Chapter 9
If Matthew had hoped to kiss his bride and then escort her directly to the altar, it had only been out of a momentary lapse of memory about who he was and the people his life contained.
They emerged into the hallway to find both Asters in a state of unrest.
Sir Ambrose was nearer to the vicarage office, rubbing his forearm with a distinctive pout, and turned as they appeared, to announce, “They made me carry a statue. Me!”
“That’s very sad,” said Matthew. “I am sorry.”
A few feet further, Mae Casper was lighting into Vix.
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?!” she demanded. “I was obviously going to realize eventually. When were you going to say something? Ever?”
“When the opportunity arose that would bring the most amusement,” Vix replied with a bored little sigh. “And now it’s ruined. Congratulations, Casper.”
“What’s ruined?” Matthew asked, blinking at each person in the narrow surrounding confines until his bride-to-be cleared her throat and softly tugged on his sleeve so that he would lean closer.
“Vix is going to have a baby,” she said softly in his ear, the warmth of her breath sending a ripple of gooseflesh up his spine that had little to do with the horror of the news.
“She what?” he repeated, certain he’d heard it wrong.
“Yes, yes,” Vix said impatiently. “Ambrose, tell them. I’ve tired of the topic.”
Sir Ambrose glanced up from his tending to his forearm, still frowning, and sighed. “She wants a boy,” he said with a shrug. “You are to be the godfather.”
“Me?” said Matthew, but then Ambrose was gone too.
“Oh, Mae, I’m sure she didn’t mean it to be cruel,” Rosalind was saying, leaving his side to comfort the other woman. “You two have such an odd way of loving one another.”
Mae made a hissing sound but accepted Rosalind on her arm, leading her back down the hallway toward the bridal chamber until Matthew was standing quite alone again, somehow, in a hall that was filled past capacity only a breath ago.
“I found a comb,” Vix announced, flying back into view so suddenly, he startled. “What did you do to your hair? Do you know who I saw as I came here?”
“Vix!” he said, trying to bat her off as she came at him, already aiming at the part of his head where he’d upset her careful hairstyling. “Mercy!”
“I saw your curate, Mr. Green, when I walked past the vestry. Do you know what he was doing?” she continued, slapping away his hands without pausing her tirade as the wooden teeth of the comb descended on the area of offense.
“He was ironing his vestments. For the ceremony. Did you know this parish had an iron, Matthew? Did you know that?”
He sighed loudly.
“You always look like a balled-up debt slip, you know,” she continued, twisting the comb to her satisfaction and stepping back to consider her work.
“You always have. I thought you’d grow out of it one day, but alas, here we are, all adults, and you still look like you get everywhere by rolling there on the carpet.
There, that is better. Oh, I almost forgot.
This is important, Matthew, are you listening? ”
He blinked, turning his head to meet her eye with a wary tightening of his brows. “Yes?”
“If you are a poor husband to my Rosalind,” she said, flipping the comb around and holding its teeth to his throat, “I shall slice your bollocks off and nail them to the statue. Do you understand?”
“Me?!” he balked, his jaw dropping open. “Me a poor husband to her?! Me who risked prison at the tender age of thirteen to get you, my fair woman, an education and a better life?!”
“Yes, you,” she said, pushing the teeth of the comb past his cravat and into his Adam's apple. “Do you want to try me, Matthew?”
“Are you insane? Of course not,” he said, reaching up and flicking the comb away with two stiff fingers. “I’m not convinced you haven’t killed before.”
She smiled at him, just a quick flash of her teeth. “Good. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said, horrified. “Are you going to threaten her to be good to me? Does this protection go in both directions?”
Vix laughed then, taking a step back. She laughed, paused, and then laughed some more. “No,” she said, after she’d had her fill. “Come on, let’s get you to the altar.”
He shrugged and followed her, uncertain he had any other option. “What did they do with the statue?” he asked as they went. “Your husband said they made him carry it.”
“Oh, that soggy cat of a man,” she sighed lovingly. “They had him support its feet. They just moved it down to the basement. It might have had a slightly expedited journey down the last couple of stairs.”
