Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Ben clipped his ear, Stephanie clucked her tongue and tossed a glance at the ceiling, and their mother shook her head and removed the hand she had clapped over her heart.
The family left first. They would occupy the seats on one side of the church together with Sir Ifor and Lady Rhys, Idris and Eluned, and the Havilands, who had been invited and had accepted.
The extended Westcott family, of which the Cunninghams were one branch, would sit on the other side—vast numbers of them, Nicholas had been warned.
All the guests were in place when Nicholas arrived ten minutes early with his younger brother on a crisp winter morning brightened by the sun beaming down from a clear blue sky.
There was a murmur from the gathered congregation as they made their way along the nave to the seats that had been reserved for them before the altar.
Their boot heels rang out on the stone floor.
Nicholas felt awed and dwarfed by the size of the church, the dimness of its interior transformed by the light passing through the huge stained glass window behind the altar.
If he had not fully understood the serious solemnity of the occasion before, there was no escaping it now.
This was his wedding day.
His wedding day.
Even as he thought it, he was aware of a renewed murmur and rustling from behind him, and he turned his head to see Mrs. Cunningham, on the arm of Robbie, take her seat across the aisle from his. She glanced over at him, raised her eyebrows as though in surprise, and smiled warmly.
There were other sounds coming from the back of the abbey, but they were soon drowned out by the majestic chords of the great organ.
Nicholas rose to his feet even as the clergyman, gorgeously clad in his clerical vestments, took his place in front of the altar rail and turned to face the congregation and motion for them all to rise.
And Nicholas watched his bride proceeding slowly toward him on her father’s arm, small and slight and dazzling all in white velvet, a long spray of winter greenery—Christmas greenery—in her free hand.
Her head was bare, her hair in its usual sleek style, with a knot high on the back of her head threaded with more of the greenery, in which there were tiny white flowers, he saw as she drew closer.
She looked nothing short of stunning.
Her eyes were on him, he saw as she came nearer, as his were upon her.
He was not smiling, he realized. Neither was she.
This was too solemn a moment. Too precious.
This was their wedding. No longer just their wedding day, but their wedding.
—
Winifred’s thoughts were thrown back to that day in June when she saw Colonel Nicholas Ware for the first time.
Her first impression had been a certain degree of fright and an unacknowledged attraction.
How much had happened since then to transform him into a man, a person in her eyes, whom she could admire and like and trust and desire. And love.
Yes, he was a killer. And yes, he had killed.
He was a military man, after all. He had fought in the Napoleonic Wars.
But life was not as simple as it often seemed.
He was also a defender of the helpless and downtrodden and innocent.
He was a saver of lives. He also respected what made people different from one another.
He went out of his way to understand and accommodate people many might see as handicapped when in fact they lived life according to their own reality.
Andrew, who generally disregarded strangers, genuinely liked him.
Now, gorgeous and seemingly remote from her in his dress uniform, minus the bearskin helmet, he was about to become her husband.
She had expected to feel nerves, even perhaps the last-minute desire to rush toward freedom before it was too late.
But as Papa transferred her hand from his own to Nicholas’s warm clasp, she had not been surer of anything in her life.
She loved him. She did not know what the future held.
She did not even know where they would live or what she would do to occupy her days.
Would it be in London of all places? But at this moment it did not matter.
She trusted him. She was putting her happiness in his hands, and he would not let her down.
“Dearly beloved,” the clergyman said.
And in all the splendor of Bath Abbey, where her parents had married twelve years ago and she had acquired a family of her own for the first time in her life, she gave herself to Nicholas Ware, as he gave himself to her.
They became husband and wife, embarked upon their future together as their own family, supported by the love of the two larger families, the Wares on one side, the Westcotts on the other.
When the clergyman pronounced them man and wife, she smiled at last, and Nicholas smiled back.
And oh, she almost wished she were not yet in love with him so she could fall all over again.
She shook with silent laughter at the absurd thought and became aware of the collective sigh that came from the congregation around them.
