Epilogue
ONE MONTH LATER
“No, no, no,” Olivia said, her fingers deftly working through Augusta’s hair as though they were conducting a very serious experiment in beauty. “The curls must fall thus, or the entire effect collapses. It’s all balance, Cassie. Balance, and a touch of theatrical flair.”
Augusta stood before the mirror in her dressing gown, attempting somewhat vainly to reconcile the woman staring back at her with the one she had become since arriving at Oakhart House.
The morning light spilled across the dressing table in long, generous stripes, catching on the silver brush set Hudson had gifted her the previous week.
A bride should have her own things, he had said.
“I’m not being whimsical,” Cassie protested, bouncing on her toes so hard the pearl hairpins trembled in their porcelain dish. “I’m being visionary. Augusta is not a statue, Livvy. She’s a bride.”
“Oh, I do love statues,” Olivia said dreamily, stepping back to examine her work as though Augusta were a painting that might yet blink if persuaded correctly. “They are so wonderfully committed to never changing their minds. Very restful company.”
Cassie frowned. “That still doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you admire art,” Olivia replied lightly. “Augusta is not simply a bride; she is a composition. And compositions require drama in the right places.”
Augusta let out a small, helpless laugh despite herself. “I feel like I should be worried about being composed.”
“Nonsense,” Olivia said, swooping in again to adjust a curl with exquisite seriousness. “You are being improved. There is a difference, and I assure you it is entirely flattering.”
Cassie crossed her arms. “I think she should look like herself.”
Olivia gasped, delighted. “Cassie, darling, ‘herself’ is far too modest a brief for a wedding day. Today, she must look like herself… only as if she has just survived a very romantic poem.”
Cassie brightened immediately. “Oh, I can work with that.”
Olivia smiled, entirely pleased. “Of course you can. You’re practically dangerous with inspiration.”
Pippin, who had been orbiting the dressing table in happy, counterclockwise circles for the better part of an hour, chose this moment to insert himself between Augusta’s ankles.
The collision sent a hairpin skittering across the floorboards, which he immediately interpreted as an invitation to chase, his big body transforming into a blur of determined enthusiasm that terminated, predictably, beneath the escritoire.
“Pippin!” Cassie lunged for the dog, which only served to redistribute several additional hairpins across a radius that now encompassed most of the carpet. “You are the worst wedding attendant in history. The absolute worst.”
“He’s merely expressing his approval,” Augusta said, catching her sister’s eye in the mirror. “In his own inimitable fashion.”
“The dog has the emotional regulation of a teaspoon,” Olivia observed, retrieving a pin from the vicinity of Augusta’s left ear with the precision of a surgeon.
“But I concede he has excellent timing. The Church of England’s liturgy contains no specific provisions regarding canine participation. We might be establishing a precedent.”
The wedding gown arrived on Mrs. Beale’s arm, borne with the solemn reverence usually reserved for religious relics or particularly valuable porcelain.
It was made of ivory silk, shot through with threads of a paler gold that caught the light and held it.
The bodice was worked with lace that had required three separate modistes and nearly provoked Hudson’s housekeeper to a second resignation.
“Arms up, if you please, miss,” Mrs. Beale said.
Augusta complied, stepping into the gown with the peculiar, weightless sensation of a woman being transformed by fabric. The silk whispered against her skin, cool and heavy and alive in a way that expensive cloth had no right to be.
The lacing began, the corset beneath pulling her into a shape that was simultaneously unfamiliar and exactly right, as though her body had been waiting for this particular architecture.
“You’re crying,” Cassie noted, her voice suddenly small.
She was standing very still by the window, one hand resting on Pippin’s head where the dog had finally consented to be stationary, her eyes fixed on Augusta with an expression that contained more understanding than any child of eleven should have been required to assemble.
“I am not,” Augusta said, which was technically true, as the moisture gathering at the corners of her eyes had not yet achieved the velocity required for descent. “I am experiencing a perfectly reasonable response to the combination of tight lacing and emotional significance.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” Cassie snorted. “It’s one of the things I love most about you.”
