Chapter 21
Thaddeus Beck arrived at the church a full ten hours prior to the event of his wedding vows. It still seemed insufficient for the amount of preparation that needed to take place.
They had brought all the pieces for the chuppah the night before, as well as the canopy provided by Mrs. Lazarus that would be draped over it.
Because the ceremony would be held after the sun had started to set, there would be a need for additional tapers throughout the sanctuary, as well as several odds and ends that had been agreed upon in the weeks leading up to the event by all parties involved.
His sister, trailing in his wake, was still chattering about the jeweler and how very well she approved of his fine precision work on the wedding bands, the velvet box containing said items clutched firmly in her manicured hands as she hurried after him.
“It is only that I should like very well to have him make a great many items for me in the future,” she was saying, knowing damn well that he wasn’t really listening to her.
“Teddy, why didn’t you tell me that the Jewish jewelers are so much better than the others?
Teddy, stop walking so fast, your legs are too long. Teddy!”
“Vix!” Matthew Everly emerged from the rooms behind the pulpit as though summoned by the sound of her haranguing, trailed closely by Reed. “You little menace! Why haven’t you been to visit me yet?”
It did have the effect of freezing Victoria Beck in her jewelry-centric scree and making her gasp.
“Matthew! Roland!” she squealed, shoving past her brother like he was some peasant who’d stepped on her gown in the street to barrel down the aisle and over the steps to the stage to fling her arms around the two of them.
“Oh, look at the two of you! Teddy has been keeping me from you!”
“I have been doing no such thing,” Beck replied, affronted. “You have sequestered yourself at home of your own damn accord.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s saying, poor lout,” she was tutting, taking her time examining one man and then the other, both of whom were beaming down at her like she was their patron goddess come to visit. “Oh, you’re both so very clean. And grown!”
Beck made a disgusted noise and veered off to find the tools and start the business of assembling the chuppah, leaving them to their nonsense.
Every time he emerged with a new armful of wood, he caught another snippet of their conversation.
“You see, the scar looks like some ghostly beauty painted her lips and planted a kiss right on my forearm,” Reed would be saying on one trip, his shirtsleeve pulled up to demonstrate his battlescar. “It looks like a benediction, doesn’t it?”
“It looks like you got chewed on, my beloved,” Vix said gently.
“No, no,” Matthew put in. “It really does look like a kiss.”
Then, the next time, they would be reassembled, with Vix lounging on the altar, saying, “He is being so very obtuse about it. It is as though he doesn’t really understand the realities of aristocratic matches. He provides a dowry. I provide a pretty face. What more do I need to offer?”
“What more indeed?” Reed replied wryly. “And have you found a willing victim yet?”
“Of course not,” she sighed. “But we are only starting toward the first blush of spring. All the bachelors are just now peeking out of their country estates toward London. Why? Do you have any suggestions?”
“I might.”
Beck frowned and forced himself to go back again. He knew they were baiting him. They were always baiting him. Since they were children. He knew better now. He was an adult! About to be a man wed.
Then on the third trip, Vix was giggling at Matthew, her head tilted as he leaned back against the pulpit with his brows raised, one hand sunk in his messy brown curls like he couldn’t quite believe what she was saying to him.
“Did you really?” he asked, sounding utterly scandalized. “I didn’t think you actually would.”
“Yes, of course I read it. Thrice, in fact! It was part of the reason I was dismissed.”
“You were dismissed?” Beck snapped despite himself, catching looks from all three of them that managed at once to be both shocked and satisfied. “Vix!”
“Victoria,” she corrected, if only to goad him. “It was … mutual.”
“What did you tell her to read?” he barked, rounding on Matthew, who already had his hands up like Beck was aiming a pistol at him.
“At least he wrote to me,” Vix said mildly, kicking a slippered leg out at her brother’s knee. “When my good friend, the parson, suggested something called The Monk, I thought it would be a piece of religious reflection.”
Beck blinked. Twice.
“And what was it?” Reed prompted.
“A novel,” she said, tossing him a little smirk, “about a holy man’s descent into carnal madness. I’m afraid I left it in the nursery on a repeat reading.”
Everyone found that very funny except Beck himself.
“I assure you,” she said in a tired, languid voice, “it was not the only problem with that post.”
“Are you all going to help me, or not?” he snapped, rather than acknowledge or even really think about the information that had just been forced into his mind. “Hold the beams up while I attach them.”
“Yes, fine,” Reed muttered, hopping down from the platform. “Keep your wig on.”
For all their irritating qualities, they were handy in a pinch. Or at least Reed and Matthew were. Vix stayed on the altar, admiring the rings, humming to herself and occasionally offering commentary when something looked misaligned.
“Have you met the bride?” Matthew asked her, once they’d gotten the four legs in place and were wrangling the lid into order. “She is a sharp little thing.”
“Once,” said Vix with an absent wave of her hand. “I think she rather hates me. I will fix it later.”
“She doesn’t hate you,” Beck grunted, twisting a screw into place. “You’d know that if you lifted your fingers for anything other than droll commentary.”
“She seems fine,” Vix said again with a shrug, making Reed grin and wiggle his eyebrows.
“Your marital home already seems a treat,” he whispered as they stepped back to gauge the look of the thing.
“Yes,” said Matthew with a frown, joining them farther down the aisle, out of Vix’s earshot. “Perhaps you ought to find her a rich husband sooner rather than later if you actually want to keep your wife rather than simply marrying her.”
“Not just rich,” Reed added, tucking his thumbs into his pockets. “Titled or otherwise with accolade. And you’ll want a nice jawline too, of course.”
“Vix said ugly was fine,” Beck grumbled. “Old was preferred.”
