Chapter 5
Seraphine had never seen anything like it, nor did she think she ever would again. Unless, of course, she was to take up residence with the Briarwoods.
The halls of the Westleigh estate bustled like the busiest Christmas market, but even more important was the way the whole family behaved in the Westleigh chapel.
It was a beautiful, intimate affair, and yet one could never call it humble. It had the vast sort of magnificence of ducal chapels that went through ancient families and survived religious revolutions.
It was packed.
Every single pew had someone sitting upon every single inch of it. It smelled deliciously of winter. There was ivy. There was juniper in every corner. How beautifully it had been decorated. It did wonders for her soul.
And as she examined her surroundings, she found herself wedged between two ladies. She wasn’t entirely certain who they were, but she had been swept up and put in a unique position.
Her brother sat on the other side of the chapel. She had no idea why they were not sitting close together, except Phoebe was nestled into the crook of his arm.
She wanted to protest. Surely, such intimacy was too much! But apparently not here. Apparently they were as good as wed. It did not matter how many people could see it or would watch.
Seraphine was amazed by such a thing, and yet she found herself entirely tempted to give into it with Viscount Hawthorn, for she knew the bed play rules of Europe. She was no innocent fool. She had not been raised in a convent as so many naive young ladies were.
No, she had traveled from Baden-Baden to Naples, to Salzburg, to Berlin.
She’d even been to St. Petersburg. Her mother had wanted her to be cultured and interesting.
Now, some might have found that appalling, but her mother didn’t want her to have a boring, old husband.
She was not to be some old man’s darling.
No. Her mother wanted a prince for her daughter, and a princess needed to be able to speak several languages, read in several languages, understand music, politics, history, and she did.
But now here in the cozy intimacy of this chapel, she rather found all of that empty and lacking, given the merriment and kindness surrounding her.
And the three gentlemen standing at the front of the chapel were tall, gorgeous young men, broad in shoulder, strong in arm.
They were dressed beautifully too. She rather found herself stunned by the amount of beautiful young men in this chapel. Her mind went to Laertes and how stunning he was.
She blushed.
“Oh my dear,” the lady to her left said. “Are you overheated? Do you need to step outside into the snow and cool yourself?”
“No,” she said quite honestly, “I am simply a bit overborne if I must tell you. I’ve never seen so many beautiful people all together all at once.
The Continent, well, it is not like this.
There people were often beautiful of face, but not beautiful of soul.
Here the beauty of soul shines on every visage. ”
“Nowhere is like this,” the lady said and turned to her. “My name is Lady Perdita. And you are Lady Seraphine.”
She knew this woman somehow. She looked beautiful with her dark hair and her feline eyes with wrinkles, giving testament to years of laughter and smiles.
“You must be his mother,” she exclaimed suddenly.
The lady smiled. “And who’s he when he’s at home?”
“Laertes Ripton. The future Earl of Hythe, Viscount Hawthorn,” she said.
Perdita’s smile deepened. “Well said. You easily make that mouthful sound like music. You make everything sound like music, my dear. I heard you play and sing today. And well spotted. I am indeed Lady Perdita, Laertes’s mother.
And my husband is bustling about, making sure everything goes off without a single issue. How he does love to organize.”
“Does he?” she asked, pleased to hear it. She’d met far too many lords who left such things to underlings.
“Oh, yes,” Lady Perdita said with a nod of her dark curls. “Do you like to organize?”
“Of course,” she replied easily. “I am the daughter of a duchess, and I expect to manage a large set of estates, so yes, I do enjoy it, and I am good at it.”
She didn’t enjoy it, but she was good at it.
It had taken her years to become good with details.
The truth was she hated them. If she had her way, she would have passed them all onto someone else and allowed herself to be consumed by dreams and beauty, but that was not what her mother had in mind for her.
And her mother had driven it home, over and over again, the importance of details, and so now she never risked being too vague in anything.
“For someone who loves details, this family might seem a bit…”
“Chaotic,” she supplied. “A wedding with three grooms and three brides! It’s—”
“It’s marvelous?” Lady Perdita gushed.
And she quickly realized that nestled in a bag at Perdita’s feet was a cat. It meowed. No one seemed to be surprised.
Her eyes flared. “I say, is that…?”
“Yes, it is,” Perdita replied as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Would you like to hold him upon your lap? If you’re overborne, sometimes petting a cat will do just the thing.”
She opened her mouth, not quite certain what to say, and as if upon command, the cat bounded out of the bag and onto Lady Perdita’s lap. And then, even more astonishing, out of the bag came a hedgehog.
And the hedgehog brushed up against Lady Perdita’s slippered feet. Perdita picked up the little thing and put it upon her lap. She stroked it, and it looked particularly happy to be given such attention.
“Will the cat not eat it?” she asked.
Perdita shook her head. “Not at all. They’re very good friends.”
“A cat and a hedgehog,” she protested.
“Indeed, a cat can be friends with a hedgehog if given the right circumstances,” explained Perdita gently. “And you can be good friends with my son too, if given the right circumstances.”
“I don’t know what you’re speaking of,” she sputtered.
“Of course you do. You are a lady who likes details. My son is an artist and musician, and you, of course, are going to go and make a great marriage. For most people, they would think that my son is a great marriage, but I understand it is not enough for you.”
She ground her teeth.
What a thing to say, and yet it was exactly what her mother would have said, exactly what she had been thinking, not because she didn’t want him in any sort of way, but because she knew that she could not have him.
“The practicalities of being the daughter of a duchess can be quite difficult,” Seraphine said firmly.
“The practicalities of living can be quite difficult,” said Lady Perdita.
