Chapter Sixteen
Calliope Oliver peered into the looking-glass…and saw a bride.
‘A special licence! Just one week ago you were refusing to marry him,’ sniffed Aunt Louise behind her, sitting on Calliope’s guest bed. ‘And now look at you!’
Calliope blinked. She certainly was attired in a way she had never been before in her life, but then, how often did one wed a marquess?
‘I think she looks lovely,’ came another voice from the window seat, slightly vague but at least engaged.
Hiding a smile, Calliope glanced over at her sister who was frowning at her notebook. ‘Thank you, Thalia.’
‘You’re welcome, Ditty,’ her sister said vaguely as she scribbled something down.
‘Thalia!’
Calliope giggled as her aunt berated her younger sister. There was nothing to be truly offended by, was there? It had been Ditty who had been the first sister to marry and Thalia was always a little distracted when she was working on a poem.
Which appeared to be…all the time.
Besides, she could hardly complain. Thalia was the only member of her family who had travelled to Brighton for the wedding after the hasty invitations were issued on the fastest mail coach Montague could find.
Ditty, it appeared, was early in the throes of pregnancy and her husband, the Duke of Glanyrafon who also happened to be a doctor, had forbidden her to travel such a distance.
Their mother had not responded to the invitation, though Calliope was almost certain she had the correct address in Weymouth.
It had not been a huge surprise to not receive even a note, though it did hurt.
And that was it. Calliope had no other family, but she was about to gain at least two more members.
‘To think, you’ll be a marchioness!’ Aunt Louise was dabbing at her eyes now with an exquisitely embroidered handkerchief. ‘A duchess and a marchioness, my two nieces! It’ll be your turn next, Thalia.’
Calliope’s sister snorted. ‘Alex and I agree matrimony is designed only to curtail a woman’s freedom.’
‘Alex?’
‘Thalia’s letter writing friend. She’s a poet, too,’ Calliope explained, as she turned back to the looking-glass and attempted to straighten the veil that Hannah had placed there not five minutes before.
Was it lopsided? Perhaps her own ears were lopsided. She had never really taken much notice of them, yet here she was, about to get married with a lopsided veil on lopsided ears.
‘Stop tugging at it, Calliope, it’s fine.’
Precisely how her sister knew that, when she had not deigned to lift her gaze from her poetry notebook, Calliope was not sure.
But still. Perhaps she was right.
‘It’s almost time,’ Aunt Louise said, rising from the bed. ‘I don’t suppose you have anyone to give you away, what with your father gone and my dear Rupert with him.’
Calliope turned and saw, just for a moment, the pain on her aunt’s face. To lose the person you love, to think you will spend the rest of your life with them and then realise in fact, you only spent the rest of their life with them…
She took the misty-eyed woman’s hands in hers. ‘I would be honoured if you would walk me down the aisle, Aunt Louise.’
‘Calliope!’
Ignoring her sister’s exclamation, Calliope looked steadily at her aunt. ‘Will you?’
Aunt Louise burst into loud, soggy tears. ‘Oh my dear, it would be my pleasure!’
Hastily attempting to stem the tide of saltwater, Calliope looked over at Thalia desperately. ‘Help me!’
Thalia sighed, closed her notebook on her pencil and stood up. ‘You know, I think it a most excellent idea, having a woman give away the bride. Why don’t we always do that? Why does Society always dictate it is a man who—’
‘Can we debate this later?’ Calliope hissed over their aunt’s increasingly voluminous sobs. ‘When we’ve dried out Aunt Louise?’
It took another twenty minutes to calm the emotional woman, who was clearly touched to be included on what she persisted in calling ‘Calliope’s special day’.
And it was special, Calliope realised as the trio of ladies stepped out of her aunt’s home and into the waiting carriage that Montague had ensured would be there.
It was special. The sun was hot and the sky was blue—not quite cerulean blue, but not far off—and today she would be losing the name Oliver and gaining the title Marchioness of Laidley.
But most of all she would be marrying the man who irritated her like no other. And that was all she wanted.
The church bells were ringing, their echoes startling the seagulls who were soaring above them, as the carriage pulled up. Calliope found to her surprise that her stomach appeared to have been colonised by a herd of butterflies.
A herd? A wing of butterflies? A flitter?
‘Thalia,’ Calliope said quietly as the driver jumped down from the coach and walked over to open the door. ‘What is the collective noun for butterflies?’
