Chapter Four
“You will wear the blue,” Pruett said, laying the silk carefully across the bed.
“I had intended to wear the grey.”
“Then I beg your pardon, my lady, but I hope you will reconsider. The blue was made to your measure, and it becomes you far better.”
Victoria turned from the glass. “I gave no measurements to any modiste. I have not ordered a gown in three years. Who sent it?”
“His lordship sent the modiste. I supplied the measurements,” Pruett admitted, bending over a pin. “Though I will say that a man who sends a gown without a note is either a fool or something worse, and his lordship has not the look of a fool.”
“You gave him my measurements?”
“I gave them to the dressmaker, my lady. His lordship was not invited into the matter that far.”
“An important distinction.”
“I thought so.” Pruett looked critically at the shoulders. “He chose the colour, however, and chose it well. That requires a man to have looked at a woman, which is rather more than your first husband managed in nine years across the breakfast table.”
“You are not to speak of my first husband today.”
“No, my lady.” Pruett came round with the pins. “Arms up, if you please. If you mean to marry a stranger before noon, you should at least do it with your seams straight.”
“He is not quite a stranger.”
“He is a man you have spoken to three times and mean to promise the rest of your life to before the hour is out. By most reckonings, my lady, that still makes him very nearly one.”
“You are a great comfort, Pruett,” Victoria said, surprised to find she half meant it.
“I try to be an honest one, my lady.” Pruett set another pin. “Hold still, if you please. You have fastened that button three times, and it was right the first. I think you are frightened, whatever your face may be telling us.”
“I am not frightened. I am careful. There is a difference, and I paid dearly to learn it.”
“Then let me see to the rest.” Pruett stepped back to inspect her work. “Miss Sophy has been dressed and undressed twice already this morning because she cannot decide whether it is a happy day. She will look to you for the answer, my lady, so you must take care what she reads in your face.”
“And what do you make of him, Pruett? You have not once said, which for you amounts to a speech.”
Pruett considered before answering. “I make of him that he sent a gown without a note, and that he once bent for a child’s dropped doll and stood up to a drunkard.
I have had a husband of my own, my lady, and learnt that a man may be judged by what he stoops for and what he stands against. Lord Harwood may not be the worst bargain a cautious woman ever made. ”
“That is all?”
“That is all I can honestly say of a gentleman I have not yet met.” Pruett gathered the last of the pins. “Stand now, if you please. It is time, and Miss Sophy is at the door.”
***
The church was small and old and smelled of cold stone.
Morning entered through the east window in long bars of colour that lay across the empty pews.
Victoria found Elias waiting in the vestibule ahead of the appointed hour, and she had the gown with which to accuse him before she had any greeting to offer.
“You sent me a gown.”
“I sent a modiste,” Elias corrected. “The gown was her doing. I supplied a colour and told her the lady disliked being fussed over, which she correctly understood as an instruction to work quickly and say little.”
“You had no right.”
“None whatever. I shall acquire several rights this morning that I lacked last week, but that is not among them. I overstepped.”
“You do not sound sorry.”
“I am not. I would rather begin the marriage with an honest offence than a dishonest apology.”
“Then tell me why, and tell me plainly. I have received gifts before that proved to be leashes with ribbons tied about them.”
“Your other gowns are too severe and too much worn,” Elias said. “A woman ought not to be married in a dress that has been turned twice and dyed once against its will. I dislike a great many things, Lady Hemsworth. This morning, chief among them, is a poorly fitted occasion.”
“An occasion. Is that the word you have chosen for it?”
“It will serve. I had no wish to see the morning made grimmer than necessity required, nor you dressed as though you had come to endure it. Call it vanity, if you like. You already know I keep a considerable supply of it.”
“And if I had refused to wear the gown?”
“Then I should have married you in grey and said nothing. I might have regretted the colour, but never thought the less of you. The gown was mine to offer and yours to refuse.”
“You are very sure of yourself, my lord.”