Nicholas offered his arm and led her to the vestry, where for the last time she signed her name as Winifred Cunningham in the register. She was Winifred Ware henceforth, wife of Colonel the Honorable Nicholas Ware.
And surely the happiest woman in the world.
Nicholas took her hand in his and kissed the back of it.
“Beautiful, beautiful Win,” he murmured.
“It is the white of my gown,” she said. “It has dazzled you. I never wear white.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners. Something she said had amused him. And goodness, he was huge in his uniform. Not to mention gorgeous. And if he meant to don that impressively adorned shako when they left the abbey, he was going to look larger still.
Sarah, who looked very pretty indeed in her dark green velvet bridesmaid’s dress, came to hug her tight, and she was followed by Owen, who grinned and winked before hugging her and kissing her cheek.
“Be happy, Winifred,” he said. “But you will be. You have a gift for happiness.”
Did she? That certainly would not have been true of her nine-year-old self. But she had taken her immense good fortune at being chosen for love by Mama and Papa, and she had made happiness out of it.
She would continue to do so. And when she felt herself sink toward depression, as she inevitably would, rare though those occasions were, then she would recall what she had promised back in the summer.
Remember that day.
She set her hand on Nicholas’s sleeve, and they left the vestry as the organ burst into a joyful anthem.
They proceeded slowly along the aisle, smiling to left and right—at Mama and Papa and her siblings, at Grandmama and Grandpapa, Uncle Harry, Aunt Abby, Estelle and Bertrand, among others, on the one side; the Dowager Countess of Stratton, the earl and countess, the Duke and Duchess of Wilby, Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, Stephanie, Mrs. Haviland, and more on the other side.
It was impossible to acknowledge or even see everyone.
That would happen at the wedding breakfast in the Upper Assembly Rooms.
And after that…
Well, after the breakfast there would be no return home.
Even now all her belongings were being taken to the house on the Royal Crescent where Great-Grandmama used to live, and presumably Nicholas’s baggage was being taken there too from his hotel room.
Tonight, and every night in the future, home would be wherever Nicholas was.
She was a married lady.
The bright sunshine of the outdoors was almost blinding as they approached the abbey doors and the paved churchyard, which included the famed Pump Room, beyond. Nicholas came to a sudden halt, and Winifred looked up at him.
“The devil!” he exclaimed. And then, completely contradicting himself, “Good Lord!”
And then Winifred could see for herself what had startled him into such irreverence.
For outside the abbey doors, an honor guard awaited them: twelve cavalrymen in full dress uniform, astride twelve black horses, six on either side of the doorway, all absolutely still, as she had seen them once before on a parade ground awaiting the arrival of the king.
On a word of command, they raised the lances they held to meet between the two lines in a sort of arch for bride and groom to walk through.
General Haviland, also resplendent in dress uniform, stood at attention on the far side of them.
He saluted as Nicholas settled his shako on his head and stepped through the abbey doors with his bride on his arm.
Beyond them all, a crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle or, in the case of the young relatives from both sides of the family who had left the church early, to pelt the newlyweds with flower petals they had acquired somewhere even though it was late December.
Nicholas saluted the general and Winifred smiled brightly at him after they had passed beneath the arch.
Then Nicholas smiled at her, grasped her hand in a tight clasp, and hurried past the Pump Room, the flower pelters in hot pursuit, and on out to Stall Street, where his carriage awaited them.
They were both laughing as he handed her inside, her white cloak and her hair now liberally dotted with colored petals.
Winifred turned to wave as the carriage moved forward, accompanied by the predictable din of what sounded like a whole arsenal of pots and pans tied to the bottom of the carriage.
“Oh dear,” Winifred said, turning her face to Nicholas beside her. But she could not hear her own voice.
He did not even try to answer her. He tossed his shako onto the opposite seat instead, set an arm about her shoulders and his free hand beneath her chin, and kissed her.
They did not hear the cheers of siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews.
—