Chapter 4 #2
The change was almost nothing. The most fractional softening at the corners of her eyes.
A shift in her shoulders so slight that he doubted anyone else in the chapel would have seen it.
She drew a single quiet breath, and the grip on the bouquet eased, by small degrees, and she turned to face the front beside him.
He turned back to the front as well.
The vicar cleared his throat with the gentle authority of a man who had been patient long enough, and the ceremony began.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency,” the words moved through the quiet chapel and settled into its old stones the way words did in old stone spaces, absorbed, somehow, rather than simply heard.
Thomas said what he was required to say and found that he meant more of it than he had expected to.
That surprised him slightly. He had anticipated a certain going-through-of-motions, the mechanics of an arrangement conducted with appropriate dignity, and instead he stood in the pale morning light and said the words, aware of her beside him.
Then her voice low and even when her turn came, not wavering, and he thought she is braver than I expected, or perhaps she knew and was doing it anyway, which is braver still.
The light moved slowly across the flagstones. His grandmother did not make a sound.
He did not kiss her at the end of it.
The moment came and went, that slight, weighted pause in which the expectation lived, and he let it pass, and she let it pass, and the absence of it settled between them not as a lack but as a kind of acknowledgement.
An unspoken and mutual recognition that there were distances between them which would need to be crossed in their own time, and that neither of them intended to pretend otherwise.
He found he was grateful for it. It would have felt like a performance, and they had both, he thought, had quite enough of performance for one morning.
They moved to the vestry. Small and plain, smelling of old paper and ink, a single window looked upon the churchyard where the light was very clear and still. The register lay open on the table. The vicar produced a quill with quiet efficiency.
Thomas signed first, his own name, which looked, as it always did, slightly too large for the line, and then stepped back and watched her sign. Her handwriting was very clear. It did not waver. He looked at it for a moment after she had set the pen down. Genevieve Penrose.
Something about it, the plain and irrevocable fact of it on the page, settled in him in a way he had not anticipated.
Not relief, exactly. Something more like the particular stillness that followed a decision fully made.
Whatever the morning had been, whatever it had cost, this was real now and solid, and he had always found solid things easier to work with than uncertain ones.
Then the families came through, and the moment passed, and there were congratulations to receive.
His grandmother moved past him with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had somewhere to be and pressed his arm briefly as she went. Said nothing. He had not expected her to.
The Penrose mother was crying in a controlled and well-bred fashion, her handkerchief already deployed, and the father shook his hand with the grip of a man expressing considerably more than a handshake could properly contain, gratitude, Thomas thought, and relief, and something more complicated than either, the specific feeling of a man who knows a debt has been incurred and does not yet know how it will be repaid.
"Welcome to the family," the father said, quietly.
“Thank you,” Thomas replied, and meant it.
He stood in the small plain vestry and received everything that was offered, and was in every outward particular entirely composed, and the morning light came through the single window and lay across the open register and across her name written there in that clear and steady hand.
Beside him, his wife stood quietly.
He was aware of her, the specific, particular fact of her, the warmth of her presence at his shoulder, in a way that was new, and which he did not examine too closely. There would be time for that. There was going to be, he supposed, rather a lot of time.
He led her outside and, to his surprise, his grandmother walked with them.
“Do you always smile so?” she asked Genevieve. His wife’s eyes widened and he had to take a breath.
“Grandmama, do not—”
“I was not so joyous on my own wedding day, which was done at similar notice to yours,” his grandmother rebutted.
“Grandmama,” he said, feeling something in his forehead throb. “Please, be gentle.”
“There is nothing but gentleness here,” she replied, snapping her fan shut. He felt Genevieve tense next to him, her arm slightly constricting around his own.
“Grandmama, she is not well-used to a woman of such humor,” he said.
“I am just asking if the young woman always smiles in such a way, am I not allowed to ask these things?” she replied. By now, Genevieve was slightly shaking.
“Grandmother—” he was cut off when Genevieve burst out laughing. His eyes widened. Her smile was wide, her laughter genuine, the sun catching in glints in tears of laughter in her eyes and her auburn hair.
“I am ever so sorry!” Genevieve laughed. “I had not expected to be asked why I smile so much today! I must admit, I have been told this smile is a rather permanent fixture on my face, so if it displeases you, please do not feel you have to look at it.”
Oh.
He had misunderstood. He had believed her to be upset.
Clarissa had not appreciated his grandmother’s ways, but Genevieve had taken it in stride.
His grandmother watched and then nodded.
“I will take that into consideration,” she said before turning and walking away.
“I have not insulted her, have I?” Genevieve asked. Thomas shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I dare say nothing could offend her.”
“That is a relief,” she nodded. “I would hate to have offended her on our wedding day.”
“Do not worry so,” he said, leading her to the carriage.
Helping her inside, he looked at her smile. He could see nothing that would have offended anyone. He stepped inside next to her, looking out at the gathering.
His chest ached. In another world he would be sat across from the love of his life.
He looked back at Genevieve, still smiling.
Would he be able to give her the life she deserved?