How he must wish that it were Frances he was to marry! The two of them looked so very handsome together, so very well-matched. Arabella was not at all sure that she had been right after all to insist upon releasing Frances from the obligation of making the marriage. She had done so convinced that Frances loved Theodore and wished to marry him. She had not wanted to see true love thwarted.
But as Mama had hoped, Lord Astor had asked her to allow Frances to come to London with them after their marriage. Not only had Mama agreed, but Frances had wept for a whole hour after being told of the invitation. And her tears had not been ones of grief, Arabella had discovered, but tears of joy. Frances wanted above all else to have a Season in London. That was understandable, Arabella conceded, but what about Theodore? Would Frances be content to return in the summer and marry him in due course?
But her uneasiness aside, Arabella admitted, she was more delighted and relieved than she could say to know that she would have her sister with her when she left for London with her new husband the day after their wedding. The thought of being alone with him, or having the burden of making agreeable conversation with him resting entirely on her own shoulders, terrified her. When he had only her to look at and only her to talk with, he would realize with full force just how very inadequate she was. Frances would help. He liked Frances, and Frances was beautiful to look at.
Arabella wished desperately that they were to leave for London on the wedding day. But it was not so. After a wedding breakfast at Parkland, Mama, Frances, and Jemima were to leave to spend a night with Mrs. Harvey, Mama’s bosom friend. Lord Astor was to be left to occupy his home alone with his bride.
Arabella felt sick whenever she recalled this detail. Consequently she did not think of it a great deal. And inevitably the prospect rarely left her consciousness.
Arabella rode to church in the carriage with her mother, Frances, and Jemima. She could not grasp the reality of the fact that it was her wedding day even though all four of them wore new dresses and bonnets, and Frances was trying in vain to hold back her tears. Her own gown was the grandest she had ever owned. It was white with a wide pink velvet sash at the high waist and pink rosebuds embroidered around each of the three deep frills at the hem and around the single frills on the short puffed sleeves.
Arabella did not know quite why she did not look pretty in the dress. Though she had guessed at the reason earlier when she had looked at herself in the full-length looking glass in Mama’s dressing room. She was too small to do justice to any gown. And this one definitely made her look less than slender. It did seem a little unfair. A bride had a right to look lovely on her wedding day.
The old stone church in the village was almost full. And it was not even Sunday. All those people looking back over their shoulders when she stepped into the porchway with Mama and the girls were there to see her. And the new master of Parkland, of course.
That was when Arabella started to feel sick. And cold. And wobbly at the knees. She had never been more thankful for Mama’s steady arm and loving smile. She was aware of a figure standing close to the altar, a splendid and handsome figure who was about to unite himself with her, and she blanched. And smiled. And succeeded somehow in setting one foot ahead of the other, without either wobbling out of control or breaking into a panicked gallop, until he took her hand.
Lord Astor smiled at her. That was the only clear memory she had afterward of her wedding—that and her fervent wish that he was sixty and bald and toothless. And Frances’ tender sniveling from somewhere close by.
Somehow afterward Arabella was scarcely aware of her husband. Frances wept and Mama talked all through the carriage ride home—Jemima had been taken up by someone else. And once they were home, the guests began to arrive, and there were ladies kissing her cheek and gentlemen kissing her hand and friends and neighbors wishing her well and telling her experiences of their own in London and giving advice on how she might best go on there.
And she chattered incessantly to everyone, it seemed, except to her husband. Whenever her eyes lighted on him and she thought of their new relationship, her knees threatened to wobble again and her stomach tried to stand on its head, and she smiled harder and chattered faster.
Frances, meanwhile, who had finally stopped both crying and making little runs at her sister to give her one more hug, wandered into the garden after the wedding breakfast, as did several other guests, Theodore at her side.
“The last month has passed quickly,” he said. “Tomorrow you will be on your way, Fran. You must be excited.”
“I would give anything in the world not to be going,” she said, her eyes on the ground ahead of her.
“What?” he said. “Have you changed your mind so soon? A few weeks ago you were ecstatic.”
“But then I was not one day away from having to take my leave of Mama and Jemima,” she said. “A dear mother and a dear sister. And of you, Theo.”
“But it will not be forever,” he said, lifting one limp hand from her side and drawing it through his arm. “Just a couple of months, Fran. And it will be the experience of a lifetime. Thebeau mondeand the Season.”
“Perhaps,” she said, her head drooping lower, “you will be glad to be rid of me, Theo.”
“Frances!” His voice had sharpened considerably. “You know that it nonsense. We would have been married two years ago if I had not been in the army. And we would have wed last summer if your father had not had the misfortune to pass away. You know it is the dearest wish of my heart to marry you. But I think that for all that we have been wise to have no formal betrothal. You are very lovely and you have seen nothing of the world. It will be good for you to have these months in London and to be free.”
“I do not want to be free, Theo,” she wailed. “I just want to be with you. Dear Theo. I shall not know how to go on without you. And Mama.”
“Don’t cry,” he said firmly, patting her hand. “People will think we are quarreling.”
Frances lowered the handkerchief that had been creeping up to her eyes.
“I might even surprise you and appear suddenly in London myself,” he said. “And you will probably be enjoying yourself so much that you will wish I had stayed at home.”
“Theo!” she cried, raising large blue eyes to his. “Oh, how could I ever, ever be sorry to see you? I wish I were not going. But for Bella’s sake I must. She is so very young and so very sweet and innocent. His lordship is kindness itself, but I am sure Bella will be glad to have me with her.”
“That is good,” Theodore said. “You look after your sister, Fran.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it lingeringly. “No, you must not cry. We will be together again before you know it.”
But her large blue eyes grew even bluer before his gaze as tears gathered in them and spilled over.
“Dear Theo,” she said, her voice quavering. “How am I to leave you?”
Lord Astor was lying in his bed in the master bedchamber at Parkland Manor, his hands linked behind his head, staring up at the darkened canopy above him. He wished he could be back in London at a snap of the fingers. He did not much relish the prospect of a three-day journey. However, it was good to know that tomorrow he would be on his way.
And he supposed that he must accustom himself to stop thinking in the singular number. Tomorrowtheywould be on their way. He and his wife and his sister-in-law. It still seemed unreal. The whole day seemed unreal: the drive to church in the morning and the marriage ceremony; the wedding breakfast afterward and the afternoon spent conversing with the guests and receiving their congratulations and good wishes; dinner and an hour spent in the drawing room alone with his wife, trying to draw her into conversation; the early retirement.
