The Wedding
Frederick had forgotten how to speak.
This was, he reflected with the small portion of his brain not currently consumed by panic, becoming a pattern.
He had forgotten how to speak at the ball, too, when Florinda had stood before him in green silk with fury in her eyes and wildflowers would have suited her better.
He had forgotten how to speak in the tower, when she had kissed him and the world had rearranged itself around the fact of her mouth against his.
He was beginning to suspect he would spend the rest of his life forgetting how to speak in her presence.
The vicar waited. The congregation waited. Florinda waited, her bare feet pale against the worn stone floor of the church, her golden hair falling past her waist in waves that caught the coloured light from the windows and scattered it like coins.
Seventeen, he thought. Seventeen threads catching the red from St. George's cloak in the eastern window.
He had not meant to count. He never meant to count. But his mind did it anyway, cataloguing and measuring, trying to contain the uncontainable in numbers that made sense.
The church smelled of beeswax and old stone and the faint sweetness of the roses woven through Florinda's hair. His hands were sweating inside his gloves. His cravat was too tight. His heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his throat, in his temples, in the spaces between his ribs.
"Your Grace?" The vicar's voice was gentle. Patient. The voice of a man who had shepherded many nervous grooms through this particular trial. "The vows?"
Frederick opened his mouth.
Nothing emerged.
Say anything, he commanded himself. You have rehearsed this. You have memorised these words. You have recited them to yourself forty-seven times since dawn—
Forty-seven. The same number as the steps between them at the ball. The same number as the miles between London and Ashbourne. His mind seized on the coincidence, turned it over, examined it for meaning—
Florinda's hand tightened around his.
He looked at her. At the curve of her mouth, which was not quite smiling but held the shape of a smile waiting to happen. At her eyes, which were bright with what might have been tears or might have been laughter or might have been both.
"Breathe," she whispered.
He breathed.
"Now speak."
"I cannot remember the words."
"Then find different ones."
The letter was in his breast pocket.
He had placed it there that morning, telling himself it was merely a precaution.
A safeguard against precisely this eventuality.
He had not truly believed he would need it—had not wanted to believe he was the sort of man who could not recite simple vows without assistance—but his hands were already moving, reaching into his coat, drawing out the folded paper before his pride could intervene.
Twenty-nine, he thought, the number surfacing unbidden. This is the twenty-ninth letter I have written her. The twenty-ninth confession I did not intend to make.
The paper trembled in his hands. His handwriting stared back at him—cramped and urgent, the marks of a man who had written in the grey hours before dawn whilst his heart beat too fast and his thoughts refused to order themselves into anything resembling sense.
"I wrote this the morning after the tower," he said.
His voice came out rough, scraped raw by the tightness in his throat.
"I did not intend for anyone to read it.
I did not intend—" He stopped. Swallowed.
The congregation had gone utterly silent; he could hear the creak of pews as people leaned forward, the soft rustle of fabric, the distant cooing of pigeons in the eaves.
"I did not intend to fall in love with you.
I had forty-three reasons why I ought not to. I made a list."
Florinda's breath caught. A small sound, barely audible, but he heard it.
He heard everything about her. Had been hearing everything about her for nine years, cataloguing the rhythms of her voice and the patterns of her breathing and the particular quality of her laugh when she was surprised into genuine amusement.
"Forty-three reasons," he repeated. "And not one of them mattered. Not one of them could make me stop."
He unfolded the letter.
"I counted the gold threads in your hair."
His confession emerged without his permission, pulled from the page and given voice by an impulse deeper than intention.
"Fourteen, the first time. In the garden at the palace, when you were playing pirates with the children and your feet were bare and I thought—" His voice cracked.
He pressed on regardless. "I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life.
I thought if I counted the threads, I could contain it.
Make it manageable. Make it a thing I could fold up and put away and not think about every moment of every day. "
The church had disappeared. The congregation had disappeared. There was only Florinda, her eyes fixed on his face, her hand still clasped in his, her pulse beating against his palm in a rhythm he had memorised without meaning to.
