing being done properly entailed for two military men, apparently, was wearing full regimentals. Gil hauled out his uniform, which he had not worn since leaving St. Helena, and discovered that his green coat was sadly soiled and badly creased—not to mention the rest of his gear. He took the coat downstairs before going to bed and stood outside the kitchen door in the darkness brushing it vigorously before sponging off those stubborn stains that refused to yield to the brush. He was caught in the act by the cook, who had not been in bed, she was quick to explain to him, but rather in conference with Mrs. Sullivan and the butler in the housekeeper’s room.
“There are to be only two outside guests for luncheon tomorrow, according to Mr. Harry—Major Harry, that is,” she said, “those two being the Reverend and Mrs. Jenkins. But the meal is to be a wedding breakfast, we have been informed, since Miss Abigail is to marry you in the morning and who am I to call it a havey-cavey business when her ladyship, Miss Abigail’s mama, has not long returned to London with his lordship, the marquess, her husband, and all the rest of the family except Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham, who returned to Bath with their family and Mrs. Kingsley?”
Fortunately her monologue did not turn into an all-out scold, for she had spotted the coat Gil held in one hand and the brush in the other. What she noticed, with sharpened eyes and thinned lips, was the creases.
“That coat is in such a state I would be ashamed to let you be seen wearing it, Lieutenant Colonel,” she informed him, “when you would be coming from this house, where we have maids who know how to use an iron and turn people out right and proper with not a crease or a wrinkle in sight. Give that here.”
In vain did he protest that he would do it himself, as he was perfectly capable of doing, if she would just point him in the direction of an iron. He was asked, rhetorically, he guessed, if he supposed the irons would heat themselves, a question that was followed by a not particularly complimentary remark about men. While she spoke, the cook was kindling the fire in the stove from the embers and banging down upon it two hefty irons and dragging out the board from some inner sanctum. She clucked her
tongue over a few faint stains that were quite indelible and had been on the coat for as long as Gil could remember. She went in search of cloths and cleaning potions and the Lord knew what else.
“You are not going to do it all yourself, are you, ma’am?” he asked her, seriously embarrassed. By now it must be perilously close to midnight.
“I am not dragging one of the maids out of her bed just because a man does not know how to treat his property with the proper respect,” she said. “And what, Lieutenant Colonel? Do you think I am capable only of cooking?”
He wisely refrained from answering and watched meekly while those few faint indelible stains became delible, if there was such a word. The army wives who had used to clean his uniform very creditably would have been put to shame. He continued to watch while she ironed the coat. He dared not bring his boots down to brush and polish while she was busy or she would probably have insisted upon doing that job too. And he dared not prepare to polish the buttons on his coat . . .
“I’ll get them buttons and them other taradiddles on the shoulders and cuffs shined up proper too,” Cook said as she replaced one iron on the stove top and picked up the other. “It’s a disgrace you would have been to this house and yourself and Miss Abigail, Lieutenant Colonel, if I had not happened to be up late on account of your wedding breakfast. All spots and creases.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, standing in the middle of her kitchen, his feet apart, his hands clasped behind his back. She could not see his grin. She reminded him a great deal of those camp followers, who had bossed and sassed and coddled the men—husbands, lovers, officers, grizzled old veterans, new recruits, and all the rest of them alike.
“And you needn’t just stand there pretending like you are doing something,” she said without looking around at him. “You can get yourself out of my way and off to your bed for your sleep. And if you don’t look after Miss Abigail proper, you will have me to answer to next time you come here, lieutenant colonel or no lieutenant colonel.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Good night, ma’am, and thank you.”
His coat and the shirt—fortunately clean—and other items of his uniform that he had set out ready in his dressing room before lying down were all hanging up when he went in there early the next morning to get his boots, which he planned to take out to the stables to clean. All—not just the coat—were freshly cleaned and ironed. Even his shako, set neatly on a side table, had been brushed and cleaned and its metalwork polished to a high gleam. And—the devil!—his boots, placed neatly side by side beneath the hanging clothes, were spotless and defied their advanced age by being so shiny he could almost see his image in them.
Good God, he must have been deeply asleep not to have heard all the nighttime traffic.
Only his sword had escaped attention, for which fact he was profoundly grateful. It had been generally known within the regiment that no one—and that meant no one—touched Lieutenant Colonel Bennington’s sword unless he wanted his ears blistered. He bore it off now to the stables to put a fresh edge on the blade and to oil it and shine both it and the scabbard until they met his exacting standard. More exacting than usual this morning. It was his wedding day.
He had not allowed himself to think too deeply about that fact. It was a mental discipline he had acquired during the war years and had stood him in good stead. Never borrow trouble from the future and never lament the past unless there was something one could do to fix its effects. The present offered quite enough with which to occupy oneself. It was not a simple system, of course. One could not, by a mere effort of will, eliminate the past and ignore the future. There was that prebattle terror, for example, which he had never been able to avoid.
And now, suddenly, there were prenuptial nerves. And second and seventeenth thoughts. And the terrible clutch of fear at his stomach that he was possibly putting himself through all this for nothing. He might never see Katy again. And if he was putting himself through it for nothing, what did that say of what he was doing to Abby?
