by Jagger, Kait
Luna’s brow wrinkled in confusion but at that moment, Stefan put his arm around her, stealing a glimpse of Jem’s watch. ‘Right, älskling, the gents and I are going down to the pub. You have exactly an hour and twenty-five minutes to prepare.’
‘Prepare?’ Luna repeated blankly.
‘You don’t think we’re going to let you get married in that, do you?’ Nancy said, gesturing disparagingly to Luna’s dress.
Kayla eyed Stefan’s suit with a critical frown. ‘Not gonna lie, you guys look like fifty shades of grey.’
As if on cue, the Salonen twins sauntered into the foyer, Kimi sporting a deep purple waistcoat and Kiki a forest green one. Stefan started herding them and the rest of the men out the door and Luna could hear Kimi saying, ‘You’re not wearing that are you?’
Next thing Luna knew, Jem was hustling her up the stairs into the waiting arms of no less than five beauticians: one for nails, one for makeup, two for hair, plus a massage therapist, of all things.
‘We want you relaxed for your big day,’ Kayla explained shortly thereafter, straddled face down on a massage chair while the therapist worked on her neck. ‘Mmm, that’s right,’ she groaned. ‘There’s a knot right… ah…’
There was a knock on the door of the function room they were using and Jem sprang to answer it, returning with a silver bucket and a brace of champagne glasses. ‘From the groom!’
‘Ooohh, DP,’ Nancy cooed. Without looking up from the massage chair, Kayla held out her hand.
And it was… lovely. Lovely having a loud whirlwind of joking and drinking and laughing going on around her as she sat swathed in a robe, with one hand in the process of being manicured and the other under an ultraviolet light, and two hairstylists standing behind her, straightening, backcombing, pinning and spraying her tresses into a high, satin-smooth bun adorned by braided loops and artful coils of hair.
The makeup artist was just finishing applying a thin coat of liquid eyeliner to her lids when another delivery arrived, a gift from Lady Wellstone. Something old – x Augusta read the note. Luna opened the square leather box that came with it and gasped. Resting on a bed of black velvet was a delicate circlet made of a combination of white and blue diamonds. A Wellstone family heirloom Luna had seen only once before, in photos of the Marchioness’s own wedding to the Marquess.
‘Oh my days!’ Kayla screeched. ‘It’s a tee-ah-rah! Give it here.’ She danced away with it to the wall mirror and she and Jem spent the next few minutes trying it on.
‘Maybe I should try growing my hair out for my wedding,’ Jem said speculatively, adjusting the tiara on top of her blonde bob. ‘My hairdresser says I need to give the bleach a rest or it’s all going to start falling out.’
‘You, no hair colour?’ Nancy said in a voice that was like, Thor, no hammer?
‘I know,’ Jem said sadly. ‘It just doesn’t feel right, does it.’
‘What is your natural hair colour anyway?’ said Kayla. ‘Do you even know?’
‘It’s light brown,’ Luna said, smiling up at Jem as the makeup artist brushed powder on her cheeks. ‘With a little bit of gold in it.’
Another knock on the door, then, and another delivery, this time of flowers straight from Arborage’s nursery garden. Three unique smaller arrangements for the girls and a larger bouquet of dark pink Arborage roses mixed with creamy white magnolias for Luna.
‘Smells like heaven,’ Jem said, holding Luna’s bouquet in her arms, inhaling deeply. The arrangement was secured by thick luminous silk cord wound around the stems several times and tied off with a knot that looked womb-flutteringly familiar to Luna. Later… read the card from Stefan that accompanied it.
After, when all the beauticians had gone, Luna helped the girls into their bridesmaid dresses. They’d chosen their own, all on a theme of red; Jem’s a demure, poppy-red velvet mini-dress, Nancy’s a scarlet sheath dress with matching Jimmy Choos (‘Well,’ she shrugged, ‘Stefan was paying’), and Kayla’s a show-stopping fitted red and black dashiki-print gown with a full skirt and plunging neckline.
‘You all look so beautiful,’ Luna said, snapping photos on their collective phones and feeling a little emotional for the first time that day. ‘Thank you for being here with me.’
Her voice cracked and the next thing she knew she was in the middle of a group hug, with Nancy gruffly chiding, ‘Don’t you make me fuck up my makeup, Lou,’ lifting the side of a finger to her eye.
