Epilogue
TWO MONTHS LATER
The church was brimming with well-dressed guests.
Anna peeked through the open doors at the sanctuary, full of candles and white roses, the light catching on it all in a way that made the whole room look faintly unreal, as though someone had painted it and then forgotten to let it settle into anything ordinary.
She stood in the vestibule with her hands steady around her bouquet as her heart fluttered like a caged butterfly.
This is real. This is happening.
She caught sight of herself in the narrow mirror propped against the wall and paused to actually look at herself.
The morning had been such a flurry of activity she hardly had a moment to breathe.
The gown was ivory silk with the faintest silver threading.
It hugged her curves and flared out at the bottom, with delicate lace sleeves.
Her hair had been pinned up, and away from her face, a few curls left loose at her temple, and her cheeks had color in them that owed nothing at all to rouge. She was a blushing bride.
A stark contrast to my first walk down the aisle.
Rachel appeared in the doorway, ivory silk pooling around her like moonlight. Her hair was swept into an elegant chignon, a few loose tendrils framing her face. Her heirloom diamond earrings caught the light with every small movement of her head. She looked as beautiful as a portrait in the Louvre.
“Ready?” Rachel said as she clasped Anna’s hands.
“Entirely,” Anna said. “And you?”
“I have been ready since approximately last November.”
Anna laughed as they took up their bouquets and she hooked her arm through Rachel’s.
For a moment neither of them moved. They just stood there at the church doors, breathless, as if putting off the walk in might keep the morning from ending.
Then Rachel squeezed her arm, and they went in together, two futures ahead down the same aisle.
The quartet struck up as they entered. It was not the traditional march, but something lighter, quicker, a tune with a little mischief in it. Anna felt it suited them perfectly.
At the altar, Frederick stood with Thomas beside him, and neither man was managing composure particularly well.
Thomas’s jaw was set too hard to be casual, and Anna suspected he was holding back tears.
Frederick was opening and closing his right hand at his side as though it wanted something to hold.
But then Frederick looked up and found her, and whatever tension had been sitting in his shoulders simply left them.
He smiled broad and true. Anna felt the full weight of his attention locked solely on her.
One year ago, I was running from a church. It turns out, I was only running toward this one.
The ceremony was conducted jointly, both couples standing together at the altar rail.
This did require some ingenious management by the rector, who navigated the arrangement with an admirable lack of confusion.
He asked each question once by simply turning from groom to groom, bride to bride, so that the whole service moved as a single current rather than two.
It was so fitting, and so uniquely them.
“Dearly beloved,” he began, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together these persons—” he paused, glancing between the two waiting couples with the faintest flicker of private amusement, “in holy matrimony.”
He turned first to Frederick as the higher-ranking peer of the realm. “Will you have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony?”
“I will,” Frederick said quietly, looking only at Anna.
The priest turned to Thomas. “And will you have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony?”
“I will,” Thomas pledged with a smile.
“And shall you,” the rector said, turning to Anna, “have this man to thy wedded husband, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death do you part?”
“I will,” Anna said back, and somehow did not cry.
“And shall you,” the priest said, and Rachel drew a breath as though she had been waiting all morning just to be asked, “have this man to thy wedded husband, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death do you part?”
“I will gladly,” Rachel said, with a warmth so uncontained that several guests in the first three pews required their handkerchiefs.
“By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you all husband and wife. Now, let us sign the registers.”
The registers were brought out and laid open on the vestry table, and the four of them crowded round it.
“One at a time, if you would,” the priest said, though there was no reproach in it. “I have signed a great many of these in my years, but never four in the same quarter hour, and I find I should like to get it right.”
Frederick signed first, his hand careful as a man double-checking his own name, and Anna watched the ink settle into the page and thought that it looked very small for a thing that felt so large.
Anna signed after him, steady in a way that surprised her.
Then Thomas, quick and certain, and Rachel last, her signature looping and triumphant, so large it nearly ran into the margin.
