And then she slipped her hand through Harry’s arm, and... smiled.
Wayward thoughts fell away, and his whole focus was upon her. Upon Abby. His bride. And nothing else really mattered. It did not matter that the pews were virtually empty. He was marrying her, and this time he would get it right. Hemust, for her sake, for the sake of his daughter and their future children. And yes, for his sake too.
Please, God, let him get it right this time.
It did not occur to him to smile. Solemnity did not call for levity, and it was a solemn occasion like none other he had ever experienced. The church fairly pulsed with holiness.
When Harry gave her hand into his, he held it enclosed tightly in his own and then loosened his grip while her brother moved to his other side to perform the second half of his duty, as his best man this time. The vicar stood before them, looking with a kindly smile from one to the other of them.
“Dearly beloved,” he said in a tone that matched the smile and somehow filled the church.
Gil fixed his eyes upon Abby’s face. And she gazed back with flushed cheeks and slightly parted lips and a fragrant garden of beauty like a halo about her head. Her voice was soft, slightly trembling when she spoke her vows to him. His own seemed rough and curt in contrast. When Harry handed him the ring Gil had purchased in London to the measure of one she had given him to take for that purpose, he slid it onto her finger and saw it there, the gold, eternal band of his commitment to her.
And this time, with this woman, it will be eternal,hevowed silently. He wanted desperately to love her, to be able to make her happy, to be a family with her and their children. He wanted the dream—home, wife, children, love, happiness. Not fleetingly—gone almost before he could grasp it, darkness at its heart—but forever. For the rest of their lives and beyond. A foolish, silly dream that no one looking at him at any time during his thirty-four years would ever have suspected. He wanted it.
The vicar was pronouncing them man and wife, and he had a viselike grip on her hand and was gazing down at her with a look of granite. Not that he knew it. It was just not his habit willingly to show a chink of vulnerability in his armor. The only time he had done it fully and consciously was with his newborn baby.
The vicar led the way to the vestry, where they signed the register and Harry and Mrs. Jenkins signed as witnesses. Harry hugged Abby and held her tightly for several moments while Mrs. Jenkins shook Gil by the hand and informed him that Miss Abigail—Mrs. Bennington—was very precious to them all in the village and was very certainly precious to him too. He wondered if she was convinced of that latter statement.
“I intend to cherish my wife quite as dearly as you could wish, ma’am,” he said, and she beamed comfortably at him, not apparently offended by the stiffness of his tone.
Then Harry was wringing his hand while the vicar’s wife hugged Abby and the vicar smiled benignly upon them all.
“Thereissomething to be said after all for a quiet wedding,” Harry said. “It is no less touching than a big one, is it? And I was no less conscious that it wasmy sisterI was giving into your care.” He was looking steadily into Gil’s face.
“Did I ever let you down on the battlefield?” Gil asked.
“You never did,” Harry said. “But this is not a battlefield.”
“I give you my word,” Gil told him, “that I am to be trusted in this too, Harry.”
He led his bride slowly along the aisle of the church even though there was no one in the pews to watch them go. He and Harry donned their shakoes, and Harry slipped out ahead of them.
Ah. But there were people outside. Indeed, there was a sizable cluster of them beyond the church gate where the carriage awaited them, and they all burst into applause and whistles and even cheers when Gil appeared with Abby, no doubt having learned from the coachman the nature of what had been going on inside the church. If they had had any doubt, it would certainly have fled when Harry turned back toward them, a drawstring bag in one hand, dipped the other hand inside, and showered them with flower petals.
“Oh.” Abby laughed. “How very foolish.”
It was a bright, girlish laugh.But how very wonderful,she seemed to be saying. And if he had thought her beautiful before their nuptials, then now she was... Was there a more accurate word to describe her? But yes, there was. She wasradiant.
Because this was her wedding day and she had marriedhim.
She laughed again as another shower of petals fluttered over their heads.
And then Harry was opening the church gate for them and standing at attention in order to salute a superior officer. Gil returned the salute and experienced an alarming urge to weep.
He resisted it.
Outside the gate he lost his bride for a few momentswhile two young ladies he had seen before rushed at her, asking a dozen questions apiece even as they hugged her, and other villagers crowded around and called greetings and a few questions of their own. The landlord of the inn caught Gil’s eye and winked at him. A few other men with whom he had shared a glass of ale at the tavern grinned sheepishly at him.
At last he handed Abby into the carriage, about the roof of which a garland of flowers had appeared since he came to church in it earlier, though as far as he could see from a single glance there were no old boots or old hardware attached to the back of it to create an unholy din when the conveyance moved. It was no wonder, though, that the villagers had known there was a wedding in progress inside the church.
Harry, rather than join them inside, climbed to the box to sit beside the coachman. It was something he would have been incapable of doing without some help a mere few weeks ago.
The door was shut upon them, Abby waved to the villagers still gathered outside, and the carriage rocked into motion just as the church bells pealed. And yes, there was something underneath after all that rattled and grated and scraped and otherwise announced to the world that a bride and groom rode within.
He turned his head to look at his wife. She was gazing back and reaching for his hand. He closed his own about hers and remembered not to grip too tightly.
“Well, Mrs. Bennington,” he said.