“Look at this cat and look at this hedgehog. Both of them were on death’s door not long ago, and yet here they are in a chapel surrounded by the nobility of England, and they don’t give a whit for any of us. Not a bit. They care not.”
“Well, that’s because they’re a cat and a hedgehog,” stated Seraphine, mystified but intrigued. She felt captivated by Lady Perdita.
“Yes, but they’re alive, aren’t they? They’re just as important as anything.”
“I don’t know if I can agree.”
“Oh,” Perdita said softly, “that a cat or a hedgehog is as important as, say, you or I?”
She nodded.
“You’re right in a way about that, of course,” Perdita said as she stroked her marmalade cat’s back and tickled the hedgehog.
“But we’re all part of something much larger, my dear.
You, myself, the cat, and the hedgehog. And that thing they we are a part of?
It is much larger than the single dreams and machinations of your mother. ”
She almost coughed at that. “I beg your pardon,” she said.
“Your mother’s a very intelligent woman. I’ve met her. And she wants great things for you.” Lady Perdita paused. “Has she ever asked you what you want?”
Seraphine’s stomach tightened, and she suddenly wished the organ music would start and that the brides would march down the aisle.
“What I want?” she repeated. She blinked. “What a ridiculous question.”
“Why is that a ridiculous question?” Lady Perdita asked.
“Because it doesn’t matter what I want,” Seraphine stated. “What I want is terribly unimportant.”
Lady Perdita reached out, took her hand, and put it atop the cat. “Give him a good pet, my dear. You need it.”
And just as she did, the music started, and the organ began to play. Everyone turned to look.
The brides processed down the aisle, and she found herself quite amazed. They were beautiful young ladies, all dressed in simple but perfect pale gowns that glistened under the candlelight flickering in the many candelabras positioned throughout the chapel.
Their hair was done to perfection. Their bonnets were kissed with winter greenery as they made their way to the front.
And when Seraphine spotted the vicar, she almost laughed.
He was so jolly and happy, his cheeks were pink, not with heat, not with being overborne, not with drink, but with happiness.
And he clutched the good book as if it was the answer to all things and perhaps, for him, and here with the generosity of the Duke and Duchess of Westleigh, it was.
The children laughed and clapped their hands. Some hummed to the music. Everyone watched. A child darted out into the aisle, and Seraphine sucked in a shocked gasp as the little one toddled forward and grabbed onto the skirts of one of the brides.
She waited for the child to be swept away by a nanny and castigated, perhaps taken out to the cold, where she would be made to understand the importance of such events and how children should not ever take away from something like this, at least not the children of nobles.
Peasant children were expected to act up in various ways, but then much to Seraphine’s shock, the bride looked down at the little thing, smiled, and held her hand out to the child. The child reached up, wound her pudgy little fingers with the bride’s, and processed down the aisle with her.
Seraphine could not believe it.
When they reached the end of the aisle and stood at the front of the nave, the bride knelt down, kissed the little girl atop her head, then handed the child her bouquet and waved her off to be caught up in the arms of another Briarwood.
“I don’t understand,” Seraphine whispered, tears stinging her eyes at the scene.
And as the three brides took their places beside the three grooms with several beautiful Briarwood men, Laertes one of them, standing by, she felt her heart ache. Not with sorrow but with longing.
Lady Perdita gave her a knowing glance. “Of course you don’t understand, my dear. But I think this place has been waiting for you. And soon you will understand very well indeed.”
She stroked the marmalade cat’s back, half expecting to wake from a dream in her own room at her brother’s estate with her mother awaiting her downstairs. But she did not awake.
“What can you possibly mean?” Seraphine asked.
“I think this place has the answers to the questions you’ve been having.”
“I haven’t had any questions,” she returned softly, firmly, as if she could will it to be true.
“Have you not?” Lady Perdita asked as softly in return. Lady Perdita trailed her gloved hand along the hedgehog’s back. The hedgehog curled itself upon her lap and promptly took a nap. Lady Perdita didn’t say another word, but stared straightforward, watching the ceremony.
Seraphine didn’t understand her feelings. Her envy.
They had to be unimportant young ladies to be married like this in a chapel on the Westleigh estate with no grandeur.
All great marriages took place in St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey.
But this wedding, though small, was joyful, she realized, full of life, bursting at the seams with excitement and love.
Oh, how magnificent it was! And she knew in that moment that she’d never have anything like this. She’d have a grand wedding with hundreds of guests who sat silently and eyed each other, jockeying for power and position.
Questions.
What sort of questions had she been asking as of late?
Oh, no, she would not allow herself to think on them.
How did Lady Perdita know that in the darkest hours of the night, when the silver moon shone through her window in the cold, cold winter air of Austria and the other places she had visited, that she had longed to know if there was more to life than what she knew.
If there was more than just the unending duty and perfection.
Surely, there had to be more than winning the approval of her mother and others.
Surely, there had to be more than the unrelenting, never-ending pursuit of approval and power.
The answer to life couldn’t just be soaring ceilings and beautiful gowns and princes and princesses and witty phrase after witty phrase. It couldn’t just be in the merciless pursuit of power and position in the world of the privileged, who cared only for power and money.
There had to be more, didn’t there?
And as she looked around, she thought this was it. This was more, but it could never be hers. She was destined for something very different, even as she looked at the Briarwoods, even as her heart suddenly leapt.
In all her life, she’d never felt so free as when she’d played and sang with Viscount Hawthorn. It had been but moments really. But the way that she’d felt playing with him side by side could never be hers.
He could never be hers, but maybe, just maybe, for a short little season, for twelve days, she could tempt him, and in turn, she could be tempted.
They could be tempted together, and maybe no one would ever have to know.