Chapter 31 #2
Frances watched his eyes. He was feeling something deeply, and he could not hide it.
The minister turned to Eleanor. “Repeat after me.”
“I, Eleanor Antoinette Moonwell.” Eleanor’s voice was bright. Strong. Not a tremor in it. “Take thee, Malcolm James Frazer, to be my wedded husband.”
Alexander’s hand curled. Just slightly. His fingers pressed harder against his knee, and the knuckles went white for a moment before he released the pressure.
He is watching his sister become a wife.
The realization moved through Frances with a force that surprised her.
She had seen him angry about Eleanor’s choices.
She had seen him rigid with disapproval, cold with control, sharp with the particular fury of a man who believed his authority had been defied.
She had argued with him about it. She had walked out of his study over it.
But she had never seen this.
This was a man watching his little sister—the girl he had raised, the child he had protected, the only family besides his mother who remained—step away from him. Not in defiance. Not in rebellion. In love. In joy. In the most ordinary, extraordinary act a woman could perform.
And it was costing him something.
“To love and to cherish, till death us do part.”
Eleanor’s voice rang through the church. Malcolm held both her hands in his. His face held an expression of such unguarded devotion that she had to look away.
She looked at Alexander instead.
His jaw had softened. The tight line of his mouth had eased into something that was not quite a smile but was close.
Closer than she had ever seen from him in any setting that did not involve Emily.
His eyes were bright. Not wet but bright in a way that suggested the boundary between the two was thinner than he would have liked.
He loves her. Beneath all the fury and the disappointment and the rigid adherence to what he thinks is right, he loves her so much it is breaking through.
Frances’s chest ached.
“I now pronounce you man and wife.”
The minister closed his book. Malcolm leaned forward and pressed his lips to Eleanor’s forehead, and the church erupted into sound. Applause. Laughter. The rustle of forty people rising to their feet.
Eleanor turned. Her face shone brightly. She looked directly at Alexander and Frances in the front pew, and the smile she gave them was the smile of a woman who had everything she wanted and needed the people she loved to see it.
Alexander stood. Frances stood beside him. Their arms brushed.
“Well,” Frances said.
“She is married.”
“How do you feel?”
He looked down at her. The vulnerability was still there; she could see traces of it, like footprints not yet covered by snow, but the mask was returning. Settling back into place, layer by careful layer.
“I feel,” he said, “that Mr. Frazer had better deserve her.”
“He does.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I am very certain.” Frances held his gaze. “A man who takes separate lodgings in a village where nobody knows him because it is the right thing to do is a man who deserves a great deal.”
Frances and Alexander moved into the aisle. His hand found the small of her back—guiding her through the crowd. The contact was light, brief, entirely proper, but she felt it everywhere.
“Alexander!” Eleanor appeared before them, breathless, her white dress already slightly crumpled from too many embraces. “Thank you. Thank you for being here.”
He looked at his sister. The new Mrs. Frazer. Twenty-years-old, flushed with happiness, her eyes wet and shining.
“Where else would I be?” he said.
Eleanor made a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and wrapped her arms around him. He held her. Briefly. His hand pressed against her back, and his eyes closed for a moment—just a moment—and then he let go and stepped away.
“Go,” he said. “Your husband is waiting.”
Eleanor laughed, turned, and went to Malcolm, who caught her hand and raised it to his lips, and the villagers cheered.
Frances stood next to Alexander in the small church and watched his sister walk away arm in arm with her husband. He remained still. Composed. The mask was once again securely in place.
But Frances had seen what lay beneath it.
For those few minutes during the vows, when he thought no one was watching, she had seen the whole of him.
The love. The loss. The capacity for feeling that he kept locked behind discipline and duty, and the terrible fear that if he opened the door, everything he had built would come undone.
He can feel this deeply. He does feel this deeply. About Eleanor. About Emily. About—
She did not finish the thought. She could not. Because finishing it meant asking a question she was not sure she could bear the answer to.
Alexander turned to her. His face was calm. His eyes gave nothing away.
“Shall we?” he asked.
“Yes,” Frances said.
They walked together toward the doors. His hand did not go back to her back. The space between them was appropriate.
And Frances thought, He has accepted Eleanor’s marriage. He has made his peace with love for his sister.
But what about us?