While he waited, Colin thought about the dream he had had at Christmas when he had started to make goals for this year—the dream of establishing a family of his own and drawing into it the members of the old. Some of the dream was materializing. He was about to marry. Ruby and Sean had sent a hasty response to the letter he had written them announcing his upcoming marriage and inviting them to come to Roxingley for at least a part of the summer. They were coming and bringing the four children with them. The rest of the dream probably never would be realized. His mother would never change.
“Mother,” he said, “will you be in attendance at my wedding tomorrow? It is my hope, and Elizabeth’s, that you will.”
She picked up a large fan from the table beside her and cooled her face with it. “You were quite right to reject Miss Dunmore, dearest,” she said. “She is a milk-and-water miss and I never did think her more than tolerably good-looking. She has the sort of prettiness that will not endure. Before ten years have passed, she will resemble her mother to a marked degree, and that will be unfortunate for her. End this foolishness with the plain-faced widow, though. It is not too late. Send her on her way. Pay her off if you must. Or I shall send Ede to do it if you wish. I shall help you choose the perfect bride. “
“I have already done that myself, Mother,” he said. “Lady Overfield will be Lady Hodges tomorrow, and I will be the happiest of men.” It was a horrible cliché. It also happened to be the truth.
She waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, do sit down,” she said. “You look like a coiled spring.”
Colin stood where he was.
“How droll it will be if you persist in marrying a dowdy older woman, dearest,” she continued. “Everyone would see us all together and think you, Blanche, and I were brother and sisters. We would dazzle them. They would think the widow was our mother. How lowering it would be for you to have to correct them.”
Colin clasped his hands at his back and gazed steadily at her. He would not dignify her taunts with a reply.
“Will you attend the wedding tomorrow?” he asked after a short silence, during which she fanned her face slowly and Blanche and Nelson did a fair imitation of statues. “You are my mother. I do not have a father to come.”
“I was very vexed with your father,” she said, resting her fan on her lap. “He deprived me of my youngest two children. First he implied I was incapable of looking after my own little Rowena when he sent for Megan to take her away and give her a home with that dreadfully dull older man who left Rowena a fortune she had done nothing to deserve when he ought to have divided it among all my children. I daresayyouwere chagrined. I know Blanche was, and I do not wonder at it.”
“You are mistaken in that, Mama,” Blanche said, speaking at last.
Her mother waved a dismissive hand at her. “And he sent you away to school, dearest, when I begged him not so to break my heart. He did it for that very reason. He could be very vindictive, your father, God rest his soul.”
“I asked him to send me to school, Mother,” Colin told her.
“Oh, you merely played into his hands by doing so,” she said. “He was determined to send you anyway.”
Was that right? Colin wondered. Perhaps giving him what he had asked for had not been such a gesture of love on his father’s part after all. Perhaps it had been done primarily to hurt his mother. And had Aunt Megan been sent for specifically to take Wren away? Permanently? It must have been intended as a permanent thing or Colin would not have been told soon after that she had died. But that could surely not have been done to hurt his mother. She had never been able to bear to look upon Wren. She had never allowed her down from the nursery floor.
“Your father was a difficult man,” his mother said. “But he adored me anyway. He would insist upon marrying me even though my dear papa could not offer anything for a dowry. He always told me that I was worth more than the greatest fortune in the world. Of course I could have done far better than a mere baron, but it would have broken his heart if I had said no, and I have ever been tenderhearted.”
Colin left soon after that since it was clear he was not going to get an answer to the question he had come to ask. He still did not know if his mother would be at his wedding tomorrow or if Blanche and Nelson would be. When he had asked them as he took his leave, he had got a shrug from Blanche and the explanation that she did not know what her plans were for tomorrow.
Who knew what the future held? Would his mother choose to live year-round in London at the Curzon Street House? Would he make it over to her and count his blessings? Would she decide to continue living at Roxingley during the summer and winter and even expect to continue organizing parties there? Would he feel compelled to build a dower house for her somewhere in the park? Would even that be workable? How would Elizabeth deal with her proximity? Meet the problem head-on? Insist that his mother be banished from Roxingley altogether? Somehow he could not see her doing that. Or losing the war against her future mother-in-law. He certainly would not wager against Elizabeth anyway. But this was hismothershe would be dealing with, and no one had yet been able to stand against her.
Did all men feel a bit sick to the stomach on their wedding eve?
Ross Partimer and John Croft were organizing a bachelor party for him tonight while Elizabeth was going to dine with some of her relatives. By this time tomorrow he would be married to her. He drew comfort from the thought.
Elizabeth Overfieldwas going to behis wife.If anyone had told him that six months ago, even one month ago, he would not have considered the prediction even worthy of comment.
But tomorrow she was going to be his bride.
•••
Viola and Marcel, Marquess of Dorchester, had arrived in London in time for the wedding. But they had indeed been bewildered to discover not only that it was to be somewhat sooner than they had expected but also that the groom had changed.
“So you traded Codaire for a younger model of manhood, did you, Elizabeth?” Marcel said when she arrived at his home the evening before.
Viola tutted and the young people who had come into the hall with them to greet their visitor burst into peals of merriment.
“A vastly younger model,” Elizabeth agreed. “Eighteen years younger, in fact.”
“May I be permitted to hug the happy bride?” he asked.
“I will not be a bride until tomorrow,” she told him. “This evening you may hug the bride-to-be.”
Viola hugged her too. “You could have knocked me over with a feather,” she said. “I was very prepared to be pleased for you, Elizabeth, for I remembered Sir Geoffrey Codaire as a very worthy gentleman—”
