Chapter Sixteen #2
“Speaking of correspondence,” Adrian said, producing a letter from his pocket with the air of a man unveiling a scandal, “this arrived from Madame Delacroix. Your wedding gown is ready for its final fitting.”
Catherine’s expression transformed from scholarly authority to bridal alarm in an instant. Her hands flew to her hair, smoothing already perfect curls. “Already? But the wedding is still six weeks away!”
“Eight,” Adrian corrected with the weary precision of someone who had been over this before. “Alterations take time—particularly for a dress of such, ah, architectural splendour, as the modiste described it.”
“Six weeks,” Catherine insisted. “We agreed on four months from the garden incident—”
“We agreed on four months of proper courtship before the wedding,” Adrian said, consulting the small diary he’d apparently been keeping for the purpose. “It has been two months since I gave permission. Two plus six—”
“Four,” Catherine interrupted triumphantly. “Two months of courtship completed, two remaining. The ceremony is fixed for the twentieth of December. I have the figures perfectly in order.”
“That is six weeks,” Marianne pointed out, amused. “Six weeks from now is December twentieth.”
“Six weeks, two months—what is time?” Catherine waved her hand dismissively, but Marianne noticed her fingers were trembling slightly. “A human contrivance. Timothy, tell them about your theory of temporal architecture.”
“I haven’t one,” Timothy said, eyeing her in concern. “Catherine, are you quite well?”
“Perfectly. Entirely. Utterly.” Her tone had risen half an octave. “Why should I not be well? I am only to be married in six weeks—six weeks!—with a gown I have seen but once, while all of London gathers to decide whether I am worthy of happiness after everything that has happened—”
Timothy came round the table and took her hands gently, propriety quite forgotten. “Catherine. Breathe.”
She drew a shaky breath, blinking rapidly. “Six weeks feels both endless and no time at all.”
“I know the feeling,” Marianne said softly, remembering her own whirlwind courtship—the terror and thrill of marrying Adrian when they had barely begun to understand one another. “But you two have had more conversation in two months than Adrian and I managed in our entire courtship.”
“That’s because we were too busy scandalising society to talk,” Adrian said, moving to pour Catherine a cup of tea with surprising gentleness. “Here, drink this. It’s that chamomile blend you like.”
“You know my tea preferences?” Catherine looked at her brother with surprise.
“Of course I do. You’re my sister. You’ve been drinking the same bloody tea since you were fifteen and declared Earl Grey ‘pedestrian.’”
“I didn’t think you noticed.”
“I notice everything,” he said quietly, then cleared his throat. “Everything concerning my household.”
“We talked plenty during our courtship,” Marianne protested, seeking to lighten the air. “We had many meaningful conversations.”
“We had debates,” Adrian corrected, a dry note entering his voice. “Endless debates.”
“That is talking,” she insisted. “Debating is simply very spirited conversing.”
“Your definition of spirited involved accusing me of being unbearably arrogant,” he said.
“You were unbearably arrogant.”
“And you were maddeningly contrary.”
“Yet here we are,” she said sweetly, “entirely un-murdered.”
Timothy laughed, the tension finally cracking. “And I thought our courtship was dramatic.”
“Your courtship involves mathematical equations and architectural debates,” Adrian pointed out, gesturing at the destroyed breakfast table. “Ours involved multiple compromising situations and at least one death threat.”
“At least,” Marianne echoed with placid amusement.
“Adrian’s violent tendencies aside,” Catherine interjected, having regained her composure, “I should go for the fitting. Marianne, will you come? I require an honest opinion—and Timothy, of course, must not see the gown yet.”
“It would be most improper,” Timothy agreed, though his expression betrayed his disappointment. His thumb brushed lightly over Catherine’s knuckles before he released her hand. “I shall content myself, for now, with imagining how beautiful you will look.”
“I shall look like a meringue,” she said, laughing despite herself. “Madame Delacroix insists upon ruffles. An unconscionable number of them.”
“You will look perfect,” Timothy said simply, his gaze warm and steady.
“You haven’t seen the ruffles. They are feats of structural engineering. I suspect they violate natural law.”
“Then I shall admire them accordingly,” he said. “Perhaps we might calculate their volume together.”
“Everything is mathematics with you two,” Adrian muttered, though there was a smile in it. “You’ll be writing equations into your vows next.”
“Actually—” Timothy began, drawing a folded paper from his pocket.
“No,” Adrian said at once. “Absolutely not. Mathematical vows are where I draw the line. The Archbishop would expire on the spot.”
