Chapter 14
Clara made her way down the stairs to where the cook had dished up breakfast. She paused in the doorway and saw Julian sitting there already, a newspaper in hand. He smiled up at her, his teeth flashing as he did.
“Good morning, My Lady. I’m afraid breakfast is not much today. Cook lives in town, so I sent her a note, and she came to cook with whatever supplies we had at hand.”
“You did not move your cook from here to London?”
She tipped her head to one side. Her father usually moved the entire household staff from the London house to their country seat when they moved, but this seemed not to be the case here.
“No.” Julian rose and pulled out a chair for her.
“I am not in the habit of moving my staff from one location to another. It seems unkind. It does not allow them to build a life of their own after all. I have my London staff and then the staff that is here, I employ locally. I pay them a little more, so they can have their own accommodations, and when I am in residence, they come live here—if they are footmen or maids or such.”
“I see,” she replied. He returned to his seat and placed his napkin down on his lap again. Before her was a spread of porridge, breads, and jams similar to what they had had at the London house.
She reached for a roll, and he looked up. “Shall I cut it for you, or do you think you can manage? I would not want another accident with the butter knife.”
She sneered at him. “I daresay, I can usually manage the cutlery.”
“Can you? Previous occurrences do not support that statement.”
She blinked, shaking her head. “Is that the marriage I have to look forward to? Endless teasing?”
“Yes, I am afraid so. I can be more surly if you wish. Sit quietly and glare at you once and again while barking commands at you.”
“I should like to see you try,” she said with a small laugh as she cut through her roll without incident. “I daresay, you will not achieve a thing by bellowing at me.”
“I assumed as much, so you shall have to put up with my questionable humor, then. Pray, are you ready for the wedding?”
He looked at her with some intensity. She’d selected an evening primrose-colored gown this morning and done up her own hair. It was the nicest dress she’d brought. Frankly, she hadn’t thought to bring a wedding gown, even though she’d known she’d be getting married.
How bizarre it was that she was to get married in a few hours. She’d imagined her wedding day as a child, walking toward the man she loved. She glanced up, and here he was now. The man. Though not the one she loved.
That one was somewhere. Somewhere out in the world, and now she would never meet—
“What is it you are thinking about? You seem… not yourself.”
She shrugged. “Nothing. Just that I can’t believe this is my wedding day; that is all.”
“I know you likely had other plans,” he said quietly.
She nodded. “That is what I was thinking about. But it can’t be helped. We are doing what is right by Arabella. And David.”
He nodded, placing the paper down. “What was your wedding going to be like? The one you’d planned with… the Baronet.”
She appreciated him not saying Benjamin’s name.
“It was going to be at his family’s chapel.
We were going to invite everyone we knew.
Over three hundred people.” She shuddered.
“That wasn’t what I wanted at all. I wanted a much smaller wedding.
At my home church. But regardless, it was what was planned between his parents and mine.
The wedding breakfast was going to be pheasant and peas and carrots with mince pies and mashed potatoes—a hearty meal. ”
He looked up again. “You do not like mince pies. And you despise peas. I recall you’ve been picking them out of every meal since you were a little child.”
Her stomach leaped at this observation, for she’d never had any idea he’d even noticed things like this.
“I know it, but his father adored them, and mine did not oppose. The cake was a standard wedding cake with pastries which I had to convince his mother to let me have.”
She looked at her plate. “Suddenly, I realize that almost nothing at my wedding would have been for me.”
He reached out and patted her forearm with his hand.
“Perhaps what happened was not the worst thing that could have been? If he did not stand up for you over your own wedding, I do not know that he would have been a very good husband.” A pause lingered between them, thick and heavy.
“Was there anything at all that was going to be yours? Other than pastries?”
She looked up. “My bouquet. I selected a bouquet of wildflowers. I always loved wildflowers. His mother thought them frightfully common, but I got my way. My mother insisted on them.”
“Well,” he said and set his napkin down, “at least our wedding will be small. That is one of the things you had on your list.”
“Indeed,” she replied. “Albeit a bit smaller than I had thought.”
“We can always host a ball when we get back to celebrate the one-year anniversary of our wedding. As for everyone else, it will be just that. We might be getting married on the twenty-third of March 1819, but everyone else will think it was the twenty-third of March 1818. So, we could have a ball to celebrate, and also to mark our introduction to society. Then, you could have whatever food, music, or flowers you want. What do you think?”
She smiled at him. “I think I would like that.”
“Good,” he replied. “Now, I shall get dressed, and then we shall have to go to the chapel, so the vicar can make us legitimate.”
He got up then and walked away.
They drove to the small chapel together which was another thing that was entirely different from what she had imagined.
