The Wedding #2
She lifted her chin. Met his eyes. Held them with the same fierce determination she had shown at seventeen, when she had marched into his stable and changed everything.
"Reason one." She glanced at the paper, then back at him. "He counted the gold threads in my hair, and instead of being horrified, I found it desperately romantic."
Frederick's throat closed.
"Reason one hundred and seven." She turned the paper over. "He makes me feel brave enough to be barefoot."
He looked down. At her pale feet against the worn stone floor. At the faint smudge of dirt across one arch where she had walked through the garden to reach the church. At the delicate bones of her ankles, unadorned and unashamed.
"And the reason that matters most—" She set the paper aside.
Took both his hands again. Her fingers were cold; his were burning.
"I love him. I have loved him since I was seventeen years old and too foolish to know that love does not require scientific verification.
I have loved him through nine years of silence and two months of impossible proximity and one tower and twenty-nine letters that I shall keep until I am old and grey and my own counting has lost all meaning. "
Her voice broke on the last word. She pressed on anyway.
"I love him. That is the only reason that matters. That is the only reason there has ever been."
Frederick did not wait for permission.
He kissed her.
In front of the vicar, who made a small sound of protest. In front of Margot and Lord Raventhorn, who made no sound at all.
In front of Edward and Ella and Charlotte and James and little Charles, who had woken from his nap and was now demanding to know why everyone was crying.
In front of the Dowager, whose rigid posture had softened almost imperceptibly somewhere during his recitation of the letter.
In front of Caroline, who had pressed a handkerchief to her eyes and was weeping with an abandon that seemed to speak of more than wedding sentiment.
He kissed her, and she kissed him back.
Her mouth was warm. Her tears were wet against his cheeks—or perhaps those were his tears; he could not tell anymore and did not care to try.
She tasted of salt and champagne and indefinably of Florinda, and he thought he might happily spend the rest of his life learning the precise flavour of her happiness.
Her hands fisted in his lapels. His found her waist, pulling her closer, and someone in the congregation gasped at the impropriety but the sound was distant, unimportant, belonging to a world he no longer inhabited.
"I have not yet pronounced you—" the vicar began.
"Pronounce us later," Frederick said against her mouth.
"I really ought to—"
"Later."
Florinda laughed into the kiss. Her body curved toward his with the same unconscious trust she had shown in the tower, when she had let him carry her down the stairs and refused to let go even when they reached solid ground.
One, he thought, the counting starting again without his permission. One kiss. One wife. One life.
It was, he realised, the only mathematics he would ever need.
The vicar did eventually pronounce them husband and wife.
He managed it approximately three minutes after the kiss began, during a brief moment when Frederick and Florinda had separated long enough to breathe.
His voice carried a note of exasperated resignation that suggested this was not the first unorthodox wedding he had performed and would likely not be the last.
"I now pronounce you man and wife," he said firmly, before either of them could interrupt again. "You may—well. You already have. Repeatedly."
The congregation erupted.
Charlotte cheered with the enthusiasm of a child who had been promised she could throw rose petals and had been waiting for this moment with increasing impatience.
James joined in a beat later, his contribution more of a general shriek than anything intelligible.
Charles, bewildered but determined not to be left out, added his own voice to the chaos.
Hope, who had been stationed in the second pew with strict instructions to remain dignified, abandoned her post entirely and launched herself at Florinda's skirts with the battle cry of a child who had been dignified quite long enough.
"You are a duchess now!" she announced, clinging to the white muslin with sticky fingers that suggested someone had given her sweets to ensure good behaviour. "Marmalade says duchesses get to do whatever they want!"
"Marmalade is not an authority on aristocratic privilege," Margot said, but her voice was thick with tears and she made no move to dislodge her daughter from Florinda's gown.
Lord Raventhorn stood beside her, one arm wrapped around her waist, his face caught between laughter and tenderness. His eyes met Frederick's across the chaos, and he inclined his head—a small gesture, barely perceptible, but unmistakably an acknowledgment.
Take care of her, that nod seemed to say. She is ours, and now she is yours, and if you hurt her I shall find architectural ways to make your life extremely uncomfortable.
Frederick nodded back. He understood. He would have expected nothing less.
"Are you crying?"
Lord Raventhorn's voice cut through the chaos, low enough to be private despite the celebration erupting around them. Frederick turned to find him watching Margot, whose face was wet with tears she was making no effort to hide.
"Absolutely not." Margot's voice emerged somewhat strangled. She pressed a handkerchief to her eyes with the air of a woman who had been caught in an undignified act and refused to admit it. "There is dust in this church."
"There is no dust in this church. I watched the vicar's wife sweep it myself."
"Then I am crying." She lowered the handkerchief and met his eyes with the kind of fierce dignity that Frederick had come to associate with the Ashbourne women. "Do not tell anyone."
"I would not dream of it."
"I mean it. If you breathe a word—"
"Your reputation for stoic practicality shall remain entirely intact." He caught her hand, raised it to his lips, pressed a kiss to her knuckles that lingered just long enough to make her blush. "Though I confess I find your tears rather becoming."
"You are impossible."
"I learned from your daughters."
The Dowager intercepted him before he could reach Florinda.
"Frederick." Her voice carried the particular tone that had made him straighten his spine reflexively since childhood. "A word."
"Mother." He stopped, aware that Florinda was watching from across the church, her smile fading into caution. "If you intend to voice objections, I should warn you—"
"I do not intend to voice objections." The Dowager's gaze moved past him to Florinda, assessing in the way that had made debutantes tremble for three decades. "I intend to offer congratulations."
Frederick blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"Do not make me repeat myself; it was difficult enough the first time.
" She drew herself up with the rigid dignity that had never, in his memory, wavered.
"Your wife—" The word emerged stiff, as though she were trying it on for size.
"Your wife has good family, good breeding, and apparently the fortitude to marry a man who reads his correspondence aloud during wedding ceremonies. She shall do."
"She shall... do."
"Do not fish for compliments, Frederick; it is unbecoming in a duke.
" But her eyes had softened—a crack in the ice so small he might have imagined it, except that he had spent a lifetime learning to read her.
"She makes you laugh. I told you once that it was more than I ever had.
" A pause. "I find I meant it more than I realised. "
Frederick's throat tightened. "Mother—"
"We have matters to discuss. Arrangements to be made.
" Her gaze moved briefly toward Caroline, who was being embraced by Florinda with the careful gentleness one offered to fragile things.
"But that can wait. Tonight is for joy." The word emerged as though it cost her. "Tomorrow is for practicalities."
She swept toward the door, and Frederick found himself face to face with his sister.
Caroline looked—different. Smaller than he remembered, though she had always been slight. Thinner. The black mourning dress hung loose on her frame, and there were shadows beneath her eyes that spoke of sleepless nights and troubles he did not yet understand.
"Caroline." He caught her hands, searching her face. "I did not expect—that is, I did not know you were coming. When did you arrive? How long are you staying? The children look well, though you—" He stopped, aware that he was cataloguing concerns rather than celebrating. "I am glad you are here."
"I am glad to be here." Her smile was wan but genuine. "I would not have missed my brother's wedding for the world."