“Well,” the priest said, blotting each in turn, “I don’t know that I’ve married two brides on the same morning before. I shall have to ask the bishop if there’s a proper term for it.” He capped the ink. “Though I daresay there ought to be, if this is to become fashionable.”
“Let us hope it isn’t,” Frederick said, “or you’ll never have a Sunday off again.”
The priest allowed himself a small, dry smile and closed the book.
When the papers were signed, and the music swelled, Frederick kissed Anna softly, as though the church was empty but for the two of them. Thomas, meanwhile, kissed Rachel with considerably less self-consciousness about the assembled witnesses, and the sound from the pews was rather louder.
The wedding breakfast at Rathbourne House was a grand event for only their closest friends and family.
The dining room had been opened to its full length, the table dressed in white and gold linens.
White flowers that had been at the church were set about the table.
The guests moved through it all with the warm noise of people who were genuinely happy, which, as Anna had noted before, was rarer than it should have been at London gatherings.
“My dear girl.” Lady Oldbarrow appeared at Anna’s. She took both of Anna’s hands and held them and looked at her with a genuine smile. “You look extraordinarily well for a woman who was in a fever bed eight weeks ago.”
“I had excellent care,” Anna said.
“Yes, you had Frederick,” Lady Oldbarrow said. She glanced across the room to where Frederick was receiving congratulations from a group of older gentlemen. “He looks rather better than usual as well. Something to do with the expression he is almost managing to suppress.”
“He is trying very hard,” Anna agreed.
“He will get worse at suppressing it the more time he is with you, my dear,” Lady Oldbarrow said with satisfaction.
“I like the sound of that.”
“Good.” She patted Anna’s hand. “Now. I have been told that your cousin’s situation has resolved itself.”
“Frederick was very thorough about it,” Anna said.
Jonathan Cartwell’s removal from England had been accomplished with the same quiet, unhurried efficiency Frederick brought to all his business dealings.
She had not asked for details. She had asked Frederick only whether it was done, once she had fully recovered.
He had said yes, and that had been sufficient.
“He is settled abroad, permanently. He will not trouble anyone here again.”
“And I hear Wexford has married,” Lady Oldbarrow said, in the tone of someone introducing a pleasant subject. “Quite happily, from what I understand. A girl from Berkshire. They were engaged within a month of the Season ending.”
“I am very glad,” Anna said, and meant it simply. “He deserved someone who was entirely his.”
Lady Oldbarrow smiled. “As did you, my dear.” She glanced once more across the room and took up her fan. “Go and be with your husband. I intend to tell him at least twice this afternoon that I was responsible for the whole thing, and you needn’t be present for either conversation.”
“Were you?” Anna asked.
Lady Oldbarrow’s smile widened fractionally. “I was present at certain moments,” she said, with magnificent imprecision, and moved away into the crowd.
Thomas found Frederick near the windows, and the two of them stood together for a quiet moment.
“Well,” Thomas said, finally.
“Well,” Frederick agreed.
“I feel I should say something significant. I’ve been trying to come up with something since Tuesday.”
“If it takes more than eight words I won’t remember it.”
Thomas considered. “You’ve done well,” he said. “We both have.”
“That will do,” Frederick said, and they clinked their glasses.
Across the room, Rachel was talking to Anna with the animated energy of a woman who would have approximately eight hours of undivided conversation before the next several weeks demanded otherwise and was intending to take advantage.
Thomas watched his wife attentively, and Frederick watched Thomas watching Rachel.
He could not have imagined all those years ago at Eton that his dearest friend would marry his only sister.
It would be Thomas’ duty to protect her now.
“Take care of her,” Frederick said.
“You know I will.” Thomas looked at him sideways and drained his champagne flute. “Take care of yourself, for once. You have someone who will actually let you now. A true partner, with a lifetime of happiness ahead.”
Frederick said nothing to that. He just looked across the room at his Anna, who had caught him looking and smiled.
Thomas is not wrong.