The truth was, after the conversation that morning, she wasn’t quite so sure how much of her own matrimonial dreams would have come true had she married Benjamin.
In fact, the signs had been there that he was not in fact the kind of man she thought he was. He had never stood up for her.
How sad it was that her marriage would have been nothing but a shadow of the one of which she had dreamed. It was true her wedding to Julian was not going to be what she had imagined either, but circumstances were entirely different now.
At least she had somewhat made her own choices when it came to her marriage to Julian.
She could have said no. That night, when he had asked her if she trusted him, she could have said no.
Even when he had decided in front of everybody to announce that they were married, she could have refused him and called him a liar.
She needn’t have done any of the things that she was doing now.
She was doing them because of Arabella and also because of David.
And Julian had stood up for her, hadn’t he? He had seen that the whispers were growing louder, that everybody believed the child to be her own. Even if she had denied it, what would have happened? People would not have believed her.
Yes, David was a relation of his, and Arabella was his beloved cousin, but he had stood up at her side.
“Do you wish to walk down the aisle together?” he asked when they arrived in front of the little chapel.
She paused and shook her head. “No, I want to walk on my own.”
“Very well,” he said. “I shall wait for you then.” He hurried into the church and disappeared behind the double doors.
He was dressed in a pair of black pantaloons and a white shirt with a matching black waistcoat and jacket.
He was wearing a top hat. Indeed, he looked as though he was going to a wedding, if not necessarily his own.
He didn’t look exactly like a groom, but he had dressed for the occasion which she appreciated.
She sat in the carriage for a few more minutes, allowing a fragile peace to settle over her, and then stepped out. She walked to the door and placed her hand on the doorknob.
It took a moment before she willed herself to pull it open, and then she stepped inside.
The walk down the aisle felt endless, and yet it was over in a flash. The vicar, an older man with shaggy white hair, smiled at her encouragingly as she approached. Julian’s eyes never left her, not once. She found it both unsettling and agreeable.
Agreeable because, well, there could be no denying that he was a handsome man. She remembered seeing him at various assemblies over the years and always thinking him one of the finest of the ton. Always dashing, always with every eye upon him.
And unsettling because she shouldn’t be finding him agreeable at all.
This was an arrangement, one that they had both been thrown into against their wishes.
She couldn’t allow an attraction to be forming right now.
It was most inconvenient. Besides, he had made it very clear that their marriage was one that would not last. It was for show. He wasn’t interested in her. In fact—
“My Lady,” the vicar’s voice came, and she looked up instantly. She felt awash with shame because she hadn’t even realized that she was already standing before the man.
“Good gracious,” she said.
“Are you ready?” he asked, and she nodded. Beside her, Julian moved closer, so close that they were standing shoulder to shoulder. Having him stand so close helped calm her, oddly enough, even if only a little.
The ceremony was not as lengthy as the ones she had witnessed before, and she was grateful not to have to stand there for an age until they reached their vows.
Even those were said quickly and without emotion.
The vicar didn’t even suggest that there’d be a kiss at the end for which she was grateful.
After the ceremony, she sat on one of the pews while the vicar went to make his records.
Julian accompanied him and returned after about ten minutes.
They stepped up to the front again and signed their names in the registry, and she saw that the vicar had indeed manipulated the year so that it looked as though they were married a year ago.
He had even made an entry for a child born to them.
So much deception. All she could do was hope that it was worth it.
Afterwards, they walked back together towards the carriage.
He handed her in and then walked around to the other side.
However, as she was about to sit down, something caught her eye.
A bouquet of flowers was lying there. Wildflowers.
She frowned and lifted it up. It had been put together with care but tied with ribbon in a haphazard way that told her whoever had done it wasn’t very skilled at binding flowers.
The carriage door opened, and Julian entered.
He looked at her with a sheepish expression as he sat down beside her.
“I should have found a way to give them to you before the service, so you had them when you walked down the aisle, but I hadn’t had a chance to bind them. I only just picked them this morning, and then time got away from me.”
“When did you get them?” she asked. “And why?”
He shrugged. “I picked them this morning before we left. After our conversation at breakfast. The coachman had brought them into the rectory. I bound them while the vicar was working on the records.”
“Goodness,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”
He shrugged. “You do not need to say anything. I just wanted you to have at least one thing that was as you had dreamed. That is all.” Then he knocked against the roof of the carriage, and it sprang into motion. The force of it pushed her back into the seat slightly.
As they went, she kept turning the bouquet of flowers in her hands, a smile playing about her lips.
She hadn’t expected this, nothing like this.
Not from him. She looked up at him with a smile but found that his eyes were fixed out of the window.
He couldn’t look at her. He was embarrassed. But why?
She decided not to press and instead looked at her flowers again, feeling grateful that at least this one thing was indeed just as she had planned.