He took her in his arms again and it felt like coming home after a long journey. Tears glistened on her lashes as the wonder of the moment took hold of her, and this time they were tears of happiness.
‘You said that you also had something else to tell me,’ she reminded him in the last few moments before they had to separate while Nathan went to collect Toby from his father’s house.
‘It’s just an idea that has been in my mind ever since I saw the house on the island, and I’ve followed it up by asking if it is available to rent for the Christmas period, and it is. So how would you like us to have our wedding reception there? Many of our guests will have their own boats and we could hire something bigger to transport those who haven’t across the lake?’
‘That would be magical,’ she cried. ‘Shall I ask the vicar if he can call round this evening to talk about the arrangements? He was saying only yesterday that he was disappointed that no one was planning a Christmas wedding, so he will be pleased to hear our news.’
The ring on her finger did not escape the notice of the surgery staff when she got into work later that morning and congratulations came from all sides. Nathan had told his father their good news when he’d gone to pick Toby up, and John called at the surgery during the morning to express his delight to his prospective daughter-in-law.
‘You’d better tell your father to bring his best suit with him if he’s going to be giving his daughter away,’ he said laughingly, and remembering her father’s pleasure when she’d rung him earlier with her news she thought that for once he was happy. Happier than he’d ever been since they’d lost her mother.
The vicar came round that evening as requested, and was, of course, delighted to hear that he was going to have a Christmas wedding in his church after all, and by the time he was ready to go the foundations of a wedding ceremony to take place on the morning of Christmas Eve had been laid.
‘The main formality is that the banns, which are in the form of giving notice to anyone and everyone that a wedding has been arranged, must be read three times on three separate Sundays in a church before it can take place,’ he told them. ‘The rest of the procedure you will already know, I’m sure.
‘December the twenty-fourth will be a special day for the folks of Swallowbrook this year,’ he said as he was leaving. ‘Two of its own marrying on that day, and both of them doctors from the health centre that is one of the main focal points of the village.’
Toby was fast asleep upstairs and when the vicar had gone they went up and stood by his bed. As they looked down at him Libby said, ‘I wasn’t wrong about us being in the baby business, Nathan. I’ve done a test and I’m pregnant.’
‘Life is getting more wonderful by the minute,’ he said chokingly. ‘It wasn’t so long ago that I wasn’t sure if I would ever have children of my own because they would have had to have you as their mother and at the time the chances of that weren’t looking good.’
‘I was having the very same thoughts,’ she told him, ‘that if ever I had any children they would have to be yours.’
They sat talking long into the night, making plans, dreaming dreams, and amongst them was the idea of making the two cottages into one.
The invitations had been sent, the details of the music they wanted given to the vicar, and the banns were being read. Libby’s father would give her away. Hugo was to be Nathan’s best man and Toby a pageboy.
Libby’s best friend Melissa was cast in the role of matron of honour, and Keeley, a friend she’d always kept in touch with since they’d been at medical school, was to be a bridesmaid.
The ceremony would take place late morning and when it was over Libby and Nathan would sail cross the lake in Pudding to the house on the island where the reception was to take place in the afternoon. Outside caterers had been hired to prepare a buffet that would go on until everyone who wanted to come had been.
When they had all gone Toby would be tucked up in bed early to be ready for what Santa had brought while he’d been asleep. The problem of how he would get his sledge across the water had been on his mind at first, but they’d told him that he would bring it down from the sky on to the island and it would give the reindeer a chance to have a nibble at any grass that was lying around.
The day had dawned and though the sky was heavy and grey there was no snow, but Libby told herself it was expecting too much that the weather would adjust itself to her special requirements. She already had blessings by the score.
She was marrying the only man she’d ever loved in the church, in the village, where she’d lived all her life. She was carrying his child and was going to fill the gap, God willing, in the life of the small boy who was so dear to her heart.
That morning Nathan had told her that he was the interested party who had been quick to agree to a price when Greystone House had come onto the market, and that soon it would be theirs for holidays and weekends, and as she’d held him close she’d thought, what more could she want?
The church was full, the organist was playing the wedding march, and the bells were pealing out high above as Libby stood holding her father’s arm on the same spot in the porch where Nathan had seen his hopes scattered all that time ago.
Today none of what had gone before mattered, they were together at last, and with a smile over her shoulder for her small pageboy and the two friends who had both travelled quite some distance to be with her on her special day, she lifted the hem of a wedding gown of heavy white brocade and, holding a bouquet of red Christmas roses, met her father’s enquiring gaze and whispered, ‘I’m ready, let’s go.’
With every step she took towards Nathan, standing straight and still before the altar with Hugo by his side, the rightness of the moment increased. As he placed the gold band of matrimony on her finger next to the glowing emerald, the future was stretching before them as a wonderful dream that had become reality.
She was back in the church porch, holding onto the arm of her new husband this time, and as they stepped out into the open to be photographed they began to fall, soft and white, whirling and twirling—snowflakes from the sky above.
They were coming across the water, boats of all shapes and sizes, amongst them a big launch with lots of seating, and as Libby and Nathan waited to greet their guests on the landing stage of the island, with Toby holding both their hands, the lanterns around the lake came on early as a token of congratulation to the newlyweds.
‘That will be one of my patients who works for the lake authorities making a gesture,’ she said. ‘People are so kind. If any of their craft go past we must signal for them to stop and invite them in for a bite, don’t you think?’
‘I think that you are wonderful,’ he said laughingly. ‘The whole world can stop by as far as I’m concerned as long as you are here with me to greet them.’
It was over. Their guests had gone back across the water with the moon to light their way home as well as the coloured lanterns.
Toby was asleep, having supervised leaving out wine and a mince pie for Santa Claus. Libby and Nathan had the night to themselves and as he removed the soft white cashmere stole from her shoulders, which she’d worn to keep out the cold, and unzipped her out of the long white dress, he held out his arms and after that it was just the two of them, loving and giving each other all the joys they had longed for and had sometimes thought would never be theirs.
* * * * *
ISBN: 9781459220089
Copyright © 2011 by Abigail Gordon
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