Chapter 8
The chapel smelled of old stone, dust and roses cut to sweeten what could not be improved.
Edward stood in the chancel while a verger argued with a florist about lilies.
Lady Eleanor joined the fray, entering the church by a side door.
Candles waited like a small fleet, when they were lit the place would glitter, but for now it was a ship not yet under sail.
Seven days of being buried in papers. Accounts, timber contracts, solicitor’s letters. All to purge a certain woman from my mind.
None of the work sufficed. Whenever his pen paused, Isla’s face rose. Her full-lipped mouth always seemed ready to laugh or wound. He walked the aisle towards the doors, through which a broad shaft of sunlight penetrated. His mind conjured the furious lift of Isla’s chin.
The way she had looked in his dressing room when she ought not to have been there. He had avoided her. His mother approved. Now he needed to escape from her vinegar. Escape from everything the wedding preparations reminded him of.
The verger fussed about white ribbon. Edward escaped and took the gravel path around the little lawn. The morning had the hard blue of early summer. Bees harassed the lavender. Beyond the hedge a groom exercised a horse and the soft thud of its stride reached him like memory.
I will marry a woman whose company I have denied to myself. I would give her my name because honor requires it.
He reminded himself this was convenience, not romance. Leaves whispered above him, punctuated by the chirp of small birds. A small cry followed, the sort made for audiences. Lady Charlotte Pembroke came along the path as if by chance, sunlight making a halo of her hair.
“Your Grace,” she said. “Or perhaps I still have permission to call you Edward?”
Edward nodded gruffly.
“How fortunate. I feared I would have no word from my oldest friend.”
“Lady Charlotte.” Edward bowed formally, wishing the churchyard was empty except for the birds and the bodies.
Lady Charlotte smiled and reached for his arm.
“Would you escort me around these pretty grounds. Like we used to take turns around Ranelagh Gardens?” she asked, presenting her low cut dress beneath his nose.
“Would you mind if we did not?” Edward said, turning his body back towards the church and denying her his arm at the same time. “I am requited inside.”
“But you have only just stepped outside,” Lady Charlotte said, quietly.
“Edward! Edward!” called Lady Eleanor from within the darkness of the old church.
Saved by the bell.
“I fear that a groom’s work is never done,” he said, striding back towards the church.
There was another cry and it brought Edward up short. Looking back he saw Lady Charlotte fall to the ground, clutching at her ankle. She had fallen in a small cluster of trees, effectively screened from the view of anyone looking out of the church door.
“I placed my foot badly. Tripped over a root,” she gasped, hands hiding the ankle of her right foot. “Do not trouble yourself, Your Grace. You have duties to attend to.”
Edward walked back to her, leaning down to offer his hand.
She watched him from beneath lowered lashes.
As she came to her feet she put both down on the ground firmly.
There was no hint of pain. Suddenly, she was clutching his shoulders, leaning heavily against him while contriving to pull him further into the shade of the trees.
“How clumsy I am. Weddings are such violent things. The end of hopes, the beginning of other people’s dreams.”
Edward seized her by both elbows, set her on her feet and stepped back. She came with him, clinging to him.
“You are unhurt,” he accused.
“Not entirely.” she breathed. “Simply desperate to get your attention. Edward, do not spoil your life.”
“You will not speak of my marriage as if it were a mistake made from weakness,” he said.
“You think it a triumph?” Her smile was thin. “A Scottish girl who wanders into a man’s stables, who is carried half undressed through a ballroom. Do not tell me you cannot see the web.”
Anger rose, quick and clean. “Do not mistake the theatre of talk for truth. She struck her head. I carried her.”
Her words, though, had struck him deeply. He had responded without thought, in defense of the woman who was to be his wife. But that was honor. Charlotte’s words had echoed his own worst fears.
“You forget the beginning. She sought you. She trapped you. Families do such things when cupboards are bare. You know it, or you would not have avoided her all week.”
“Who told you I was avoiding her or anyone?” Edward demanded.
