Chapter Twenty-Three #3
I sent her a grateful look. “I suppose it’ll do. It’s tradition, isn’t it?”
“Marry in yellow and resent the fellow, marry in pink and shatter your link, marry in white and endure a fight, marry in green
and neither will be keen,” Felicity said. “But marry in blue and your love will be true.”
I stared at her. “You just made that up, didn’t you?”
“Blue it is,” she said quickly. “I’ll bring it in and press it. It won’t be but a moment.”
There was a knock at the door. I nodded to Felicity, who opened it to reveal Mrs. Silver, holding a small posy of white and
blue flowers and a velvet bag. If it were possible for a person to radiate joy, she would have lit the whole of Feygrove Square.
All that faded the moment she saw my face.
“So,” she began, sharing a look with Felicity, who hurried past her. “We are not celebrating.”
I gave her a watery smile.
“Oh, ma chère,” she said, her whole countenance softening as she came toward me.
Setting aside the flowers and bag, she wrapped her arms around my shoulders, stroking my hair. “Of course. What girl wishes
to be married without her dear mama to see it, with no flowers to line aisles of your loved ones, and without a choice in
song—Albion is a nation of the emotionally repressed who cannot see the romance of living! To be married in a sitting room!
I cannot bear it!”
The embrace, the kindness behind it, nearly made me weep again. “I had never thought to be married at all.”
She pulled back, still stroking my hair. “Neither did I. Love took me by surprise, but that is the way of fate, non? I only
had to lay eyes on Marina to know, and once we were finished trying to—ah.” Mrs. Silver paused. “Well. We were at war then,
of course, and there was no telling what might become of us. It was a time of passion and terror and dreams.”
“There is no love here,” I told her, hating the disappointment that flickered in her dark gaze. “None of this is real.”
“Could it not be?” she asked gently. “He is rather handsome, non? And you will be a countess.”
I balked, feeling the blood drain from my face. God, I hadn’t even thought of the title.
“He is . . . not hard to look at, no,” I grumbled.
Mrs. Silver let out a small laugh, her knuckle stroking my cheek the way Mama’s used to, when she was trying to gently rouse
me from sleep. My heart seized painfully in my chest.
She went to retrieve a brush from the vanity and gestured toward my hair. I nodded, turning my back to her so she could begin
to take out the pins. With each stroke of the brush, I felt some of that same tightness release.
“What was your wedding like?” I asked her.
“Oh, but it was romantic.” Mrs. Silver sighed dreamily. “The war was done, and we were on a ship bound for Albion’s coast.
The night was so very clear, I could see the stars reflected in her eyes. She looked like a goddess. Marina is adorably embarrassed
by emotion, you see, and she was horrified when I woke the captain and asked him to marry us on the deck beneath those same
stars. But, then, she has always been the night to me.”
“Did you want to come to Albion?” I asked, twisting around to look at her.
“There was not much choice, non?” she said with a hint of sadness. “This is a kingdom of the cold-blooded who care only for
horses and tea, but my own would have seen us stoned and buried.”
Yes, there was that.
The Church of Albion had experienced a cataclysmic rupture from the central body and tenets of the Undying Faith when King
Bayard had ascended to the throne. Determined to marry his male lover against the existing religious prohibitions and prejudice
against such unions, he’d set about creating an altogether more morally flexible branch of the faith, with him at the head.
Naturally, old Bayard hadn’t spared a thought to elevating the position of women from faithful, meek, and virtuous servants
to their menfolk while reforming church canon to suit his needs.
Mrs. Silver and Mrs. Keyes could wed and live openly in society, but their legal status as women remained inferior to that of men.
While they wouldn’t have to dissolve their identities into their husbands’, they and single women like me and widows were forced to hire a male solicitor or rely on a male relation—in this case, likely the Lords Foxcourt—to guarantee their bank accounts, oversee legal matters, and so on.
It was humiliating to any capable woman.
At the sound of voices below, and a newly arrived guest smelling strongly of old holy books and incense, I tensed.
“I’ve brought you these, though you do not have to wear them if they are not to your taste,” Mrs. Silver said, spilling a
pair of pearl drop earrings from a velvet bag into her palm. “Marina told me that nonsense superstition about not wearing
pearls at a wedding, for they represent tears, but I wore them at my own wedding and they have brought me much luck. They
will lend their magic to you as well, I think.”
