Chapter 13
Ambrose was not entirely convinced he hadn’t swallowed a wasp’s nest at some point in the night. It was the only reasonable explanation for how he was feeling.
It was as though the entirety of his inner body was experiencing that dreadful sensation of a thousand needles that one gets after a foot or arm falls asleep from misuse.
That wasn’t possible, was it? It wasn’t as though he’d tangled up his insides awkwardly for too long or elsewise left them under something heavy, only to whip away the obstacle on the morning of his wedding.
No, wasps were the only reasonable explanation.
Zeller had probably sneaked them into his wine.
They arrived at the church just ahead of most of the guests. Though, of course, there were always a few that came unreasonably early and loitered about just to unsettle the bride and groom.
In Ambrose’s case, it was clearly sanctioned directly by the vicar himself.
He found the good Reverend Matthew Everly holding court with Thaddeus Beck and Roland Reed almost the instant he had passed into the churchyard, and all three had stopped speaking to turn and stare at his approach in a way that gave away, immediately and without question, the fact that their chittering had been about Ambrose himself.
“Good morning!” called Reed, grinning. “I’ve just met your wedding present. It’s a delight.”
Ambrose glowered at him as best as he could. “I will not ask.”
“It’s best you don’t,” Beck agreed, giving an unsettling little smirk and leaning up against the church walls. “I thought you’d be late.”
Ambrose scoffed. “Why? I’ve never demonstrated tardiness to you before.”
Beck only shrugged. “A hunch, I suppose.”
“All right, enough,” chided the parson, who looked altogether too entertained by the exchange. “Let’s get inside.”
Ambrose wanted to ask someone, anyone, really, if they had seen her yet. And if so, how she looked and what she looked like and what they thought it meant and so on. He didn’t, because he did not care to humiliate himself today, or at least, not so early into the day.
He sighed, listening to the instructions being given to him about the ceremony while trying to keep the wasps at bay as they stung and stirred in his ribcage.
Not for the first time, he did wonder if it had really been so bad, back when he felt numb all the time.
He had done this to himself, of course, at least in part.
He’d had to go sit in the washroom and plunge his whole head into the basin after that last encounter in his bedchamber, and it hadn’t even helped that much.
He’d been requiring more washbasins every few hours in the two days since, unable to stop thinking about all the different ways that scene might have unfolded, if he hadn’t gotten so damned smug about it.
Still, the memory as it was was a fine thing. Very fine.
He shook himself, glancing up at the stained glass windows, and reminded himself not to get aroused in a house of God.
It was only that this business of delayed gratification was new to him. Ambrose had never struggled to satisfy the itch when it had arisen in the past. He’d never even found it to stir for a woman who was not already midway to undressing and awaiting him in a nest of sheets.
Even that had been boring after a time. It hadn’t felt like release so much as another performance.
It didn’t entirely stop him, of course, but it had been just like everything else.
Just like the gambling and the parties and the fine purchases.
Just another thing that was meant to shift something inside and instead only landed with a muffled thud in an already crowded pit of disappointment.
Was this all he had needed all along? A woman who bristled and told him not to touch her? Was it that simple?
He somehow doubted it.
And now the wasps were in his skull too.
He groaned and pressed his thumb between his brows, trying to will them away and failing.
“Jitters?” asked Reed, coming to drape himself all over the altar and gloat. “Grooms get them, you know.”
Ambrose dug his finger in a little harder and opened his eyes just a slit to glare at the other man. “How would you know?”
Reed only grinned, his freckles moving around the wide expanse of his mouth. “I half grew up in this church,” he told him. “A lot of weddings.”
“Where was the other half?” Ambrose shot back, sarcasm doing more to dispel the wasps than any amount of earnest agony had managed. “Jail?”
“A brothel,” Reed answered, looking unbothered by the confession. “My parents are whores.”
Ambrose paused, blinking. He dropped his hand and stared at the other man, who was grinning at him like he enjoyed telling people this.
“Yes,” said Reed, quirking his golden head to the side, the light turning the ends of his curls an odd burnished pink. “Him too.”
Ambrose paused, blinking at the surprising lack of wasp stings in the room at the moment. “And you didn’t choose to go into the family business yourself?” he asked. “Seems a fair sight easier than ejecting rowdy gamblers.”
Reed scoffed. “I don’t think it is. But I suppose I always could if enforcing doesn’t work out. I thought you’d understand, Aster.”
“Me? I’d make an excellent whore,” Ambrose replied with a sniff. “Look at me.”
“All right,” said Roland, who then leered theatrically.