‘Am I interrupting?’ The huddle broke up as Kayla’s old friend, stylist and budding designer Patrice, strode into the room carrying a garment bag. He stroked his millimetre-perfect black goatee and took in Luna’s bejewelled coif appraisingly. ‘I have a delivery for the bride.’
‘This has been a challenge, to put it mildly,’ he said as he unzipped the bag. ‘Not to say I didn’t make a few sketches, play around with some ideas when you first got engaged. But you didn’t seem to be in any hurry to actually do the deed, so…’ He put his hands on his hips and frowned at Luna. ‘This is not the way I like to work, with less than ten hours to create a wedding dress for you. I have had to improvise.’
He lifted a set of ivory corded stays and matching flounced underskirt from the bag, saying reverently, ‘I made these for my final project at arts college. Literally months of sewing and embroidery, to get the detail right.’ He cocked his head at Kayla. ‘The only other person who’s ever worn them is this one, and that was only for five minutes on a runway. They came straight off her after, before she could spill red wine or Monster Munch on them. Let’s try them on you.’
The room went quiet when Luna removed her robe. Never shy about getting her kit off amongst friends, her first, paranoid thought was that somehow they’d twigged to her reproductive status. But, ah… no, they were staring at her souvenir from Stockholm.
‘No more strapless cozzies for me, eh?’ she said lightly.
Kayla recovered first. ‘Having a scar makes you look hench,’ she replied staunchly. ‘Like Angelina Jolie in Salt.’
Nancy gave a vigorous nod. ‘Angelina was all, look at me, boarding this Russian tanker. I’m so fragile and beautiful in my fur hat—’
‘And then she killed every last motherfucker on that ship,’ Kayla growled, miming gun pumping with one hand, a stabbing motion with the other.
‘I think it’s more like Harry Potter’s lightning bolt scar,’ Jem said sweetly, helping Luna to step into the skirt while Patrice lifted the stays over her head. ‘Except it’s on your chest.’
The stays and underskirt fit her like a dream, like they’d been made for her, the corded whalebone in the stays subtly shaping her waist and the delicately embroidered cups above the corsetry cradling her breasts to perfection.
‘Your bosom’s gotten bigger,’ Kayla observed as she snapped a photo of her. ‘Or mine was smaller back then.’ She snapped another and Luna sheepishly raised a hand. ‘This is for posterity, babe. Think of Stefan.’
The overdress consisted of three parts: a sheer, long-sleeved bodice constructed entirely of antique rose-point lace, a heavily draped skirt of peau de soie silk, and a matching cummerbund that rose to just beneath her breasts.
‘I whipped this up last night with the help of around ten of my friends,’ Patrice lisped through a mouthful of pins as he rapidly stitched a minor alteration under her arm.
‘We have exactly five minutes here!’ Jem announced, looking out the window at arriving guests. ‘Stefan’s back and… oohh, he looks lovely!’ Nancy and Kayla went running over to join her, leaving Luna and Patrice alone. He angled his face next to her breast, biting off the thread he’d been using.
‘There,’ he said, rocking back on his heels.
Luna looked at herself in the mirror, unrecognisable from the woman who’d walked into the room just over an hour ago. Her hair looked both exotic and regal, capped as it was by the Wellstone tiara. As she’d re
quested, her makeup was subtle, highlighting her eyes and adding a dusting of colour to her otherwise pale cheeks.
And her dress, for all its luxurious fabrics and skilful tailoring, was beguilingly simple in appearance. Its lace bodice, with close-fitting sleeves that ended in points on the back of her hands, revealed the merest hint of her stays underneath. The lustrous, slightly crisp fabric of the skirt made an evocative shushing sound every time she moved, and the matching cummerbund made her waist look impossibly small. ‘You’ve made me look like a princess,’ she marvelled, bending down to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Patrice.’
He stood and dusted his hands on his trousers. ‘Thank your groom. He basically wrote a blank cheque, and two-hundred-year-old Belgian lace doesn’t come cheap. But you’re right,’ he sniffed. ‘Yet again, I’ve outdone myself.’ His gaze strayed to the garment bag. ‘I have one other thing for you. I don’t know how you’ll feel about it, but… I’d like to see you in it.’
