Chapter 11
“You look so pretty, Phoebe,” Hannah gushed.
Phoebe grimaced in the looking glass.
“Oh, all right, not when you do that,” Hannah allowed. “But otherwise, you look very nice.”
Phoebe did look nice, she supposed. But the problem was that she didn’t feel that she looked at all like herself.
Don’t pretend. Her mother’s parting words rang through her ears as they so often did.
There were so many details about her mother that she could no longer recall properly.
She couldn’t remember the sound of her laugh.
Her smile, which appeared so rarely, appeared in Phoebe’s mind with the brushstrokes of the portrait that hung in line with all the other portraits of the Turners over the years.
But those words never faded. Not even when she wanted them to.
This ornate coiffure, which had taken her maid a full hour and a half, was too ornate. Phoebe had never followed fashion too closely, and this new gown felt as though it had too many flounces, as though it pulled and tucked in all the wrong places.
She looked like a fashion plate.
It felt as itchy as new wool.
“This is the part where you say, ‘Thank you, Hannah. I’m so pleased that you think I look fine for my wedding,’” Hannah prompted.
Phoebe struggled to put a smile on her face.
She understood why Hannah needed Phoebe to be happy. She didn’t want to feel guilty that Phoebe had taken this blow for her. And Phoebe didn’t want to increase that guilt.
But good Lord, she hated pretending.
“You look nice yourself,” she said instead, which was true.
Hannah had gotten that glow that was apparently common with expecting women, and she was brimming with the kind of happy expectation that made it look as though it was her wedding day, not her sister’s.
Even if Hannah was wearing a dress that was significantly too large.
Apparently, things had escalated to the point where she needed to conceal the changes to her figure.
“Thank you,” Hannah said, flushing prettily.
“Since a duke’s wedding is such a big event, Lyle will be able to attend without rousing suspicion.
I haven’t seen him in almost a week, so I do want to look my best when I see him again.
I simply cannot wait until we are wed, and then we will see one another every single day… ”
Phoebe stopped listening. She wanted Hannah to be happy.
She did.
She just needed to let today, of all days, be about her.
So, she looked at the looking glass again and tried to find some version of herself beneath all the pomp and circumstance. She searched and searched for something that didn’t feel like pretending, that didn’t feel like a lie.
That didn’t feel like she was betraying her mother’s final wish.
“Try to smile,” Jacob hissed at Aaron out of the corner of his mouth as they stood and faced the gathered members of Society who had come out to see the fearsome Duke of Redcliff.
And yes, they came to see the wedding, but Aaron could hear people muttering. They weren’t even bothering to be quiet about it.
“… has anyone even seen him since…”
“… heard that he is most terribly tortured by…”
“… scars, I’ve heard…”
Aaron tilted his head from side to side, hearing the muscles in his neck crack.
“No,” he said simply to Jacob.
“God help this poor woman marrying you,” Jacob muttered. The bishop scowled at Jacob’s blaspheming. “Sorry,” Jacob said, not actually sounding very sorry at all.
Aaron looked over at the crowded pew where all the Lightholders who had been in town had gathered.
There was his cousin Xander, the head of the family, looking as stern and solemn as he always did… though Aaron noticed that he softened noticeably when his wife handed him a small, squirming toddler with the same round cheeks as her mother.
Huh. Aaron wouldn’t have thought anything could take that steel from Xander’s spine.
Xander would have assembled the various branches of the family tree, inviting them (in a way that was very clearly an order) to this event.
He didn’t blame his cousin Hugh for looking cantankerous about this, as he was currently trying to untangle a clump of his hair from the fat fist of a chubby baby—and, really, did none of these children have nurses?
But the part that did not make sense was that his cousin Ariadne, Xander’s younger sister, was glaring at him like she wanted to set him on fire.
It was only Aaron’s long military career that gave him the courage to avoid looking behind him in the foolish hope that she was staring like that at someone else. He hadn’t spoken to Ariadne in years. Maybe she hated bishops. How was he supposed to know?
Well, there wasn’t much he could do about it now—or possibly ever. At least half the Lightholders were crazy after all. They let him stay in the family. And Ezra. God, his cousin Ezra was the worst of the lot.
Behind him, Jacob cleared his throat loudly, and Aaron jerked his attention away from his madcap family and turned to the doors in the back of the sanctuary.
No sooner had he done so than they cracked open.
And there was Phoebe.
She looked…
Well, she looked beautiful, but also distinctly uncomfortable. She was walking with mincing steps, like her shoes were pinching her toes. It wasn’t her usual pace—which he knew all too well because he’d had to chase her into a bloody snowstorm.
But then she caught his eye and twisted her mouth to the side as if to say, Can you believe this?
It was a secret look—a secret message just for him.
It was a moment of connection, just for them.
It felt…
Well, it felt an awful lot like the way he’d felt when they’d kissed.
He hadn’t chosen Phoebe Turner. He likely wouldn’t have chosen her, given his pick of women.
But in that moment, as she made a tiny little face at him down the long length of the church, he was not at all sorry. He had the sudden thought that she might make that pert, sly sort of expression when he bedded her.
But then he tried to put that thought away, because Aaron might not be a particularly religious man—it was hard to believe in a benevolent God after all the carnage he had seen—but even he drew the line at getting an erection in church.
“Did you ever think, in all those days spent as an admiral, that you’d have such a fuss kicked up about you signing a piece of paper?” she asked him quietly as soon as her father had placed her hand in Aaron’s. It surprised him enough that he scoffed out a little laugh.
Out of the corner of his eye, Aaron saw that the bishop looked scandalized. Jacob, however, looked as though he was in raptures.
Well, he could fuck right off and find his own wife. This one belonged to Aaron.
“I’m not an admiral any longer,” he reminded her. “I’m a duke.”
“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Your Grace,” she said with a small roll of her eyes. “I’m not sure how I was supposed to know that, given that you seem determined to treat everything like a battlefield?”
He bit his lip against a smile.
“Are you quite finished?” the bishop asked irritably.
Phoebe gave him another conspiratorial look, and Aaron thought that he might not suffer overmuch if he could fight alongside this woman for a while.
A good soldier was only ever as good as the men at his back after all. Or woman, as the case may be.
And her wit was just the weapon needed in this stage of his life. One that he lacked, and she possessed.
Phoebe kept her gaze on him as the bishop read through the sermon.
She was so expressive; he could tell that every time she flicked her eyes away and then back, it was because she was struggling not to laugh.
Impertinent little thing. He squeezed her fingers tight in his, and she squeezed back just as tightly.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” the bishop intoned, sounding as though he was thrilled to be over with this nonsense already. “You may kiss the—”
But Aaron was already kissing her. He needed to keep his self-control in reserve so that he didn’t let the embrace go on for longer than was appropriate.
He managed it, though. It took only slightly less focus than he required to charge down a musket pointed directly at his skull.
“Come along, then, wife,” he said.
And then he led her outside to the swirling snow and watched as the flakes settled upon her chestnut hair like sugar dusted over the most wonderful confection he’d ever seen.