Chapter 14
Vix spent quite a lot of the wedding breakfast staring down at the ring on her finger.
She supposed part of her had expected a simple gold band. Yes, she had expected that. Ambrose might have a flair for the dramatic in his own wardrobe, but she had always assumed that was more of a passive consequence of affording fine tailors than any particular affection toward style.
She had been wrong. Twice now, she thought, remembering that tidy, elegantly appointed bedchamber.
The bedchamber.
She’d be back there tonight, wouldn’t she?
“She had stolen it. She’d stolen the entire cake,” Teddy was saying to a rapt audience, making her blink up at him in slow and horrified realization.
“The baker himself emerged from the back rooms to pursue her right down the middle of the Covent Garden market and our mother was none the wiser, selling a posey to the vicar a few feet away.”
“The vicar being my father,” Matthew put in helpfully. “He was the first one to catch on.”
“Oh, not this,” Vix said, wrinkling up her nose. “I didn’t steal it.”
“You took it all the way out of the shop and into the square,” Teddy said, turning his head to her with his eyes sparkling. “What were you going to do? Take it for a stroll and return it after it had seen the sights of the city?”
“Ugh,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, that ring glittering against her bicep.
Ambrose looked delighted, leaning forward with his chin in his hand. “How big of a cake are we talking about here?” he asked.
“It was half as tall as she was,” Teddy answered, a bald-faced lie.
“It wasn’t,” she muttered, but it was drowned out by the laughter of the assembled mutineers, listening to this tale at her wedding breakfast and enjoying it more than the real and verified cake on their own little plates.
“My father tripped over himself rushing to help, already pulling coins out of his pocket to placate the baker,” Matthew put in. “He always had more coin than sense.”
“But Vix turned to the baker,” Teddy said, starting to chuckle and wicking a little tear from the corner of his eye, “lowered her head, and dragged her tongue across the entire top of the confection, standing with the thing held to her chest right in the middle of the road.”
“God help me,” she muttered, dropping her forehead into her hand.
“What kind of cake?” Dinah Lazarus demanded, clicking her wineglass on the tabletop. “Something worth licking, I hope?”
“Almond, I think?” Teddy lied, tilting his head to the side like he was not sure.
“It was rose-flavored,” Vix snapped, unable to help herself. “And it was mine already. I bought it in advance from a shop girl who claimed I hadn’t. It was mine.”
“That was always her story,” Teddy said conspiratorially to Dinah, who nodded as though she understood.
Vix scoffed. “I had a full shilling from the scrap posies Mama let me make myself,” she insisted, not even bothered that she’d gone a little shrill. “I bought the thing on the way home and they said I could pick it up in the morning.”
“Oh, Lady Aster,” said Rosalind a little mournfully. “We ought to have ordered rose flavor for your wedding cake.”
It got another wave of laughter, with Rosalind blinking in confused, wary happiness at the effect she’d caused as she blushed in the wake of the attention.
Vix watched her thoughtfully, wondering if she was truly so innocent to some of the things she said. Vix wondered how she might deploy that particular flavor of wide-eyed, guileless charm, if ever she’d had access to it. There certainly was a power there, whether Rosalind realized it or not.
“Roses and burnt toast,” Ambrose said to her, low and curious. “You’ve an exotic palate.”
“Indeed,” she agreed, turning to watch him, her face still propped in her hand. “Look who I married, after all.”
It made him smile, those inky eyes glittering. “You have always been a troublemaker, I think.”
“Perhaps,” she answered, watching him taste a bite of the cake, following the progress of his lips over the edge of the spoon with an odd simmering feeling in her stomach. “And you?”
“Me?” he asked, sliding the spoon back onto the plate.
“I was ever the talented one. Ambrose, play the pianoforte. Ambrose, come recite the Greek you just learned. Ambrose, show Lady Harrigan your new charcoal sketch. Come stand in the foyer in your new waistcoat, Ambrose, so we may all stare at you. Very boring.”
“Yes, intolerable,” she snarked, wrinkling her nose at the way he chuckled. “Charcoal?”
“Hm? Oh, yes, but not in many years,” he said, taking another bite of cake and considering her before biting into it. “Why? Do you want me to draw something for you?”
“Your walls are very bare,” she said, trailing off at the end as he ate this second bite of cake in slow, careful movements.
She had never before been so disarmed by the stroke of a spoon and the simple act of chewing and swallowing.
She glanced down at the fruit juice next to her own empty plate and wondered if there was something in it other than apples and oranges.
At some point, Matthew must have exited the breakfast room, because just then he came back looking even more harried and ruffled than usual, his eyes locking on Teddy with an impatient lift of his chin.
“Ah,” said her brother, chuckling. “Our wedding gift?”
“One of my chairs is ruined,” Matthew replied softly, as though he’d just lost a dear friend.
“Not one of his chairs,” Ambrose whispered to her, giving her side a nudge. “The other four hundred will never stand the loss.”
She bit her lip rather than laughing.
“Ah, perhaps we ought to present it to the happy couple now?” Hannah said with a wince, standing and moving toward Matthew like she wished to hug him in apology.
Teddy put his hand on her arm. “It is just a chair,” he said, raising his brows. “Matthew has others.”
“So many others,” Ambrose muttered, this time making Vix lift her drink to hide the snort that threatened to emerge.
“Well, I, for one, would like to know what this gift is,” Mae Casper announced from her own corner of the breakfast. “Perhaps a public presentation is in order?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Hannah replied, frowning. “I … Matthew?”