Lady Charlotte cast her eyes downward. “I cannot say. I am sworn to secrecy.”
“You needn’t be. I recognize my mother’s art.”
“You cannot trust her,” Charlotte said gently, “Lady Isla, I mean. But you can still trust me.”
Edward was walking backwards, trying to disengage her hands. Finally, with a growl he seized her about the waist, lifted her without effort and placed her atop the wall that separated the churchyard from the fields beyond. She squeaked, eyes widening in surprise.
“What we might have been depended on truth,” he said. “You just feigned injury to catch me alone. Do not try this again.”
He loathed that her words found the splinter already in him. He loathed more that it existed in the first place. He returned to the chapel with his jaw set and the taste of iron on his tongue.
***
Guests arrived in careful pairs. He reviewed the order with the rector and took his place, hands loose behind his back, a frigate at anchor.
Music shifted. The ripple began at the door.
He kept his eyes steady until the moment required, then looked, ready to be indifferent. In that moment, the day altered.
Isla came on her brother’s arm and the whole business of avoidance died as neatly as a candle pinched between finger and thumb. The gown was not the fashionable torture she had worn at dinner.
Whoever had dressed her this time understood that strength could be its own ornament.
Ivory fell in clean lines, a small cluster of heather in the bouquet made London blooms look over-bred.
Her hair shone copper where the light found it.
She did not look tamed. She looked untamable.
Wild but as dignified and proud as a queen.
Edward claimed Isla’s hand from her brother.
Her skin felt soft and perfect. Her perfume was more intoxicating than the whisky they had shared.
It filled his head and warmed him more than the sunlight spilling into the church through the stained glass windows.
Alistair released her hand with a glance that admitted both relief and warning.
The warning of a brother acting as a father. The relief of …
A man seeing his plans come to fruition. A man who sees himself one step away from riches he has never dreamed of.
Edward kept his face neutral, kept his anger contained.
Isla stood beside Edward, not so near as to scandalize the rector but near enough for him to hear the measured lift of her breath.
The service began. Words he had heard a dozen times took on weight.
When asked if he would have this woman, he said I will and felt the answer lodge, solid as a nail driven true.
Isla’s voice was low and certain, with the lilt she never quite smothered. Edward’s mother sat rigid in the front pew, a posture of endurance. Somewhere to the right, he could see Charlotte. But his awareness returned to the orbit of the beautiful woman who stood before him.
A woman I seek to enter into a transaction with. Her hand to spare us both a scandal. There is nothing between us and nothing wanted.
Rings. He had the unreasonable thought that he ought to have learned Isla’s hands the way he had learned a ship. A small scar nicked the knuckle of her third finger, he wanted to know its cause. He slid the band onto her finger. Her skin was warm and perfectly feminine.
“Those whom God hath joined …” The rector’s voice balanced piety with punctuality. Edward heard only his own private vow.
You will not be harmed for my sake. I will make this clean.
“You may seal your vows with a kiss,” the rector finished.
The chapel held its breath. He had intended decorum.
A touch, a polite promise. He lifted her veil and saw her mouth soften and intention deserted him like a fair-weather friend.
He bent, brushed his lips to hers. He meant to withdraw.
He did not. Her breath answered, something in her yielded without retreating.
Her hand found his sleeve and held as if balance required it.
Perhaps it did. If his kiss made her feel the way hers touched him.
He stopped because he was suddenly aware that the chapel was full of eyes.
He drew back far enough to see her face.
Color had risen and her pupils were the dark green of the forest. She didn’t look triumphant but startled.
It was as if she had learned a new word and was not yet sure she had said it correctly.
The murmur that followed threaded the pews and filled the hallowed space like fog.
Outside on the steps, congratulations and calculations pressed close.
Rice rained down from the two lines of well-wishers who flanked the path leading from the church and back towards the looming gloom of Ravenscroft house.
Alistair embraced his sister as if he might never have another chance.
He shook Edward’s hand vigorously, beaming.