“I am sure of very little. My own temper, my own money, and the fact that blue becomes you better than mourning. A man ought to build upon the ground he knows. Everything else about this marriage I am prepared to discover slowly, with my hands where you can see them.”
She had an answer ready, sharp and carefully prepared, but found she had no wish to spend it. She kept it and told herself the vestibule was merely cold.
A smaller figure emerged from the shadow of the doorway, a girl in a new frock with a much-loved doll tucked beneath one arm. Victoria’s attention went to her at once.
“Come here, love,” Victoria said. “You need not hide.”
Sophy did not move. She stood looking at the man in the middle of the vestibule as though he were a piece of weather she had not yet decided whether to trust. Victoria understood, with a mother’s swiftness, that the child was frightened and had no words large enough for it.
Elias understood as well. He attempted none of the usual approaches adults made to frightened children: no false brightness, no loud and cheerful reassurance. He lowered himself slowly to one knee until his eyes were level with hers and waited for her to look at him.
“We were introduced through a doll,” he said, “but never properly. Elias Fernwood. Your servant.”
He offered his hand.
Sophy looked at it, then at her mother, before accepting it with the grave suspicion of a diplomat signing terms with an enemy.
“Are you taking my mother away?”
“No.” He answered plainly, without treating the question as foolish. “I could not take her away if I spent my whole life trying. Your mother is not a thing to be given or taken. She is not a parcel, a house, or a horse at a fair. She belongs to no one, and to me least of all.”
“Then what are you for?” Sophy asked, never taking her eyes from him.
“I am asking to stand near her, and near you, and to make myself useful. That is the whole of it.”
“Papa said Mama belonged to him,” Sophy said matter-of-factly. “He said it at dinner, and everyone laughed.”
A shadow crossed Elias’s expression and was gone before a child could have named it.
“Then your papa was mistaken about that,” he said. “You are not giving your mother away today, whatever anyone may tell you. You are standing beside her. There is a considerable difference, and I should like you to understand it before we begin.”
“May I truly stand beside her? At the front, where I can see everything?”
“You may stand precisely where you please. It is your mother’s wedding considerably more than it is mine, and I will not have the most important person sent to the back to be quiet.”
Sophy considered him with the whole of her small, solemn face.
“Ruth would like to stand at the front as well.”
“Then Ruth shall have the best place in the church. She earned it in a gutter, which is more than most of the company can honestly claim.”
“What am I to call you?” Sophy asked. “I have a papa already. He is in the ground.”
“Whatever you like, and nothing at all until you have decided. That may take a year, ten years, or the rest of your life. I am in no hurry.”
It won him a small, reluctant, genuine smile. Victoria found her composure suddenly unequal to the morning and turned towards the coloured window until it returned.
Amelia arrived in a flurry of ribbons, breathless from having plainly run the last of the way.
“I am not late. Tell me I am not late. I have never once been punctual for anything I cared about.”
“You are not late,” Victoria said. “You are the only person here I asked to come.”
“Then I shall weep throughout the ceremony, and you are not to mind me. Someone at a wedding ought to weep, and the bride plainly means to remain dry-eyed and superior about the whole affair, as she does about everything else.”
The ceremony was brief, conducted by special licence before two witnesses chosen for their discretion. Victoria had expected the words to close around her as they had the first time, quietly and one clause at a time, until there was no room left in which to turn.
Instead, there was only Elias’s hand beneath hers, steady and warm and asking nothing.
He offered it as one offers a rail upon a dark stair, there to be taken or refused.
When her fingers trembled against his, he did not tighten his hold, but left her to decide how much of her weight she would entrust to him.
The choosing of it was the first thing that had been left to her at a wedding in nine years.
When the vows came, he turned to face her. Victoria braced herself for the proprietary gleam Gerald had worn on the day of their marriage.
There was none.
The Earl regarded her with grave, exact concentration, as though the words were not a formality to be endured but a promise he intended to understand before he made it. The seriousness of it frightened her more than triumph would have done.