It made Ambrose laugh, a great deal of the tension in his shoulders seeming to ease. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“It isn’t what I meant either,” said Reed, chuckling and resuming his languid posture. “I meant that I thought you would understand not being at all like your parents. Not embodying their chosen path. It seems you do not, either, unless I am mistaken.”
Ambrose blinked. “You aren’t mistaken. Though it is not the same as vocation, simply being born to status.”
“Of course it is,” said Reed. “Ask your wife, if you don’t believe me.”
“My wife,” Ambrose repeated, a little weakly.
Reed blinked at him. “Vix is a good girl,” he said, suddenly sounding rather serious. “She always has been. Take care of her.”
“I will do my best,” he answered. “Though I think she is fairly determined to take care of herself.”
The other man nodded. “Until she learns otherwise.”
He then departed the altar, hopping up and slinking away without fanfare to go join Mr. Beck. Ambrose watched him go, looking from one to the next and then glancing at the vicar for good measure.
“Take care of her” had been good advice. But it had been a threat too.
Hadn’t it?
He didn’t really have time to consider what it felt like to be threatened before the music started up and he was forced to straighten his posture and smooth his face.
When had all these people gotten here? He swept his eyes over the pews, now spotted with spectators, with a kind of dazed disbelief. He couldn’t even make out any of their faces, just that there were bodies in the rows and that they were here to witness this thing he’d signed himself into.
The vicar cleared his throat, finding his footing at the center of the aisle. He took up his battered copy of the Book of Common Prayer and gave Ambrose an encouraging little half smile, nodding to the rear of the church.
Then the doors opened.
Ambrose wasn’t sure how she’d orchestrated it, but the morning light streamed in with such glowing and perfectly aimed golden perfection that she was, momentarily, nothing but an obsidian silhouette against the sun.
She began to walk, her matching the time signature of the organ as it plucked her bridal march, and inch by slowly sashayed inch, she started to come into view, eclipsing the bright tunnel of sunlight as she drew ever closer to him in a dress that appeared to be constructed entirely of cloud fluff.
Stormclouds, he amended, as she drew close enough for him to see the color, a rich and jewel-toned purple that swayed around her as she moved.
She was carrying a bouquet of foxgloves. They were purple too, he saw, with a few white ones sprinkled in through the center.
It was easier to look at her hands. When he raised his eyes to meet hers, the wasps jumped to life again, this time clustered around the center of his chest, their stingers all pointed directly at his heart.
When she reached him, she looked up through those dark lashes and gave him the smallest, most careful little smile, then turned and handed her flowers to Hannah, who was waiting by the pews. Once her hands were free, they were his to take. His to claim.
She didn’t wear gloves, he noted, her bare fingers sliding into his palms.
He wondered how many couples only held hands for the first time as they were saying their wedding vows.
He did not so much as have a chance to greet her before the thing began, the vicar’s voice going posh and solemn as he launched into the official tirade about sanctity and matrimony and sacrifice and giving and so on. Ambrose didn’t hear most of it. He just looked at her.
Her lips were purple too. How had she managed that?
They glinted like they’d been dabbed with plum juice.
They parted and began to curve as he realized he’d been caught staring, his eyes darting back to hers to find her watching him, silently, in the moments before it was time to begin reciting things to one another and to the church at large.
It was only then that he realized that he was being married not as Ambrose, but as Sir Ambrose. He heard the sir in three rapidfire successions, his outrage going first to the damned book and then to the vicar himself.
Perhaps only because the queen wasn’t there to shout at.
“Do you, Sir Ambrose …” the vicar said, oblivious to the insult as Ambrose gnashed his teeth through the entire ordeal, agreeing in gradually sharper snaps of affirmation.
It only made his bride smile wider.
And somehow, being goaded during his wedding vows eased his suffering. Glaring back at her, biting off the ends of his statements, tilting his head just so when she repeated his title back to him during hers, all of it, somehow, quieted the wasps.
Perhaps they simply didn’t dare sting opposite the queen wasp.
The thought made him smile to himself as he turned to retrieve the rings.
He’d had them made to match, poured in fine bands of braided gold and silver and studded with tiny amethysts. Hers had a single sapphire at its center, cut into a narrow oval, rich and sparkling.
He heard her breath catch when she saw it, saw the way she marveled when it slid onto her finger.
They admired the pair together as the final declaration was read, and their ringed hands entwined over the altar.
When the permission was given, when Ambrose Aster was told he may kiss his bride, he turned to find her grinning at him, and did not get the chance.
Instead, she gripped his face, pushed herself onto her toes, and claimed the kiss for herself.
If this shocked the assembled congregants, Ambrose would never know.
All he would remember was the warmth of her soft purple lips on his and the sound of approving applause.