The final adjustments were conducted in silence.
Then James materialized in the doorway with a timing that suggested he had been listening at the keyhole for precisely the right dramatic interval, immaculately dressed in wedding finery of such a violently perfect cut that the fabric itself seemed to be emitting a faint hum of self-satisfaction.
“Ladies,” he greeted. “I have been dispatched by the groom, who is currently pacing the library.” His gaze found Augusta, and a warm smile spread across his face. “Ready, Miss Booth?”
Augusta smoothed her skirts. The silk yielded beneath her palms, cool and heavy and real.
She looked at herself in the mirror one final time: the woman in ivory with mahogany hair arranged in curls that struck a precarious but triumphant balance between Olivia’s architectural principles and Cassie’s visionary exuberance, the silver locket at her throat catching the light in a way that made her throat tighten.
She nodded. “I believe I am,” she declared.
The grand stone church on Grosvenor Square was beautiful and imposing. Augusta could not help but find herself rather envious of the tall building’s composure when hers felt as though it would crack at any moment. Her hands were shaking, though she was not certain whether it was with joy or worry.
She spotted Reverend Leighton and his wife halfway down the left aisle. They were sitting rigidly in a pew, the reverend’s mouth slightly open, while his wife’s lips were pursed.
The satisfaction that washed over her at the sight was not particularly Christian, but Augusta had long since made her peace with the fact that certain pleasures existed in a theological gray area that Reverend Leighton would have condemned.
James’s arm was steady beneath her hand.
He had abandoned his customary patter for the walk down the aisle, which was perhaps the greatest compliment he had ever paid her.
His silence was attentive, present, his arm beneath her fingers offering support without commentary, and she found herself absurdly grateful for the man who had teased his way into her life with such determined charm and had become, against considerable odds, a friend worth keeping.
The vows were Hudson’s idea. Not the traditional ones, though those were present, rendered in the vicar’s measured tone, but the ones that came after, the ones that they had written themselves.
“I promise,” he said, his voice low, “to trust you even when I am afraid. To ask the questions instead of assuming the answers. To remember that you are not a stranger, even on the days when my own fear tries to convince me otherwise.” His hand found hers, his thumb tracing the line of her knuckles with a deliberation that made her breath catch.
“I have spent my life building walls, Augusta. You walked through them as though they were made of paper. I would rather spend the rest of it learning what exists on the other side, with you, than continue adding bricks to a fortress I no longer wish to inhabit.”
“I did not come here expecting permanence,” Augusta said, her voice carrying in the vaulted silence with a steadiness that surprised her.
“I came here expecting to be managed and then dismissed, as I have been managed and dismissed before.” She felt his hand tighten around hers.
“What I did not expect was Cassie, who trusted me with her whole heart before I had done anything to deserve it, and in doing so made me want to deserve it.” She paused.
“I did not expect gardens, or libraries, or someone who argues with me at midnight. I did not expect to find myself here, believing that the pieces of a thing can still become the thing. I did not expect to love you with my whole heart. But… here I am, and I do. Oh, how I do.”
The rings were exchanged, and the metal settled against her skin with a rightness that made her throat thicken.
“I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
The kiss was brief by the standards of their private encounters and considerably longer than Church of England decorum typically permitted. Hudson’s hand cradled her face gently, and his mouth found hers with a hunger that made the stained-glass saints avert their eyes in collective embarrassment.
The wedding breakfast unfolded in the sunlit garden behind Oakhart House. Guests sat everywhere, and ladies dabbed at their eyes with handkerchiefs, claiming that it was the beauty of the wedding that made them emotional, not the eligible duke who now had a wife.
The said wife stood beside the rose arbor with a flute of champagne in her hand, looking at them.
“She looked beautiful,” Lady Falstone was saying. “Of course, she was always a beauty, but today…”
“Oh, and the Duke looked so dashing and in love!” another lady exclaimed.
“And look at Lady Cassandra! She’ll be ready for her debut in a few years, and she will no doubt be quite a beauty too.”
As though magically summoned, Cassie appeared.