“I will,” he said when the moment came, and he said it to her, not to the room.
“I will,” Victoria replied, and was startled to discover that she meant at least half of it.
Beside her, in a carrying whisper, Sophy informed Ruth that it was done.
They signed the register afterwards, the scratching of the pen loud in the quiet. When it came to her own name, Victoria paused over the page.
“Victoria Fernwood,” she said coolly, testing its shape in her mouth. “It is a stranger’s name.”
“It may fit better by dinner,” Elias said. “Most things do. And if it does not, it is only a name. I trust you to remain yourself beneath it.”
“You make remaining oneself sound very simple.”
“It is not,” he said. “But I have no intention of making it harder.”
“And if I never grow accustomed to believing you?”
“Then I shall have to prove it by degrees,” Elias replied. “You may believe me when you are ready.”
They came out into a thin, bright morning, Sophy’s hand in Victoria’s. The small party had not reached the carriage before a figure detached itself from the churchyard railings and swayed into their path, the sour smell of him arriving a moment ahead.
“So it is done.” Sir Peregrine’s voice was too loud for the hour. “Harwood weds the widow. My felicitations, my lord. Though I should have thought a man of your fortune might afford something better than another man’s leavings.”
Elias stepped between him and Victoria before he could say more. He raised no hand, but the movement had the finality of a door swung shut.
“You are speaking of my wife,” he said quietly. “I advise you to stop there.”
“I am only making conversation, Harwood.”
“You are making a mistake. Do not make another.”
Sir Peregrine’s mouth worked, found nothing worth the risk, and closed. He managed a bow that nearly cost him his balance, then carried himself and his smell across the churchyard.
The words went through Victoria oddly. My wife.
Gerald had said them often enough, and every time they had closed around her like a hand at the throat.
Elias had said them once, to a drunkard in a churchyard, and they had not closed around her at all.
They had stood before her instead, between her body and the man who meant it harm.
She was only beginning to understand the size of the difference.
“You need not have,” she began.
“I know,” Elias said evenly. “I have a habit of doing things I need not. You may take it up with me whenever you please.”
He offered his arm without insisting upon it.
“The carriage is this way, when you are ready. There is no hurry. Let him be the one who runs.”
Amelia caught Victoria’s hand at the carriage step, her eyes streaming exactly as promised.
“Write to me the moment you are settled, or I shall come and make a scene in his hall and shame you before the servants.”
“You would enjoy that far too much.”
“I should enjoy it enormously.” Amelia pressed her hand. “Be happy, Victoria. And if happiness is too much to manage at first, then be safe and let the rest come in its own time.”
“I shall try for safe,” Victoria said. “It is nearer to hand.”
The three of them entered the carriage. Sophy settled with Ruth in her lap and looked from one adult to the other, plainly waiting to be told what had changed, and by how much.
“Will Lord Harwood live with us now?” Sophy asked, making no effort to lower her voice.
“We shall live with him,” Victoria said. “At least for the present.”
Sophy considered this. “Ruth says he must be kind to you and must not shout.”
“Ruth and I understand one another perfectly,” Elias said from the opposite seat.
“Where does he live?”
“At Harwood House,” Victoria replied. “It is to be our home now.”
“Does it have a garden?”
“Several,” Elias said. “They have been neglected rather shamefully and require someone with firm opinions about flowers. I do not suppose you know anyone suitable?”
“I have very firm opinions about flowers,” Sophy said.
“So I had hoped.”
Sophy accepted this as settled and turned back to the window. Elias made no further attempt to improve upon the moment, which Victoria noticed and was more grateful for than she knew how to say.
London passed beyond the glass, grey and gold and indifferent, the same city that had spent days deciding who she was and would go on deciding whatever she did.
Behind her, one door had closed for good.
She found she was not sorry to leave that world behind. She was almost afraid of how little she was sorry, and that small, honest fear was the truest thing she carried into her second marriage.