by Mary Balogh
Now it would be her wedding dress.
It would have been far too fancy for a stroll into the village, but she would not be strolling anywhere on her wedding day, it seemed. Harry had insisted that she would travel to church in the carriage with him. Not with Gil too. He would go ahead of them, because a bridegroom was not supposed to set eyes upon his bride on their wedding day until they met in church. But, absurdity upon absurdity, he had insisted that Gil go to church in the carriage too lest he muddy his boots, which was altogether possible after the rain of the last few days.
Now, early in the morning, Abigail had discovered that her straw bonnet, the one she most wanted to wear, was far too plain for this particular dress and for the occasion. After a few moments of near panic—what would she wear on her head?—she had the idea of decorating the brim with live flowers instead of the modest cluster of silk ones that adorned it now. She donned her dressing gown over her nightgown and ran down the back stairs in order to take a shortcut through the kitchen to the garden at the back where the flowers for the house were grown in neat, colorful rows alongside the vegetables.
She did not escape notice as she had hoped to do, however. Even before she reached the back door the cook had hailed her, and the two kitchen maids with her gawked. She should have gone around the outside of the house, Abigail thought, but then she would have felt obliged to get dressed first, and she might have risked being seen by her bridegroom and forever dooming her marriage to whatever ghastly fate lay in store for such unfortunate couples.
“I just need to cut a few flowers to trim my bonnet,” she explained, holding it up, though why she had brought it down with her she did not know, since she would need both hands to cut and carry the flowers. “I thought it would look prettier. For a wedding, that is.”
The cook was standing over a large earthenware bowl, almost up to her elbows in dough, but she clucked her tongue and gestured quite eloquently with her elbows.
“Are your hands clean, girl?” she asked one of the maids. “They are? Take that there bonnet from Miss Abigail, then, and bring it into Mrs. Sullivan’s room. Then go out and cut a nice lot of flowers. Take the basket with you.” She turned her attention to the other maid as the bonnet was whisked from Abigail’s hand without a request for permission. “Carry Miss Abigail’s breakfast tray up to her room and then come right back down to take over from me here. I will join Mrs. Sullivan as soon as I have scrubbed up. Between us we will have the best wedding bonnet ever seen on a bride’s head. Miss Abigail, you go back up to your room right now, and I do not want to see hide nor hair of you again until you come down to go to church with Mr. Harry—Major Harry. Your bonnet will be brought up to you when it is ready.”
Abigail felt like a little girl having her hand slapped for trying to take a newly baked biscuit off the cooling tray and then finding herself seated at the table, swaddled in a napkin tucked beneath her chin, and two already-cooled biscuits on a plate before her.
“Oh dear,” she said. “I have made a nuisance of myself when I can see you are busy. I could very easily—”
“Are you planning to send roots down into the floor, girl?” the cook said to the maid who held the breakfast tray. “Off with you now. And, Miss Abigail, out of my kitchen. I have a wedding breakfast to prepare and a wedding bonnet to trim.”
And the thing was that Abigail went, as meekly as that child she used to be would have done.
Long before Harry came for her she was wearing her dress and the pearl necklace Marcel had given her for her twenty-first birthday. Real pearls, he had assured her with a grin, referring to the large, vulgar and very fake ones Mama had worn to their wedding. Apparently he had bought them for her as a sort of joke at a village fair the day they met. Abigail added her pearl earbobs after styling her hair in a simple knot and coaxing a few tendrils to wave over her ears and neck.
And then her bonnet arrived in the hands of one of the maids, who carried it rather as though it were a bowl full of some precious liquid in danger of spilling over. She was smiling broadly.
“It is that pretty, Miss Abigail,” she said. “Cook says it is her masterpiece, and Mrs. Sullivan says no one will mistake you for anything but a bride. She says I am to put it on for you so that none of the flowers get squashed and so that it sits just so. Oh, Miss Abigail, you look pretty, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Abigail had planned a discreet border of small flowers about the seam where the crown met the brim. Something delicately pretty and just a bit festive. This looked more like a lavish bowl of flowers—mostly varicolored sweet peas—in glorious bloom. The straw hat itself was almost invisible, except the top of the crown and the edge of the brim. The ribbons had been changed from pale blue to bright pink, and where they were attached to the bonnet they had been formed into elaborate rosettes.
“Well,” she said, swallowing her dismay, “let us see what it looks like on my head, shall we?”
Was it possible to postpone her wedding? Cancel it?
But after she had sat down on the bench in her dressing room, her back to the mirror, and the maid, anxious and frowning, had placed the bonnet on her head and repositioned it three separate times and then tied the ribbons close to her left ear and fluffed out the bow before standing back and smiling again—after all that Abigail turned half fearfully to look at her image in the mirror and . . .
“Oh,” she said, “it is pretty.”
“I should dashed well say it is,” Harry said from the doorway. “Stand up and let me have a good look at you, Abby. I say, you look as fine as fivepence.”