"I stopped counting after a thousand."
One thousand, four hundred and seventeen, his mind supplied unhelpfully. That was the exact number, on the morning of the third day after she fell, when I realised I would never be free of her.
"You are beyond measure." He looked up from the letter.
Met her eyes. Found them bright with tears that had begun to spill down her cheeks, tracking silver lines through the dusting of powder her sisters had applied that morning.
"You have always been beyond measure. I was simply too much of a coward to admit it. "
From the congregation, someone made a choked sound. Charlotte, probably—she had been remarkably invested in this wedding since learning it would involve a duke. Or perhaps Margot, who had been clutching Lord Raventhorn's arm since Florinda appeared in the doorway and had not released him since.
Frederick did not look. Did not want to see anyone except the woman before him.
"I cannot promise you a life without scandal.
" The letter shook in his hand; he steadied it with an effort of will that cost him more than he cared to admit.
"The ton shall talk. The gossip columns shall feast upon us for months, possibly years.
My mother shall have opinions about everything from the arrangement of the silver to the names of our children.
I cannot promise you ease, or comfort, or any of the thousand things a duchess ought to expect. "
His voice had steadied now. These were his own—not the formal vows he had memorised and forgotten, but the truth he had been carrying for nine years, at last given shape and sound.
"But I can promise you this." He set the letter aside.
Took both her hands in his. Felt the cool press of her fingers, the fine tremor that matched his own.
"I shall count every day I am given with you.
I shall measure every hour in gratitude.
And when I am old and grey and my counting has lost all meaning, I shall look at you and know—know—that you were worth every number I ever learned. "
Silence.
Then Florinda laughed.
It was not the response he had expected.
He had braced himself for tears—she was already crying, after all. He had prepared for sentiment, for emotion, for the kind of overwhelming feeling that had driven him to write twenty-nine letters he had never meant to send.
He had not prepared for laughter.
"You impossible man." Her voice wavered between mirth and tears. Her hold on his hands had tightened until her knuckles went white. "You absolute, ridiculous, impossible man."
"I am aware I am not—"
"I made a list too."
Frederick blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"The night after the ball. After you proposed in front of three hundred people and made a complete spectacle of yourself—" She released one of his hands and reached into the bodice of her gown.
His pulse stuttered at the impropriety of it, at the flash of skin and the rustle of fabric and the way several members of the congregation made scandalised sounds that suggested this was not standard wedding procedure.
"I made a list. One hundred and seven items."
One hundred and seven. The number struck him like a physical blow. The same number she had cited nine years ago, standing in his stable with her chin raised and her cheeks flushed, announcing that she had come to conduct an experiment.
One hundred and seven reasons why this is an extraordinarily bad idea. None of them seemed sufficient.
"You remembered," he breathed.
"I remember everything about that day." Her hand emerged from her bodice clutching a folded piece of paper—smaller than his, the handwriting visible even from this angle as tight and precise as her voice.
"The way the stable smelled. Hay and horses and a scent I could not name until years later, when I realised it was simply you.
The way my heart beat so hard I thought I might actually die of nerves.
The way you looked at me—" Her voice cracked.
"The way you looked at me as though I had done a remarkable thing, when all I had done was be too stubborn to let fear stop me. "
She unfolded the paper.
"One hundred and seven reasons why marrying Frederick Hartwell, Duke of Carthedge, is an extraordinarily good idea."
Her voice carried through the silent church. Strong and clear, with only the faintest tremor to betray the tears still tracking down her cheeks.
"I shall not read them all. Most of them are embarrassing, and Charlotte is already taking notes for future blackmail purposes.
" A ripple of laughter from the congregation; Frederick caught Charlotte's unrepentant grin from the corner of his eye.
"But I shall read you three. The first, the last, and the one that matters most."