Matthew and Reed exchanged a glance.
“Have you met your sister?” Matthew said delicately.
“That girl has never tolerated an accessory that isn’t pretty,” Reed barrelled over the other man, far more bluntly, making Beck sigh.
“Can we talk about my wedding today?” he snapped, rounding on them. “Given that it is, in fact, my wedding day?!”
Reed rolled his eyes, but Matthew gave a small, wistful little smile.
“It is, isn’t it?” he said, shaking his head. “Our Tod, an honest man at last.”
“I will still kill you both,” Beck muttered, and stalked away, after his next task.
As the sun continued to rise in the sky, the frozen fruit trees in the parish garden glittered prettily beyond the window of Matthew’s vicarage office, casting prisms onto the truly overwhelming number of seating options crammed within.
Beck wove between all the seating as he laid out the canopy, smoothing the wrinkles and ensuring that the seams and stitches were all neatly presented.
There was an iron somewhere in this muddle that he could heat up if he needed to, but Martha Lazarus had insisted that the fabric should not require it, short of being pressed under something heavy while still folded, and it appeared she had been correct.
“That’s meant to be draped, anyway,” came Hannah’s voice from the door, startling him so badly, he almost kicked over one of Matthew’s damned treasure hoard of chairs in how quickly he whirled around. “No one will see any wrinkles.”
She laughed, her voice tinkling in the air. She was leaned against the doorframe, watching him with her head resting against the wood, a little basket clutched against her chest. Her hair was braided and looped around her head like it had been that first day at the clinic, all those months ago.
Bridal, he thought again.
“Hannah,” he said, carefully folding the canopy over the chair backs and crossing his arms. “You know it’s bad luck for you to be here.”
“Then why are you smiling?” she asked with a raise of her copper brows.
He tutted, carefully stepping around the drapery he’d made to get to her. “What have you got there?” he asked, nodding toward the basket. “Your veil?”
“No,” she said, grinning and whipping it away from him as he drew nearer, a playful glint in her eye. “It is food for you, because I knew you would be here, laboring away instead of caring for yourself today.”
He quirked his lips, crowding her into the frame and reaching over her head to pluck it from where she was holding it out of reach. “For me?” he asked softly, tilting his head down to let their breath mingle as he captured it. “How thoughtful.”
“Yes,” she said, a little shallower, blinking up at him with those big eyes. “Well. Yes.”
He dragged his thumb over her cheek, a little dizzy with how beautiful she was, staring up at him like this. “You really aren’t supposed to be here,” he reminded her. “I’m not supposed to see you at all before I veil you.”
“Are you superstitious, St. Thaddeus?” she teased, bracing her hands against his chest. “I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“I am careful,” he corrected. “Especially with you.”
“Hmm,” she said, tilting her head. “Sometimes I enjoy tipping over your carefully laid plans, don’t I?”
“You do,” he agreed, still tracing the lines of her face, his thumb passing over her bottom lip, dragging on the soft give of it. “You certainly do.”
“Do you think I will stop? Once I have you?” she wondered, curling her dainty fingers into his shirt, tugging him closer. “Do you think you will stop feeling tormented when I try?”
He cast his eyes heavenward, giving a helpless little groan under his breath. “Hannah,” he said, as patiently as he could, “are you trying to seduce me in a church?”
“Me?” she asked, innocent as a lamb. “I can’t imagine what you mean.”
“Hours before our wedding vows?” he clarified, sliding a thigh between her legs as he pressed her closer to the wall. “Would you do that?”
She gasped, trying to hide the satisfied little smirk that bubbled under her lips. “Of course not,” she said in the breathiest whisper, “husband.”
“God help me,” he muttered, dragging her up into his mouth with a heat wholly unforgivable in a place like this, and tasting her little bridal tongue like it was the only thing in the world worth craving. He kissed her until they were both breathless and panting and wishing they were anywhere else.
Perhaps that was the divine punishment after all. Realizing just how inhospitable a venue it was for seduction.
“We could skip the wedding,” she whispered, her lips soft and slick against his own, “and you could just take me home now.”
“Oh, I will be taking you home,” he told her, pulling back just enough to look into her eyes. “And keeping you there for some time, I think. I have a surprise for you, in fact, when we get there.”
“A surprise?” she repeated, wiggling against his evident arousal. “Can I guess what it is?”
He laughed then, because despite being half out of his mind with wanting her, she still had a talent for being perfectly absurd at times. He kissed her once more, firmly, and pulled away, shaking his head.
“You should be with your sisters, trying on your dress and nervously giggling over your wedding night,” he reminded her, knowing he sounded like a disapproving schoolmaster, and knowing even better that she loved it. “Not sneaking in here trying to get me to bend you over the vicar’s desk.”
“Is that a way it can be done?” she asked, touching her throat. “Bent over?”
“Hannah!” he cried, giving another half-hysterical laugh, which made her laugh too, her hands tightening over her collar.
“Sorry! I’m sorry,” she said, coloring at the cheeks as she giggled. “It is only so very intriguing. And you know I’ve a fondness for climbing onto desks for you.”
“Get out of here!” he commanded, still laughing, still aching, holding her by the face and dropping an exasperated kiss on her forehead and then pointing to the door. “Before I lose my mind.”
“Oh, if you insist,” she said with one last regretful look over her shoulder at Matthew’s desk. “But you will eat? You promise?”
“Eat?” He blinked at her, his mind still reeling from her presence as his eyes found the basket he’d dropped on the ground. “Oh. Yes. I will eat. I promise.”
She grinned at him, hugging her arms to herself, and then she spun away and fled the church. His sweet little runaway bride.