And so it was that Luna came to be standing at the back of the register office’s garden room wearing a floor-length silk tulle veil, soft and finely woven enough that it clung to the curves in her face, but thick enough that it reduced her view of the room to a gauzy blur. She felt… hidden, cocooned. Patrice’s final, murmured words echoed in her ears:
Some people think a wedding veil is akin to a nun’s habit, or a niqab – a bit anachronistic, maybe a little anti-feminist. But I prefer to think of it as wrapping on a gift. Because that’s what you are. A gift.
Maybe it was the veil, or the fact that she’d had nothing to eat that morning, but Luna felt strangely unreal, walking behind Jem, Kayla and Nancy between the two banks of chairs to where Stefan stood waiting for her with Rod, James and Matthias.
He was wearing a black morning coat, she could tell that much, with a white shirt, grey waistcoat and darker grey trousers. But she didn’t get her first real look at him till the officiant, an exuberant, bustling woman, finished her opening remarks. All three of the girls stepped forward then, Nancy taking Luna’s bouquet and Kay and Jem lifting the veil up and over her head, arranging it down her back.
She turned to him and her eyes traced a path from his double-breasted waistcoat, to his black cravat, to his beloved face, where Stefan’s patented honey-on-toast smile was even now fading into an expression of shock and awe. He blinked at her and actually swayed slightly, till James placed a steadying hand on his arm. A whisper of laughter flitted across the room as Stefan visibly swallowed and took Luna’s hands, wincing a little at their coldness.
You look exactly like I feel, Luna communicated telepathically, with a tentative smile.
You have NO IDEA how I feel, he communicated back with a fierce, rapt, worshipful stare.
They managed, between the two of them, to get through the exchange of vows, though Luna was never so glad that she was an ex-Catholic; there was no way she’d have managed a full mass. And the look Stefan gave her after he’d said ‘I do’ was priceless, along the lines of, Phew, now it’s your turn, flicka.
The registrar addressed her. ‘And do you, Stellaluna Incaeli Gregory—’ At the revelation of Luna’s middle name, Stefan’s eyes widened a fraction, then crinkled, and suddenly everything was alright. ‘—take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish for as long as you both shall live?’
She said yes. Of course she did. But she heard nothing more of the vows, or of Jem sobbing her heart out behind her, or Sören, also sniffing loudly. And saw no more – not the registrar completing the ceremony with a smile, or the guests rising to their feet as one, bursting into applause. All there was was Stefan holding her hands, looking down at her as if she, too, was all there was.
He almost forgot to kiss her, had to be prompted by the registrar and Magnus, who shouted, ‘Gae on, my son!’ from the back of the room. So they were laughing when they kissed, and still laughing seconds later, when they were surrounded by friends and family and whisked out of the French doors into a small garden in back for photos.
Husband and wife, at last.
Chapter Twenty-Six
For the wedding lunch, Stefan had booked the small Turkish restaurant near his apartment they’d frequented since the night they became engaged. Somehow she and he ended up in different vehicles on the way there, Stefan driving his aunts and uncles in a rented car, Luna taking the girls and the twins in the Land Rover. ‘No, no, I’m in, it’s fine!’ she exclaimed cheerily as Dagmar and Ingrid looked comically askance at her arranging her voluminous skirt behind the steering wheel and carefully shutting the door.
And she and Stefan didn’t get much time together at the restaurant, either, after accepting the effusive congratulations of the maître d’ and posing for photos with him and his waiting staff. Much as she’d have liked to pull him into a quiet corner and melt against him, instead Luna started her married life as she intended to go on, emulating her husband’s (husband’s!) superlative people skills, working in tandem with him to circulate amongst the various guest tables. She sat with the Shetland contingent, then at the Swedo-Finnish table, then with staff from Stefan’s office, feeling just a mite wistful that there was no similar group from Arborage. She was sitting with Stefan’s family talking to his Uncle Karl when her eyes met Stefan’s briefly across the crowded restaurant. He gave her a vaguely amused look that she couldn’t quite read, then stood up.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced as spoons tinkled on glasses around the room. ‘I am delighted to inform you that Luna and I are not the only couple here looking forward to a life of happiness together. My cousin Isabelle has just become engaged to her boyfriend Tarquin.’ From where she was sitting, Luna couldn’t see Isabelle, but a French-manicured hand sporting an impressive sapphire floated up in the air beside Stefan.