The maid curtsied and disappeared, and Abigail took a good look at her brother. He had definitely put on some weight. Not a great deal, but enough that he had lost that gray, gaunt look he had had when he came home. He was tall and lean and handsome in his green regimentals, which were a bit shabby, perhaps, but perfectly clean and well pressed. He looked like a warrior who had seen battle, and that was exactly what he was.
“Do I?” she asked him. “I do not look a bit . . . ridiculous, considering the fact that there will be no guests?”
Not even Mama.
Or Camille.
For a moment her stomach threatened to turn bilious.
His eyes searched hers. “I would think, Abby,” he said, “that on a person’s wedding day there is only one other person who matters. At least, that is what I would expect of my wedding day. Gil will be there, will he not?”
“Oh goodness,” she said, and laughed. “I hope so.”
“Well,” he said, “he went off in the carriage twenty minutes ago, and it has returned empty and is ready at the door for us. So I assume he is waiting for you in church and has not run off on foot.”
“Oh, Harry,” she said, “you look very handsome.”
“No. Do I?” he asked her, grinning. “Not the pale cadaver you ran from the day you arrived here?”
“And when I ran,” she said, “the first person I saw was Gil, stripped to the waist and chopping wood. I mistook him for a servant, scolded him for his state of undress, and threatened to report him to you.”
“Good God,” he said. “I’ll wager you were mortified when you discovered the truth. You have no second thoughts, Abby? You are sure this is what you want to do?”
“I am sure,” she said. “And I do not appreciate your trying to put last-minute doubts in my head. Shall we go?”
He stood back from the door so that she could precede him from the room. “You look awfully beautiful, Ab,” he said.
“Awfully?” she said, taking his arm to descend the stairs.
“I am full of awe,” he explained.
The carriage, Abigail saw when the butler opened the door and they stepped outside, was gleaming even though it had returned from London little more than twelve hours ago. And the sun was shining from a clear blue sky. The grass, still wet from the rain, was
twinkling in the sunlight.
Oh goodness, this was her wedding day.
The carriage had attracted some attention, she saw as it drew to a halt before the churchyard gates several minutes later, perhaps because it was making its second journey there in less than an hour. Some people stood still a little farther along the street, looking back. A few were drawing closer. And others began to join them when first Harry descended, all splendidly turned out in his uniform, complete with shako and sword, and then Abigail, holding his outstretched hand, followed him out in her sprigged muslin dress and her flower-bedecked bonnet. She spotted one of her closest friends among those who were drawing nearer.
But Harry was leading her along the churchyard path and opening the door. The familiar smells of the church met her—some combination of old hymn books and candles and polish—before they were overtaken by the scents of all the flowers with which the church was decorated.
Just like a garden.
Oh my! Her bonnet would be quite eclipsed. But who—?
She had no time for further thought about her surroundings, however. Harry had closed the church door and she had turned to look beyond the vicar toward the altar.
Her bridegroom was awaiting her there.
Looking tall and broad shouldered and splendid in his regimentals. Looking also unsmiling and grim faced, his facial scar somehow accentuated by the dim lighting and the shadows cast by the tapers burning on the altar.
She drew a slow breath and slipped her hand through Harry’s arm, and together they proceeded down the aisle.
Fourteen
Gil felt as though someone had robbed him of breath. He had always considered Abby pretty and dainty in her unadorned day dresses, her hair styled simply. Today she was nothing short of beautiful. Her dress looked as though it had been embroidered all over with tiny flowers, and it fell in straight, soft folds from just below the bosom. It was low cut with short puffed sleeves over tight gauzy sleeves reaching to her wrists. Her bonnet had been trimmed lavishly with fresh flowers of a glorious mix of bright pastel shades. And as soon as her eyes alit upon him they held his, large and steady.
He felt again the full weight of what he had done and what he was about to do. There should be a churchful of family, friends, and neighbors gathered here to witness her wedding day. Instead the church was empty except for the vicar’s wife in the second pew. He should be gazing at her with love overflowing from his heart after a courtship of a decent length during which he had wooed an answering love from her. Instead, her brother had put the germ of an idea into his head, his lawyer had reaffirmed it, and he had rushed ahead with the idea that having a wife might make him seem more eligible as a father to the judge who would hold Katy’s fate in his hands.
This was somehow all wrong, and part of him wanted to take a step toward her, both hands raised to stop her from approaching any closer. Go back, that one part of him wanted to say. Go back home. Let us start again and do this the right way.
If there was a right way. How could they possibly make a match of it when their backgrounds and upbringing were as different as they could possibly be and they had nothing in common except the basic illegitimacy of their birth? When they scarcely knew each other and did not even pretend to love each other? When their reason for marrying was not what it ought to be?