And this was the very reason one needed to stop letting one’s thoughts roam where they would. Roaming thoughts were a menace. They were forever trying to destroy or at the least annoy their host.
When he was dressed, unaided, despite Harry’s offer to send his valet to him, he looked at himself in the full-length pier glass in the dressing room and was satisfied that he would be making an appearance that would be respectful to both his bride and the occasion. Women, he believed, set great store by weddings. For a moment his mind touched upon the farce of his first wedding, which Lady Pascoe had insisted upon making into a grand regimental affair so that no one would suspect that it was a forced wedding, but he pushed the memory aside.
Of course, he still looked like a savage beast, which he had been called on more than one occasion, not always as an insult. But Abby had not been blindfolded when she agreed to marry him.
Good God, he could still not understand why she had done it.
Harry had insisted that his breakfast be sent up to him since it was imperative that he not see the bride until she joined him in church. So, after he was dressed, far too early, he had nothing to do but pace his room like a caged animal. He was to ride to church in the carriage. He had protested that it would look a bit ridiculous when the walk to the village and the church was not a long one and the day was fine after the rain of the last few days, but Harry had been adamant. Gil was not going to arrive at the church in mud-spattered boots and frightening the villagers by looking as though he were marching to battle.
So he rode to the village in the ancient carriage, which had been ruthlessly cleaned and polished after its muddy return from London last evening, and stepped inside the church, which had been starting to look familiar to him. It did not look so familiar this morning, however. The altar and the wall sconces were overflowing with flowers, and fresh candles burned everywhere except on the altar, where new tapers were nevertheless ready. It looked also as if the pews had been polished and the floors swept and mopped. The old church smell, which he rather liked, had been overlaid by the mingled perfumes of flowers and polish and wax candles.
The vicar’s wife—she was to be the second witness to the wedding, with Harry—dressed surely in her Sunday best, was moving one of the vases on the altar to a position half an inch to the right of where it had been. She turned to smile at Gil and scurry to her seat in the second row of pews, as though the service were about to begin.
The vicar came bustling out of the vestry, his face wreathed in smiles, his hand outstretched for Gil’s.
“This is a joyous occasion, Lieutenant Colonel Bennington,” he said. “A wedding is always joyous even when the couple chooses to celebrate it quietly, without any noise or fuss.”
“It looks as if someone has certainly been fussing,” Gil said, looking about the church.
“Well,” the vicar said, “Mrs. Jenkins has always been particularly fond of Miss Abigail. And of Miss Camille too—now Mrs. Cunningham—and Mr. Harry. Major Harry, that is. And since their dear mother is not here to fuss over Miss Abigail herself, then Mrs. Jenkins insisted upon doing it in her place, at least in her own little domain here at the church.”
“Everything looks and smells wonderfully festive,” Gil said, raising his voice so that Mrs. Jenkins would hear him too. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Everything also felt suddenly very real indeed.
And so he awaited his bride. And his future—which he tried not to think of. Today, this moment was what mattered now.
He was about to deprive Abigail Westcott of her freedom, he thought as he studied, without really seeing it, the stained-glass window that pictured Jesus surrounded by little children. She had waited patiently for six years to use that freedom in the pursuit of a life that would bring her fulfillment and happiness. And now she had chosen to gift him with it.
He contemplated the vast responsibility he w
as about to take on.
After a few minutes he glanced down at his boots to make sure they had not acquired even a speck of mud in his progress along the church path. He checked the positioning of his sword at his side, adjusted his red sash, and glanced at the church door. He thought fancifully that perhaps it would never open again. But then he heard the approach of a carriage and was aware of it stopping at the church gate. He took his place before the front pew while the vicar, now in his full vestments, lit the candles on the altar and made his way along the short aisle to the church door to greet the bride.
Gil was suddenly glad that Harry had played the autocratic family head and insisted upon formality even in so small a wedding. Gil had pictured the three of them walking to church and making their way together to the altar rail, where he would present his license and he and Abby would be married, sign the register, and walk back to the house, all within half an hour or so. It was the sort of wedding Abby had chosen and he had wanted. But every bride, he believed, and yes, perhaps every bridegroom too, needed some sort of ceremony, something to set their wedding day apart from all other days. Some sense that a momentous milestone had been reached and then passed.
His bride stepped inside the church with her brother and Gil felt his mouth turn dry.
* * *
• • •
After Harry had decided last night that his sister was not just going to wander off to church in the morning to be married, but that she was, by thunder—his words—going to have a wedding, guests or no guests, Abigail had abandoned her plan to wear her favorite blue day dress for the occasion. Instead she had hauled out from the back of her wardrobe the sprigged muslin dress that hung there a little separate from all the other garments so that it would not crease though it was seldom worn. She was not sure why she had even brought it with her from London. She had had it forever and a day, but she had worn it no more than half a dozen times. She had worn it first to Camille and Joel’s wedding in Bath—oh, goodness, five years ago. She had worn it last a few months ago to the large neighborhood party her mother had organized for the eightieth birthday of the Dowager Marchioness of Dorchester. It was delicate and pretty and always semifashionable because it had never been ultrafashionable. It was not quite formal enough to be an evening dress, but it was more than just a day dress. She had always loved it.