“Your brother is enjoying himself,” Edward whispered to Isla, watching her to gauge her reaction.
“He is relieved,” she replied, smiling for their public.
“I am sure he is. His financial problems are over,”
Isla shot him a look that could have taken down a mast. He looked back.
“You had something else in mind?” he asked.
“He sees scandal and gossip defeated. Which gives him a chance to rebuild.”
“And you?”
“I count the days to my freedom.”
“As do I.”
Isla smiled and said nothing. Edward bit back his anger. Seeing Alistair celebrating was galling. It reinforced his sense of being manipulated. It did not help that he was looking forward to being alone with Isla. Lady Charlotte came forward as Edward prepared to help Isla into the carriage.
“I wish you joy, Edward,” she said.
He saw her eyes cut to Isla’s mouth and return sharpened, as if the evidence of the kiss had carved a private grievance.
He understood then that Charlotte would not simply retreat, she would circle like a shark, waiting her opportunity to dart in and turn the water red.
The knowledge did not frighten him. It irritated him like grit in a boot.
Isla stood in the carriage that would carry her and her husband around the grounds of Ravenscroft before returning them to the house for the wedding breakfast. Bells from the larger parish church took up a distant peal, as if gossip had found an organ.
Children darted across the grass to collect fallen petals.
One solemn boy offered her a collection of rose petals, cupped as though they were the most precious things in the world.
Her hand trembled when she took it, and she steadied it with the other in a gesture no one but Edward seemed to notice.
Isla turned her back, hefted the bouquet and hurled it back over her head.
Edward watched it tumble through the blue sky.
A pair of hands waited but at the last moment were supplanted with another.
Lady Charlotte had stepped slightly in front of Lady Victoria without appearing to be chasing victory.
She even had the grace to look surprised when the bouquet bounced from her bosom.
Not so surprised that she didn’t grab it with both hands.
Before looking at Edward from beneath lowered lashes.
Lady Victoria straightened her spectacles and then resumed her happy smile, clapping at Lady Charlotte’s good fortune.
Edward looked away from her. Isla had taken a seat, looking up at Edward.
He took his place beside her and did not speak at once.
Neither did she. It was absurd that two people who had just kissed before half their acquaintance should find silence the decent language, and yet there it was, patient and almost companionable.
At last Isla said, without looking at him, “You kissed me as if you meant it.”
“Should we not compliment the weather?” Edward said with irritation, “or the way the vicar conducted the service?
“You would prefer me to be empty headed?”
“Yes.”
“I do not believe it. And refuse,” Isla said, stubbornly.
“Then do so if it makes your life more interesting. A Duchess is not as glamorous a profession as you would think.”
Edward had thought about what would be expected from a young Duchess. A lot of work running a house the size of Ravenscroft that was for certain. He had planned how to keep Isla busy for as long as their marriage lasted. For as long as the gossip lasted.
“Well?” Isla asked.
“I did,” he said, and because honesty had saved his life more than once, “I do not know what I mean yet. But I meant that.”
Her mouth curved, then steadied as though she were remembering herself.
“Then we are even. I did not intend to answer and found I could not help it.”
We could both help it. We could both have prevented it. I should have been stronger.
Dappled shadows painted Isla’s face, sunlight and shade passing rapidly over her. Edward studied her face, enjoying its apparent perfection, a perfection that was made more perfect precisely because it was not. The carriage slowed at the gates of Ravenscroft House.
The private door stood open. He offered his hand again for her to disembark. She took it. They stepped down together into a future that felt less like convenience and more like weather. Something to be read carefully and faced with the right coat.
As they crossed the threshold, he allowed himself one glance at her profile. The line of it was stubborn, the mouth ungovernable and the eyes bright with something that might have been fear.
But then it might be the same emotion masked that her brother shows openly.
His suspicion did not vanish, that would have been stupidity, but it withdrew enough to let another feeling stand in the doorway. He did not name it. Not yet. He would hold his heading and see what the sea made of them.