Chapter Sixteen
“If you pull that scarf any higher, Pritchard, I shall be unable to answer the clergyman’s questions, which I assume is not the object.”
“The object, Your Grace,” Pritchard replied, his hands steady at Edmund’s collar, “is that Your Grace should appear entirely at ease.”
Edmund looked at him through the dressing glass. “An ambitious undertaking.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Morris, standing nearby with a clothes brush, wisely said nothing.
Edmund’s reflection stared back at him with an unfamiliar clarity.
The trimmed beard still unsettled him. The shorter hair exposed more of his face than he preferred.
The scar, though partly shadowed by the scarf, was no longer hidden in the same way.
It sat visible along his jaw, not dominant but undeniable.
He felt uncomfortable in his own skin, as if the suit had been tailored for a man he had not yet agreed to become.
The wedding coat fit perfectly. That only made matters worse.
It was dark blue, severe enough to satisfy him and fine enough to satisfy Lady Maria, who had declared black too funereal and green too hopeful.
The waistcoat was silver-grey. His cravat was correct.
His boots had been polished to a degree that suggested Pritchard had taken the matter personally. He looked, he supposed, like a duke.
He had looked like one before.
Today he looked like a man expected to stand beside a bride.
That was different.
“There,” Pritchard said, lowering the scarf by the smallest fraction. “If Your Grace permits, that may serve.”
“Serve?”
“Respectably, Your Grace.”
Edmund turned from the mirror. “Has Miss Winthrop come down?”
“Not yet, Your Grace. Lady Maria is with her. Mrs Holroyd has gone to assist. The children are in the morning room.”
“And are they behaving?”
Pritchard paused. “They are under instruction to do so, Your Grace.”
“That means no.”
“It means Lord Declan is silent, and Lady Mary has asked whether duchesses are permitted to cancel Latin.”
Despite the hard knot in his chest, Edmund almost smiled. “Miss Winthrop will not cancel Latin.”
“No, Your Grace.”
The children had been told the day before.
Not in a grand scene, not in the sort of emotional performance adults arranged to soothe themselves.
Petalia had insisted on honesty and room.
Mary had shouted that if Miss Winthrop became Duchess, she would no longer belong to the schoolroom.
Declan had asked whether they must call her Mama.
Petalia had answered gently, firmly, and with such care for Eleanor’s memory that Edmund had found himself unable to speak for several moments.
No, she had told them. You had a mother. I would not take her name from you. You may call me Miss Winthrop until another name feels honest, and if no other name ever does, then Miss Winthrop will do.
Mary had cried later, loudly denying she was crying. Declan had asked whether the map table would remain in use. By supper, neither child was reconciled, but both had stopped looking as though Petalia had been stolen from them. That, Edmund had learnt, counted as progress.
Progress was an awkward, uneven creature.
A knock sounded at the door. Lady Maria entered without waiting, took in Edmund from boots to newly trimmed hair, and stopped.
For a moment, she looked not triumphant but moved.
“There you are,” she said.
Edmund’s discomfort sharpened. “I was not missing.”
“No. Only obscured.”
She adjusted his sleeve, though Pritchard had already made it faultless. “You look well.”
“Aunt.”
“You do. Allow an old woman one plain truth on a difficult morning.”
He looked away.
“Is she ready?” he asked.
Lady Maria’s face softened. “Nearly. She is pale, and the gown has been arranged carefully around the burn, but she is steady.”
“Does it pain her?”
“Some. She will not say how much.”
Edmund looked towards the window. “She should not have to stand through a ceremony in pain.”
“No,” Lady Maria said. “But do not turn concern into another delay.”
“I was not delaying.”
“You were close enough to it.”
The ceremony would take place in the parish church rather than Wrenfield’s chapel.
Lady Maria had judged that a marriage seen by the right few people would settle the county better than one hidden inside the house.
Not a crowd. There had been no time for invitations and no appetite for spectacle.
But enough witnesses: Lady Maria, the children, Mrs Holroyd, Pritchard, Mr Meredith, the clergyman and his wife, and two carefully selected neighbours who could be trusted to repeat what they had seen with useful accuracy.
Lady Whitcombe had not been invited.
That, Edmund thought, was one of the morning’s few mercies.
***
When they reached the church, the village air was cool and damp.
A small cluster of curious faces watched from respectable distances.
Edmund felt every glance as a hook. Some saw the scar.
Some saw the trimmed beard and whispered because the transformation itself had become news.
Some looked at him as if trying to reconcile the beast of Wrenfield with a bridegroom in a polished coat.
Then Petalia arrived.
The carriage door opened, and Mrs Holroyd descended first. Lady Maria followed, then turned back to help Petalia. Edmund stepped forward before he could stop himself, then stopped because Lady Maria was already there, and the village had been given enough to watch.
Petalia emerged slowly.