Her sister grinned. ‘A flutter. Or a rabble. Why?’
‘I think there’s one of those within me,’ she replied, placing a hand on her chest.
Were her lungs tightening? Was that panic she could taste, sharp and bitter on her tongue?
Perhaps this was a bad idea. She’d hardly known the man two months, after all, and he was so annoying, and so handsome, and so damned charming—
‘Well, that’s good,’ Thalia said cheerfully before the coachman helped her down to the pavement.
Calliope’s mouth fell open, and it was still open as she herself descended. ‘What do you mean, that’s good?’
‘Well,’ her little sister said with a shrug—though Calliope really should think of her as her younger sister, she was almost two and twenty.
‘If you were not a little nervous, I would worry you had not taken this whole marriage thing seriously. After all, it is one of the most permanent states one can have, isn’t it? ’
Permanent.
For some reason, the word echoed through her mind and brought Calliope a strong sense of peace.
Yes, permanent. She wanted to be permanently attached to Montague. The irritating Marquess had quite captured her heart and she did not wish to spend another day unattached to him.
Her smile was broad and her hands tightened around the small posey of cornflowers—cornflower blue, not cerulean blue. ‘You’re quite right.’
‘I usually am,’ Thalia said with a grin. ‘Poetry speaks only truth, even if it is not the truth we expected to find.’
Calliope had certainly not expected to find a husband when she had arrived in Brighton all those weeks ago, she could not help thinking as she, Thalia, and Aunt Louise stepped into the quiet, cool church.
No, she had arrived to paint. And, in a way, she had.
But she had also painted, in her conversations with Montague, the possibility of a future. Now they would make this future certain.
The church appeared to have a great number of guests. At first Calliope presumed there had been some sort of mix up—she did not even know this many people in the world—until she overheard a few snippets of conversations as Aunt Louise tearfully paraded her down the aisle.
‘—heard she was penniless—’
‘—how exactly did she entice the Marquess of Laidley to marriage?’
‘—end in tears—’
Calliope held her head up high and tried to ignore the strange prickling on the back of her neck.
So, the world did not think her an equal match with the Marquess of Laidley, did it?
Well, she would quite agree. She was far superior.
Glancing forward, Calliope studiously ignored looking at the tall man in the impressive suit and instead looked for his best man. Montague had assured her only two days ago he had the best, best man in mind, yet had refused to give his name.
Now she could see why. John was standing beside his uncle, his matching suit fresh from the tailors and a delighted smile that appeared to be incredulous on his face.
Calliope had not thought her heart could grow any larger. She was wrong.
As she reached the front of the church and her aunt slowly removed Calliope’s hand from her arm and placed it on Montague’s, she could hardly look at him. When she did, she wondered how she could have ever looked at anything else.
Montague was glowing. There was no other word for it. Something within him shone out so brightly, his very smile appeared to light up the church.
‘What are you so happy about?’ whispered Calliope with a grin.
Montague’s smile broadened. ‘You, of course.’
His adoration was palpable, changing the temperature of the air around them. Calliope knew in that moment there would never be anyone else in the world for her. No one but him.
Dear God, he had done it.
Somehow, Montague had managed to convince the most beautiful woman in the world to marry him. It was a small miracle, one he was still not sure how he had managed, but he had done it.
That was assuming he was not dreaming.
‘You’re scowling,’ murmured Calliope as the vicar started to drone.
‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God and this congregation…’
‘I just cannot believe it,’ Montague murmured, trying to focus on the weight of her hand on his arm, a tangible reminder he was not dreaming, and even if he was, he did not wish to wake up.
The last seven days had been a blur. The day after Calliope had agreed to marry him, Montague had secured the Archbishop’s blessing through a hastily written note and swiftly made as many of the plans for the wedding itself as he could.
After all, he was the one with the money, as he was frequently required to remind Calliope in the subsequent days.
All decisions had been hers, but the bills had come to Laidley House, as they should.
And now Calliope was standing before him, her hands in his, and she did not look as though she was doubting herself in the slightest. Which was a small miracle, as far as Montague was concerned.
That a woman so beautiful, so fiery, would agree to marry him.
Somehow, he had done it.
‘—and do you, Montague Reginald Ebeneezer Donovan—’
‘Ebeneezer?’ Calliope repeated under her breath with a teasing smile.