Chapter 17
The Twelfth Day of Christmas
Snow wafted down outside the Westleigh chapel.
They had chosen an evening wedding, and Oliver and Phoebe had happily agreed, because Seraphine wanted to do everything differently than how she had thought she would do things.
With the scent of winter greenery about her and the organ playing, just before she processed up the aisle, she still recalled her shock at Emily, Anne, and Tabitha’s wedding and that it was a candlelit one.
Surely, all weddings took place in the morning, that’s what she had thought, with a wedding breakfast. But not this one, like Emily, Anne, and Tabitha’s, this wedding would take place in the glow of candelabras lit throughout the holy space, amid the gentle glow of a winter’s evening, as the snow fell softly outside, caressing the trees of the forest and blanketing the ground in even deeper waves of white.
Even more so, as the organ music swelled and somehow she began to walk, she never could have imagined that she would now be going through the nave of the chapel on the arm of the Earl of Hythe, with Phoebe on his other arm.
It was hard to hold back the emotion that threatened.
Her throat was tight with it. Her father had been a strong man, a good man, by many accounts, but she’d never felt close to him.
Yet, Gordon Ripton, Earl of Hythe, made her feel so loved and so taken care of that when he looked down at her and gave her an assuring look, she knew she was his daughter, and that she always would be, and that meant she never needed to fear anything again.
There would always be a strong, loving parent to guide her, to listen to her, and to be there if she fell.
But as she walked in a gown of pale silk edged with lace, surrounded on either side of the aisle by the beautiful faces of the Briarwoods and all of the children who sat on their parents’ laps, it was her mother sitting in the front pew that nearly undid her.
Not out of distress, but out of hope.
For so long, her mother had been so rigid, but it seemed that her mother was choosing the love she had always had for her children rather than her expectations now.
And it was the most remarkable gift of Christmas.
Seraphine knew that she would have married Laertes without her mother’s permission or approval. She would have chosen herself and her new life and him.
But she couldn’t help it. She was so overjoyed that her mother had decided to choose her children over her own misguided determination, because for the first time that Seraphine could ever remember, her mother did not look strained.
Quite astonishingly, her mother looked vulnerable, as if she was in a sea of emotions that had finally come to the surface and was threatening to break free. But it was not a bad thing. It was beautiful.
In fact, tears filled her mother’s eyes. Tears of love.
She sat next to the Dowager Duchess of Westleigh, who was holding her hand.
In all her life, Seraphine never would have imagined that her mother could be vulnerable enough to let anyone hold her hand. But it seemed to her, in this place, with these people, that there were no rules, no shoulds, no musts. Only love.
Here, she had finally found her prince. He was standing at the end of the nave with Perseus and Deimos at his side.
When she crossed up to him, the Earl of Hythe handed her over, giving her a kiss on the head first, and then he turned to his daughter and handed her over to Oliver.
Seraphine then faced the vicar, who was as pink-cheeked and merry as ever.
She was ready for the future now, for whatever it brought because, at long last, she did not care about anyone’s approval. She didn’t have to, because she’d found her own approval.
And as Laertes squeezed her hand, both of them on the cusp of a life they’d chosen together, she approved. And in so doing, she’d finally allowed herself and Laertes real love. Real, undeniable, powerful, older-than-time love.