Ah ha, Luna thought, a little wedding-day thunder stealing. Well, if Stefan could see the humour in it, so could she. Struggling to her feet, listing briefly against Uncle Karl as she untangled her heel from her underskirt, Luna reached for her as-yet-untouched glass of wine and raised it. ‘To Isabelle and Tarquin!’ she declared, eyes laughing at Stefan’s as the rest of the room toasted the happy couple.
The speeches started in earnest after that, as dishes from the main course were taken away and Stefan finally came to sit next to Luna. Helen gave a surprisingly gracious toast wishing them both well, Magnus spoke in praise of Luna’s knowledge of sheep husbandry, and Kimi and Kiki delivered a joint manifesto on Stefan’s ‘embarrassingly inept boyhood’, exhorting everyone in the room to address him thereafter as Liten Prince. ‘Consider it a mark of respect to his mother, who sadly couldn’t be in attendance today,’ Kiki said as Luna squeezed Stefan’s hand under the table.
Luna’s two favourite speeches of the day, however, were from James and Christian.
‘I shall draw a veil over the groom’s dating life before he met his bride,’ James said wittily, tilting the rim of his champagne glass at Stefan, ‘except to say that the sobriquet of “ladies man” conferred upon him by the media wasn’t entirely unearned. Not that you would know this from him, because in the ten years I’ve known Stefan, he has never discussed his romantic pursuits. Not once.’
James paused for dramatic effect. ‘Until one afternoon several months ago, when he returned from a meeting at Arborage in a strangely subdued mood. It seems that the Marchioness of Lionsbridge’s personal assistant, a woman he described as, and I quote, “beautiful but cold, cold like…”’ James glanced at Stefan. ‘Where is it you said was the coldest place in Sweden?’
‘Hallviken,’ Stefan replied, generating a little laugh from his fellow countrymen.
‘Yes, cold as Hallviken. At any rate, Stefan went on to admit that this beautiful but cold woman had seemed entirely unmoved by his flirtation techniques.’ Another, larger laugh from the wedding guests. ‘You must understand,’ James added confessionally, ‘that at t
his point I was, one, in a state of shock that he was discussing a woman, any woman, with me and two, privately enjoying the mental image of him being given short shrift by this mysterious Valkyrie. I must have said something along the lines of—’ James lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, ‘—“Well, what can you do?” Because I remember very clearly what Stefan said next.’ Beat. ‘“Try harder.”’
Christian’s speech was briefer, but more emotional. He spoke with obvious pride about Stefan, how privileged he felt to have watched him grow from a boy into a man. ‘When you love someone as much as I do Sören,’ he said with a smile down at Stefan’s father, ‘you take special pleasure in a son who is so much like him, but also his own man, with his own unique gifts. When the thunderbolt of love hit Stefan, and it turned out to be the very same paragon of womanly virtues Sören had been telling me about for so many months, I admit, I had doubts. But these all stopped the day I watched Luna in Stefan’s hospital room, refusing to move from his side. And our boy—’ Christian’s voice shook. ‘—our boy at death’s door…’
He put a hand to his eyes, unable to continue, and Sören abruptly rose, putting his arm around him. Luna threw a panicked look at Stefan and both of them leapt to their feet. So the afternoon’s round of toasts ended with the two of them encircling Christian and Sören with their arms, Sören rejoicing tearfully, ‘And now we have a daughter!’ Not a dry eye in the house.
There was dancing after lunch, on a small dance floor installed for the occasion in the corner of the restaurant. Kayla and Patrice and the Salonen twins took turns DJing, serving up an eclectic mix of Britpop, Swedish house music, Abba (of course) and the Backstreet Boys (of course). Luna danced with Mark Waverley, Rod, Rafe, and Sean the fisherman from Shetland, who informed her that he’d embarked on a successful modelling career on the back of his ad for Lundgren’s menswear. Stefan, meanwhile, danced with Helen, Jem, Christina from his work, and Ruth Ollason from Shetland. He even cajoled Dagmar into dancing with him to James Blunt, smiling a private this is my wedding day gift to you smile at Luna as she danced nearby with Tarquin.