But the wave of guilt and near panic was momentary. He had thought the whole thing through on his journey to London and again on the way back. There was no deceit on either side. And no self-deceit either. Neither of them was going blindly into this marriage. They were wedding mainly for a reason that had nothing to do with each other, it was true, but it was nevertheless a noble reason. It was one that would surely bring them closer together—if, that was, they succeeded in getting custody of Katy. Moreover, they were not averse to each other. He wanted her. And she wanted him. Some of her words had echoed in his head throughout his journey and came to him now again.
It is not just because I want to help you retrieve your daughter . . . It is also because I want you . . .
I think I want to live with you, to be with you . . .
I think I would be sorry if I convinced myself that marrying you would be madness and let you go. I think I would miss you after you were gone . . . I think I would be unhappy.
And then she slipped her hand through Harry’s arm, and . . . smiled.
Wayward thoughts fell away, and his whole focus was upon her. Upon Abby. His bride. And nothing else really mattered. It did not matter that the pews were virtually empty. He was marrying her, and this time he would get it right. He must, for her sake, for the sake of his daughter and their future children. And yes, for his sake too.
Please, God, let him get it right this time.
It did not occur to him to smile. Solemnity did not call for levity, and it was a solemn occasion like none other he had ever experienced. The church fairly pulsed with holiness.
When Harry gave her hand into his, he held it enclosed tightly in his own and then loosened his grip while her brother moved to his other side to perform the second half of his duty, as his best man this time. The vicar stood before them, looking with a kindly smile from one to the other of them.
“Dearly beloved,” he said in a tone that matched the smile and somehow filled the church.
Gil fixed his eyes upon Abby’s face. And she gazed back with flushed cheeks and slightly parted lips and a fragrant garden of beauty like a halo about her head. Her voice was soft, slightly trembling when she spoke her vows to him. His own seemed rough and curt in contrast. When Harry handed him the ring Gil had purchased in London to the measure of one she had given him to take for that purpose, he slid it onto her finger and saw it there, the gold, eternal band of his commitment to her.
And this time, with this woman, it will be eternal, he vowed silently. He wanted desperately to love her, to be able to make her happy, to be a family with her and their children. He wanted the dream—home, wife, children, love, happiness. Not fleetingly—gone almost before he could grasp it, darkness at its heart—but forever. For the rest of their lives and beyond. A foolish, silly dream that no one looking at him at any time during his thirty-four years would ever have suspected. He wanted it.
The vicar was pronouncing them man and wife, and he had a viselike grip on her hand and was gazing down at her with a look of granite. Not that he knew it. It was just not his habit willingly to show a chink of vulnerability in his armor. The only time he had done it fully and consciously was with his newborn baby.
The vicar led the way to the vestry, where they signed the register and Harry and Mrs. Jenkins signed as witnesses. Harry hugged Abby and held her tightly for several moments while Mrs. Jenkins shook Gil by the hand and informed him that Miss Abigail—Mrs. Bennington—was very precious to them all in the village and was very certainly precious to him too. He wondered if she was convinced of that latter statement.
“I intend to cherish my wife quite as dearly as you could wish, ma’am,” he said, and she beamed comfortably at him, not apparently offended by the stiffness of his tone.
Then Harry was wringing his hand while the vicar’s wife hugged Abby and the vicar smiled benignly upon them all.
“There is something to be said after all for a quiet wedding,” Harry said. “It is no less touching than a big one, is it? And I was no less conscious that it was my sister I was giving into your care.” He was looking steadily into Gil’s face.
“Did I ever let you down on the battlefield?” Gil asked.
“You never did,” Harry said. “But this is not a battlefield.”
“I give you my word,” Gil told him, “that I am to be trusted in this too, Harry.”
He led his bride slowly along the aisle of the church even though there was no one in the pews to watch them go. He and Harry donned their shakoes, and Harry slipped out ahead of them.
Ah. But there were
people outside. Indeed, there was a sizable cluster of them beyond the church gate where the carriage awaited them, and they all burst into applause and whistles and even cheers when Gil appeared with Abby, no doubt having learned from the coachman the nature of what had been going on inside the church. If they had had any doubt, it would certainly have fled when Harry turned back toward them, a drawstring bag in one hand, dipped the other hand inside, and showered them with flower petals.
“Oh.” Abby laughed. “How very foolish.”
It was a bright, girlish laugh. But how very wonderful, she seemed to be saying. And if he had thought her beautiful before their nuptials, then now she was . . . Was there a more accurate word to describe her? But yes, there was. She was radiant.
Because this was her wedding day and she had married him.
She laughed again as another shower of petals fluttered over their heads.
And then Harry was opening the church gate for them and standing at attention in order to salute a superior officer. Gil returned the salute and experienced an alarming urge to weep.
He resisted it.
Outside the gate he lost his bride for a few moments while two young ladies he had seen before rushed at her, asking a dozen questions apiece even as they hugged her, and other villagers crowded around and called greetings and a few questions of their own. The landlord of the inn caught Gil’s eye and winked at him. A few other men with whom he had shared a glass of ale at the tavern grinned sheepishly at him.
