Chapter Twenty
By the next evening Amsonia had, in her usual indomitable fashion, absorbed and reconciled herself to the situation. Now the only thing left was for them to return—she armed with a small sword she’d found in a pile of jeweled armor, the Dragon with his fire and claws.
Brandishing the blade, its emerald-studded hilt gleaming, she stood resolutely in front of Qavox. “Let us make haste back to Vyranthrall!” Amsonia cried. “My father needs me!”
Was there nothing that truly scared her? he wondered.
—The Dragon and the Blue Star by Analise Crewe
The first thing that went awry on the day of their wedding was easily explained.
Ana, of course, had no time to have a special wedding dress made for herself, no lovely dollops of Belgian lace or exquisitely embroidered netting over champagne silk (these being integral elements of the Clovercote wedding costume she’d just designed).
She was to wear a simply cut gown of pale lemon-yellow silk, its only affectation a cunning border of seed pearl scallops around the bodice.
Tessie dressed her hair in an equally simple style, drawing it upward into a Grecian top knot, letting her natural curls dictate the fall of the swoops on either side of her brow.
It was when Tessie attempted to insert the only fancy flourish she’d opted for, a tall spray of blossoms made out of silver wire and matching seed pearls, onto the top of said knot that the unraveling began.
The tips of the ornament hadn’t been properly finished, and the poor thing was no match for the vigorous thickness of Ana’s curly hair.
The seeds began to pour off the unfastened ends, lodging themselves in her bun and streaming down her jaw, a whole host of them losing themselves in her cleavage.
She could feel them rolling around under her breasts, captured at last by the empire waist of the dress.
“There’s no time!” she said, waving Tessie away as she attempted to loosen her dress. “They’ll roll out eventually . . .” and off she went, shedding little dots of pearlescent white as she went.
The second thing that went wrong was slightly more ominous. She’d joined Dex in the drawing room, where McArdle and the curate were waiting in front of the giant trio of Palladian windows.
“Here are the contracts for you to sign,” Dex said, handing her a pen.
His face was unreadable, the lines of his jaw as terse as his words.
She put nervous fingers to her mother’s necklace and touched the matching ear drops quickly in succession, letting the familiar feel and familial connection soothe her rattled senses.
Rain beat against the paned glass, the world outside a grim sea of gray and brown shapes, nearly impossible to distinguish.
She bent over the table and put quill to paper, feeling a pearl roll to the center of her chest and down toward her legs, and at that moment a large bird smashed into the window, gazed at them all with a stunned and protruding eye, then slid to the ground, trailing blood and feathers as it went.
“Good lord!” said McArdle.
“Heavens!” cried the curate.
“Bugger it all,” muttered the duke. Ana closed her eyes, counted to ten, then continued signing the documents. The words swam before her eyes.
. . . which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought . . .
Some miracle, this! She glanced desperately toward the door. As if reading her thoughts, McArdle edged toward it, lodging himself firmly between her and any possibility of escape.
“Ana,” Dex said, “I can’t have you looking like I’m dragging you to the guillotine. Is this really such a devastating prospect for you?”
The curate’s mouth dropped into a comical O of shock. Ana smiled despite herself. “It’s only . . .” she began. How to explain? That she had seed pearls clicking around her undergarments, that she had always thought her wedding day might be one of light, joy, and romance?
“I had only just finished writing a wedding scene, did I tell you? A grand affair, Adora and Lord Fortescue’s union.
I’d jumped ahead to the end, because writing their wedding was ever so much more attractive than slogging through the impediments that tear them apart in the middle.
The wedding wrote itself—a stately chapel, light flowing in through the stained glass, a host of good friends standing in attendance.
There were glowing banns published in the papers, detailing the glory of their union.
Rose petals sprinkled down the aisle. A wedding cake reaching almost to the ceiling, covered in candied fruits and topped with the sugared likenesses of Romeo and Juliet.
I’d only just finished writing it, Dex.” She wrinkled her brow at him, hoping he’d understand without any more guidance from her.
Dex looked at the red smudge running down the middle of the window and grimaced. “And this . . . suffers by comparison. Emphasis on ‘suffer.’” She nodded, unable to contradict him.
“Never mind. I’m being a bit silly, the real world so seldom matches the written one.
I do know that for every reason we spoke of, this marriage is the best course of action.
I’ve been compromised, and we must marry quickly.
” She finished signing the marriage documents. “There. We may proceed, Your Grace.”
The curate couldn’t have looked more scandalized if they’d all been in their naturally born state of bareness. He grabbed the papers from them, eyes conveying a deep and abiding moral disappointment, and the ceremony commenced.
The third, fourth, and fifth things that went wrong were really just the icing on the nonexistent wedding cake.
McArdle, having eaten his breakfast too quickly as a result of obsessively checking and rechecking the list of things he had to accomplish to facilitate the ceremony, emitted a belch when the curate beseeched anyone knowing of any impediments to their union, “Ye are to declare it!” Mortified, McArdle turned purple and snapped his mouth shut, keeping it that way for the rest of the day.
“Doesn’t count as a real impediment, I wager,” murmured the duke to Ana, and she caused further affront to the scandalized curate by giggling nervously.
The ring didn’t fit. It simply wouldn’t pass over her knuckle, which wasn’t a large knuckle and shouldn’t have presented such a problem.
Dex glowered at the offending finger and left the plain gold band sitting awkwardly just at the joint.
Which accounted for it slipping off her finger at the first possible opportunity and rolling far away, requiring an immediate cessation of the ceremony until such time as the reluctant ring could be found and forced over that same, equally reluctant knuckle.
By the sixth disaster, Ana had mentally thrown her hands up and cast herself upon the mercies of the universe.
Whatever cosmic force was attempting to give them pause was overplaying its hand; she felt almost giddy with the horror and hilarity of it all.
They were almost done with it when the chimney backed up, and the fireplace began to choke out thick black clouds into the room.
Coughing prodigiously, Ana ran to the side windows to push them open and thought longingly of the Clovercote nuptials.
So neat, so sweet, and so free of smoke!
“Dex,” Ana couldn’t help croaking, lungs filling with smoke. “Do you think the universe is attempting to tell us something?”
“Too late now,” he said grimly. “We’re married, and there’s nothing the universe can do about that.”