He was frowning at Teddy directly now, as though he hadn’t even heard Mae’s suggestion. But he did answer, a quick nod of his mop of curls. “Yes, bring it out, then,” he decided. “Perhaps it will go for the cake next.”
“The devil did they get us?” Ambrose asked, marveling as the trio left together toward the vicarage office. “Does it take all three of them to transport it?”
Vix shrugged, just as baffled. “I honestly haven’t a clue.”
It was the sharp, high-pitched whine that came soon after that started to give the game away. For a moment, Vix did not quite believe it, blinking in bafflement at the sound and the little burrowing rumble that followed.
It was only when they rounded the corner again, a mound of curly brown fur wriggling in Teddy’s arms, that she realized what they had done.
“Oh!” cried Dinah, coming to her feet. “Oh!”
Hannah was grinning widely, bent over her husband’s arm, scratching at the thing’s head as they rounded the doorframe and came to the head of the table.
“What?” was all Vix could say, staring at the puppy as it turned its shiny black nose toward her, blinking from behind a frizzy curtain of sprung-up curls. “A dog?”
Hannah giggled, pushing her fingers into the dog’s scruff and revealing a sparkling collar, which she rotated until Vix could see the little metal charm hanging off the side of it.
“Bear,” Ambrose read, raising his brows. “The dog is a bear?”
“Or the bear is a dog,” Hannah answered, shrugging. “He will get bigger, in time.”
“Ohh,” said Vix, remembering now, in slow measures, as the dog was transferred from her brother’s arms directly into the lap of her very fine, very expensive gown. It sank into her immediately, a warm, squishy weight, and heaved a shuddering sigh of satisfaction as it leaned against her torso.
Not knowing what else to do, she wrapped an arm around it so it would not slip off her legs and fall.
“On the morning you made your match,” Teddy told Ambrose, who was still staring like someone had just slapped him and run away, “Vix expressed a desire to have a very large dog, one that might be part bear.”
“I did say that,” she confessed weakly. “I did.”
Ambrose just stared at her, his mouth hanging open as the dog got comfortable, resting its bony chin on Vix’s forearm and blowing air out like it was ready for a nap.
She watched his face, uncertain what the outcome of this would be. He might reject the poor pup entirely. She had never asked him, after all.
Bizarrely, though she hadn’t even known it existed some minutes ago, it made her hold it tighter in her lap.
“Bear,” he said again, reaching a tentative hand out to cup its cheek. He rubbed his thumb over the puppy’s forehead and raised his eyes to hers. “Unpredictable. Like you promised.”
“Like I promised,” she echoed.
“I’ll have Zeller get him home and settled. He’ll need a bowl and a bed and likely some other things neither of us is at all prepared for,” Ambrose said, bending his head a little lower to look the little creature in its eyes. “How does that sound?”
“All right,” she said, still not letting go, still a little undone by the bony little chin pressed against her forearm. “But not just yet.”
Ambrose released the puppy and looked back up at her, something wry in his face.
“What?” she asked, lifting her chin. “What is it?”
“Just you,” he answered, shaking his head and smiling. “I always wanted a dog. My father said they are for work or for hunting only, and such sentiment was weak and base. I had forgotten that, you know. That I wanted it.”
“Ambrose,” she said, frowning. “Your parents sound ghastly.”
He blinked, clearly stunned by the statement, and then released a little gust of laughter, shaking his head. “They do,” he said, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair, “don’t they? Maybe I’m not doing them justice.”
“I suspect you are,” she replied, but did not push the matter any further.
It had not escaped her notice that they did not arrive today to witness the vows, despite that letter from his mother expressing plenty of foreknowledge of the event.
She glanced at Teddy and Hannah, at the way she laughed and dropped her head on his arm. She looked around the room at the others, at Reed and Matthew and Mae and Rosalind and Dinah and Ember Donnelly.
It was perhaps the first time she had ever realized that some are luckier than others, and in doing so found herself in the luckier position.
She stood and carried the puppy over to Mr. Zeller, who had passed most of the morning standing in attendance by the windows, ever the watchful sentinel.
“This is Bear,” she said. “He’s coming home with us.”
“Herr Bear,” said Zeller respectfully, giving a little bow to the dog, and then offering his arms with a twinkle in his blue eyes.
Vix laughed, passing over the bundle. “Thank you for coming today, Mr. Zeller. Thank you for being here for Ambrose.”
“Of course, of course,” he said, sniffing as though the sentiment tickled his sinuses. “Where else would I be?”
“You ought to congratulate him before you go,” she said, pressing a hand to the man’s wrist. “I think it would mean something to him.”
He nodded, one side of his mustache quirking up. “I’m so glad we have you with us now,” he said, “Lady Aster.”
Vix watched the butler and the puppy cross the hall to speak with her new husband, observed in quiet awe the way Ambrose’s face lit and changed when Zeller bowed to speak to him.
It was the oddest thing, she thought, the way her chest clenched at it, the way something bubbled in her throat and stung at her eyes.
Very odd indeed.
When Ambrose stood to shake Zeller’s hand before he departed and then leaned down to drop a kiss on the puppy’s head, that bubble in her throat burst. It popped with a warm, salty gurgle and made her turn quickly to the window to blink away its escape from her voice and her eyes.
She stared out at the bench under the fig tree instead and took a few steadying breaths.
Unpredictable, she thought.
Yes, marriage certainly was that, so far. And it hadn’t yet even been a full day.