“They’re romantic mathematics,” Catherine protested, trying to peek. “You actually wrote them, didn’t you?”
“I may have,” Timothy admitted, colouring. “Something about how you’re the solution to all my equations.”
“That’s dreadful,” Adrian said.
“That’s delightful!” Catherine said at the same moment.
“It’s delightfully dreadful,” Marianne decided, amused. “Like those novels where the hero compares his beloved to a well-made plough.”
“No one does that,” Adrian said.
“Lord Byron once likened a woman to a contagion,” Catherine pointed out.
“That was metaphorical,” Adrian muttered.
“That was disturbing,” Marianne said.
***
After breakfast, which had devolved into an argument about romantic poetry versus mathematical precision that required Adrian to physically separate Timothy and Catherine when they started throwing toast points at each other, the ladies departed for the modiste while the men remained to review estate business.
The carriage ride through London’s streets was comfortable, the late October air crisp but not yet bitter. Catherine chattered nervously about everything and nothing, her hands twisting her gloves into unfortunate shapes.
“Do you think the cream silk too pale?” she asked for the third time. “I am so fair, I might vanish entirely. Also, is it presumptuous, given... everything. My past. Rome. The... incident.”
“Catherine,” Marianne said gently, stilling her fidgeting hands. “You may wear whatever pleases you. You are permitted happiness. You have earned it.”
“Have I?” Catherine turned to the window, her reflection faint against the city’s movement.
“Sometimes I still wake thinking I am in Rome, alone in that dreadful pension, certain I will never see Adrian again. Then I remember I’m home—that I’m to be married—that Adrian approves, mostly—and it feels like a dream I’ll wake from.
As if wanting it too much might break it. ”
“It’s real,” Marianne said softly. “Timothy’s love is real. Adrian’s affection, hard-won though it was, is real. Your happiness is not conditional. It’s deserved.”
Catherine smiled faintly, though her eyes shone. “Is it very improper that I’m more nervous about the wedding night than the wedding itself?”
Marianne considered her words carefully, remembering her own wedding night—the terror and exhilaration of giving herself to Adrian completely. “Have you and Timothy discussed... expectations?”
“We have discussed architectural expectations. Room arrangements. Breakfast preferences.” Colour rose in Catherine’s cheeks.
“We have discussed breakfast at length. The importance of proper morning sustenance. Toast versus scones. The optimal temperature for tea. We have not discussed... the other matter.”
“Would you speak of it? Discuss it, I mean. With me?”
A quick nod. “Adrian certainly won’t prove useful. He would threaten Timothy, then lock me in a tower until I’m thirty. Or deceased. Whichever comes first.”
“Adrian’s protective instincts aside, what are you nervous about specifically?”
“Everything? Nothing? I cannot say.” She twisted her gloves into hopeless wrinkles.
“I know the mechanics. I have read medical texts—do not look at me so; I was curious—and I have heard enough gossip to grasp the principles. But the reality… Timothy is so careful he hardly dares hold my hand without leave. What if he is too careful? What if I am too nervous? What if it is dreadful? What if I am dreadful?”
“It may be awkward at first,” Marianne said honestly, recalling fevered beginnings where passion outran finesse. “Adrian and I had the advantage of—enthusiasm. But you and Timothy possess what we lacked at first: friendship and understanding. That matters even more than heat.”
“You had passion from the beginning?”
Marianne laughed at the memory of the conservatory and the near combustion of a single touch. “Enough to set glass steaming. But we hadn’t yet learnt trust. You and Timothy have built that—over mathematics and beauty. It is the sounder foundation.”
“What if there is no passion at all? What if we are too cerebral and spend our wedding night discussing the principles of bed construction?”
“Catherine, I have seen how he watches you explain an arch. That is not cerebral. That is a man deeply in love, clinging to propriety. And the way you colour when he calls you darling? That is not your mind responding.”
They reached Madame Delacroix’s on Bond Street, its elegant windows whispering exclusivity. Madame herself—tiny, decisive, and fond of implying she had dressed queens—swept them into the fitting-room in a flurry of pins and French endearments.
The room was a small temple of mirrors and velvet. Upon the dress-form waited the gown: cream silk with cascades of ruffles that somehow contrived to look like spun moonlight rather than excess.
“Ah, the beautiful bride! And the duchess, glowing with impending motherhood! Come, come, we must see the création! It is magnifique, if I say so myself, which I do!”