The wedding gown was simple, ivory muslin with a soft fichu arranged high to avoid the burn and a narrow ribbon at the waist. Nothing ostentatious.
Nothing that pretended weeks of preparation had occurred.
Yet she looked, to Edmund’s stunned and unwilling mind, like the only living thing in the churchyard properly lit by the grey day.
She was pale. Brave. Beautiful.
He wished the word did not arrive so easily now. He wished wanting her did not move through him with such dangerous certainty. But there she stood, the woman he had endangered and chosen, the woman who had stepped into his house as a governess and was now walking towards him as his bride.
His bride.
He nearly forgot to breathe.
Mary, standing beside Declan near the church door, stared at Petalia with open suspicion and reluctant admiration. “She looks like a duchess already.”
Declan, who had been watching his father instead, said, “Papa looks less like a storm cloud.”
“No,” Mary said. “He looks like a storm cloud in a better coat.”
Lady Maria heard and murmured, “A fair assessment.”
Mrs Holroyd’s eyes shone suspiciously when Petalia passed. “You look very well, miss.”
Petalia touched her hand briefly. “Thank you, Mrs Holroyd.”
“Your Grace soon,” Pritchard said from behind Edmund, voice correct but not untouched. “The household will require a morning to adjust.”
“The household will adjust faster than I will,” Petalia replied softly, and only Edmund heard the tremor beneath the humour.
He offered his arm.
She placed her hand upon it.
The touch was gloved, proper, observed by half the necessary world. Still, he felt it as if she had laid trust directly against his sleeve.
“Are you in pain?” he asked quietly.
“Enough to dislike it. Not enough to stop.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It was not intended to be.”
For a moment, he covered her gloved hand with his own.
“If you falter, lean on me.”
She glanced up at him.
“I thought I already was.”
The words undid something in him.
They entered the church.
The ceremony was brief. Lady Maria had arranged it to be respectable without becoming punishing.
The clergyman spoke clearly. Mary shifted twice and was stilled by Declan’s elbow.
Declan watched the vows with grave intensity, as if marriage were a map whose routes had better be understood before anyone set foot upon it.
When Edmund repeated his vows, the words caught more heavily than he had expected.
To have and to hold.
The old grief stirred, but not in protest. Eleanor was not erased by this. Petalia was not a correction to the past.
She stood beside him, living and brave enough to enter his life with her eyes open.
He spoke the words.
Petalia’s voice was quieter than his, but steadier.
When the clergyman pronounced them man and wife, the church seemed to inhale.
Edmund bent and pressed a kiss upon her forehead.
The touch was brief and entirely proper.
It affected him far more than propriety had intended.
Petalia’s mouth trembled. Edmund almost smiled and looked away before the entire church saw what she had done to him.
***
After the signing, after the congratulations, after Mr Meredith had pronounced the new Duchess of Ashbourne recovering well and in need of rest rather than speculation, they returned to Wrenfield.
The servants had assembled in the hall.
Petalia had gone pale at the thought, then said it was better to be seen properly once than half-seen badly forever. Edmund had admired that and hated the necessity.
Pritchard stood at the front. Mrs Holroyd beside him. Cook hovered near the back with red eyes she would later deny. Bess stood pale and careful; Lucy was absent under Mrs Holroyd’s arrangements.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Pritchard bowed. “Your Grace.”
The title belonged to Petalia now.
She felt it strike her like a weight laid over shoulders already tender from injury. She did not flinch.
Mrs Holroyd curtsied. “Welcome home, Your Grace.”
The words nearly broke Petalia’s composure.
“Thank you,” she said. “I hope you will all have patience with me while I learn what this house requires of me.”
Edmund’s voice came beside her, low and clear enough for the hall. “What this house requires first is respect for its Duchess. The rest may be learnt in time.”
Several servants lowered their eyes.
Petalia looked at him, startled.
He did not look back.
Later, when the formalities had ended and Lady Maria had taken command of tea, Edmund escorted Petalia upstairs.
He did not take her to his rooms. He took her to the Duchess’s chambers, a suite overlooking the east lawn, warmed by fresh fires and made ready without ostentation.
Flowers stood in one vase, not roses but white narcissi and early greenery.
“These rooms are yours,” he said. “No one enters without your permission.”
She looked around slowly. “They are very large.”
“Yes.”
“I have owned nothing larger than a trunk for some time.”
The quiet statement struck him harder than she intended.
“Then the rooms may wait upon you,” he said. “There is no hurry.”
She turned to him. “You give me a great deal of space, Edmund.”
“You have had too little.”
For a moment, neither spoke.
At last, he bowed.
“Rest, Petalia.”
“And you, Edmund.”
He left her with the fire, the flowers, and the unfamiliar title.
Outside the door, he stopped for a moment before continuing down the corridor.
The day had changed everything.
It would take rather longer to understand what it had made possible.