“Oh,” said Matthew. “Well, I suppose he’s learning to endure.”
She tittered. “I suppose. Teddy and Roland haven’t come back inside since. That journalist is lurking around in the hedgerows and there are a few others besides. I don’t think they’ll be able to come inside for the ceremony.”
He frowned. “I wonder when their interest will wane.”
“When someone else worth tormenting comes along, I’d wager,” Vix said with a little curl of her lip. “Until then, all we can do is shield her.”
He took a breath as they entered the sanctuary, glancing up into the colored shafts of light that sprayed into the room through the stained glass. It was still only morning, he realized. The day had still only just begun.
Mr. Green did indeed look very neat and ironed, standing at the head of the aisle in wait. He always looked very neat, if Matthew was being honest with himself. The man was so meticulous, he likely combed his hair with mathematical tools.
Maybe there was something to envy in that.
He looked down at his own suit and ran his fingers over it, just to be certain he hadn’t wrinkled in the short time since he’d buttoned the jacket together, and made his way down the aisle to his position.
There were very few people here. Just Rosalind’s little family and Hannah, Mae, and Vix all gathered in the front pews.
They did not need anyone else, he reasoned.
He only hoped that she had not dreamed of a grand wedding, attended by a large crowd. He should have asked her. He should have thought to ask her about that before now.
He didn’t register that he hadn’t seen Sir Ambrose in the pews until the organ began to play, startling him out of his guilt-ridden reverie to bring his attention around to the choir stage behind the pulpit, where the pale-haired gentleman, a knight of the realm, son of a duke, was currently playing a bridal march like a parish grandmother, squinting down at some yellowed sheet music that someone had set out in front of him.
It filled him with such an absurd little swell of shocked amusement that, to his horror, he felt his eyes well up with warm, wet tears.
“Oh,” said Mr. Green, who evidently was also a little taken aback. “He actually is very good.”
At that, Matthew did release a little bit of a titter, shaking his head in the realization of just how much of this absurd little moment had been organized on his behalf, by these people who very easily could have washed their hands of the matter without guilt or consequence.
There was a mild little creak as the pair of pews with people in them strained to turn and witness Rosalind appear at the end of the aisle, supported on her left by her brother Abe, who had an arm wrapped around her waist to carry some of her weight as she moved.
They had put a crown of pink and white roses in her hair, he realized. That was where she’d gone when she left him in the hallway. It sat above the glinting strands of gleaming, gentle gold of her hair like a halo as she came toward him, a look of bashful hope on her pretty face.
Matthew flouted tradition a bit, stepping off the mark to meet them before the end of the aisle and assist her the rest of the way down.
It made it easier to transfer the whole of her support to his arms when Abe stepped away, meeting Matthew’s eye and giving him a nod, as though he’d finally earned a kernel of approval by way of subversion.
Rosalind gave a little squint as she adjusted her weight and then nodded to him, shifting onto one foot with the other tucked and bent like a river bird as Sir Ambrose Aster ceased his organ-playing and the vows began in earnest.
Matthew felt it a little odd, reciting them from the other end.
He had married many couples over the years, some of them sitting in this very room with them now. He had said these words more times than he could count.
But this was the first time he’d been asked to mean them.
This was the only time they were being spoken for him and to him and about him all at once, and he gave them that weight and that knowledge in every word he repeated, every word he said to her.
In the end, as ceremonial as the whole thing was, it still felt more like a conversation than he had anticipated. Like Rosalind and Matthew had decided to stand here and make promises to one another, rather than repeating a legal writ for the sake of custom and legitimacy.
The only thing that indicated it was otherwise was the presence of Mr. Green. And Matthew could hardly begrudge him that, as the curate was the one, at the end, who suggested that Matthew kiss his bride.
“Oh, but don’t let go!” she squeaked quickly before he could move, her body teetering a little forward on that one foot she had planted against the church carpet.
It meant they were both laughing, still holding one another by the forearms, as they pressed their lips together in a chaste, official seal of their union. It meant there was joy and amusement in their kiss as they were pronounced man and wife.
And even though only half a dozen people were there to applaud them, Matthew would swear until his dying day that the cheer had been deafening.