The sparkle of a diamond had its own charm, to be sure. It was the essence of splendor. But beauty was something entirely
different—something far more subtle that spoke the secret language of the heart.
I saw it in the pearls gleaming iridescent in the afternoon light, in the simplicity of their gold hoops, but the pearls were
all the more exquisite for having been offered in kindness.
I was so touched I could scarcely speak. “I would be honored. Thank you.”
Mrs. Silver’s smile was a gift, too. “I will leave you to get ready, then.”
I had only a few moments to myself before Felicity’s return was preceded by a burst of cloying, sugary lavender. I recognized
the perfume from the other dresses in the wardrobe by the modiste, but the periwinkle silk gown must have been dunked into
a vat of it. The scent was sweet enough to send a ripple of nausea through my stomach.
“Will this do?” she asked.
Lovely felt like a pale word to describe such an enchanting garment. The gown was a thing spun of dawn light and sweet wishes, as
beautiful as the first iteration had been.
“Yes” was all I could manage to say.
“Thankfully the perfume’s faded,” Felicity said. “I can hardly smell it.”
My smile tensed. If only I could have said the same.
I changed into a clean chemise and was relaced into my stays. Like a woman drowning, I took a final deep breath, bracing as
Felicity helped ease the dress over my head. The silk pooled against my skin like cool water, soothing and stifling all at
once. The lavender perfume was faint, but its syrupy sweetness made my skin itch everywhere the fabric touched. The heat of
my body only seemed to intensify the scent.
After Felicity re-pinned my hair and helped apply a little rouge to my lips and cheeks, she retrieved the small posy Mrs. Silver had left on the bed. She twirled the white rosebud, bluebells, and forget-me-nots between her fingers. “From his lordship, of course.”
My smile fell, but I couldn’t deny that the flowers offered a reprieve from the perfumed silk. It was a pleasant day, but
you never would have known by the scratchy heat that spread over my skin, coating my body like wool in the summer sun.
Nerves. That was all it was. I’d had a spell of anxiety like this before and had broken out in a rash of hives that took days
to heal. It would be my miserable luck to cap off an already devastating day looking like I had the plague.
“There we are.” Felicity pinned the posy to my chest and said softly, “For what it’s worth, you look beautiful.”
There was some strength I could draw from that, I supposed.
Felicity retrieved a pair of silk slippers from the wardrobe as I donned Mrs. Silver’s earrings and a pair of gloves.
Then there was nothing left to do but go downstairs.
It was a journey of a thousand hours and yet no time at all. Each brush of my dress against my skin only inflamed the panicked
heat rising beneath it. The warming silk released more of that repulsive candied lavender scent.
By the time we passed the covered portrait of Lord Foxcourt, even my corset felt like it was trapping in heat. If it hadn’t
been for the sudden appearance of Fleming in the hall below, I might have asked Felicity to help me loosen it. But the sight
of Fleming, clutching four vases bursting with flowers cut fresh from the garden as he scurried toward the morning room, silenced
me.
Seeing us, he slowed only for a moment, flustering beneath his powdered wig as he declared, “You shall not be married without flowers.”
I spared one last glance in a hall mirror to ensure I hadn’t turned the color of a poppy. Felicity squeezed my arm, inclining
her head toward the front door with a final silent offer. I shook my head. The course was set.
Though only two witnesses were required, the entire household had gathered, lining up in such a way that it created an aisle
toward the two figures at the center of the room. Even Brigadier was present, daisies slipped into the new blue bows on her
ears.
Despite the modiste’s revolting perfume, the beaming faces around us, and the ostentatious crimson robes of the priest at his side, once my eyes found Foxcourt, I couldn’t tear them away.
He let out a sharp breath as his gaze met mine, and I wondered then if he had expected me to run.
That gaze was like a lead; I was powerless to pull away.
Mrs. Silver had been right, of course; he was unbearably handsome in his flawless dark suit and shined boots. His face was
clean-shaven, and the dark waves of his hair had been mastered by a bit of pomade. There was a little flutter in my chest
at the violets he’d slipped through the button of his lapel.
Despite having had no sleep the night before, he looked entirely, wholly present. The tensed expression on his face eased,
just for a moment. His gloveless hands were clasped so tightly around each other, they’d turned bone white.