Chapter Fifteen #2
Their whispering was cut off by the music getting louder, the chatter dying down.
All the seats had filled up without her noticing.
Dexter shot to his feet to stand beside Harry, who was star-fishing his fingers at his sides, and Imogen turned towards the back of the room, waiting for the bride, her breath held.
A month ago, she had everyone she knew waiting for her like this.
But, apart from a few people near the back who had seen her arrive, balk and run, they had waited, and waited, then had the confusion of nobody coming down the aisle.
Imogen swallowed the uncomfortable thought, and gasped along with everyone else as Sophie appeared in a beautiful navy silk dress with frosted, silver-blue accents.
Lucy and Jazz followed her in their pale blue dresses, along with the well-dressed – and stupidly well-behaved – dogs.
Felix trotted along beside Jazz in his big-hearted jumper, and Imogen wondered what tactic she was using to keep him there.
‘She looks like a goddess,’ Fiona said from beside Imogen. ‘And so happy.’
‘She does.’ With her reddish hair loose around her shoulders, the dress elegantly cut, Sophie looked like some kind of ethereal wood nymph.
But nothing was as captivating as the look on her face, her gaze trained on Harry.
Imogen looked at him, saw how his lips were slightly parted, his cheeks flushed.
He seemed overwhelmed, his eyes bright with anticipation and love.
She didn’t think Edmund had ever looked at her like that, or …
no – she wasn’t being fair. Maybe at the very start of their relationship.
Maybe the first time he’d been invited to have dinner with her parents.
She pushed the cynical thought away: today was not the day for it.
‘OK?’ Fiona asked, giving Imogen a quick look.
‘Course.’
She focused on the ceremony, on Winnie’s jokey, kindhearted greeting; on her effusive descriptions of Harry and Sophie; as she talked about how Harry had returned to the village after a long spell in London, and it had taken a while for him to warm up to Mistingham, and vice versa.
The atmosphere was giddy delight and glowing affection, and Imogen wanted to bottle it.
None of the congregation were dressed to show off or waiting for the reception so they could forge business deals – unless it was about collaborating on the upcoming festive performances.
There was warmth and love and laughter in the air, and sooner than she would have liked, when the band had finished playing ‘You Make My Dreams’ by Hall & Oates, it was her turn.
Winnie waited until the last bars had ended – a band of very young people in the corner of the room with a guitar, violin, saxophone and electric drum kit were responsible for the music – then said, ‘And now we have Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare, performed by Imogen Rowsell.’
Harry gave Sophie a curious look, and Dexter leaned back and whispered, ‘Good luck,’ as Imogen wiped her hands down her dress.
Smiling, she stood up and walked to the front of the room. Winnie stepped off the small wooden platform and Imogen took her place, looking out over the residents of Mistingham, at least seventy people, she reckoned, who were all waiting expectantly.
She had a copy of the sonnet in the pocket of her dress, just in case, but she felt confident that she could recite it. She took a deep breath.
‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove …’
After the first few words she was lost to them and their meaning, and her voice came out strong and sure, full of emotion.
It felt good, like a burst of flat-out running or a dip in an ice-cold sea, and she projected her voice, heard the sentences reach up to the room’s high ceiling, everyone captivated by the sonnet’s beauty.
She came to the end, her eyes on the crowd, and the last word, ‘loved’, seemed to echo around the room.
There were gentle ‘aaahs’, and a couple of people started clapping.
Imogen turned to Sophie, and saw that her eyes were shining.
She smiled and nodded, and as she walked back to her seat, pride bloomed inside her at having given something to these people who had been so kind to her.
Lucy gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up from her spot next to Jazz, and Imogen risked a look at Dexter.
The grin he gave her felt like the shockwave after a blast, threatening to take her feet out from under her.
‘Well done,’ he mouthed, as she slipped back into the row behind him.
‘Thank you, Imogen, for that wonderful reading,’ Winnie said. ‘Now it’s time for the vows. Harry and Sophie, if you could turn to face each other. I think you’ve each written your vows for this moment, haven’t you?’
Dexter reached over the back of his chair and squeezed Imogen’s arm, and she felt as if she’d won a BAFTA.
She spent the rest of the ceremony, through Sophie and Harry’s emotional vows, Winnie’s declaration, the kiss under a particularly burgeoning bunch of mistletoe, in a happy, incredulous daze.
She silently admitted to herself – though would never say it to anyone else – that this wedding was better than all the imaginings of hers had ever been.