“I know you are a notable whip,” she told him. “It was always a part of your reputation.”
“One day soon,” he said, “when we are in the country, I will spring the horses and risk both our lives as they dash along at a neck-or-nothing pace.”
“Oh,willyou?” she said. “Thank you, Charles. I am not a staid old lady quite yet, you know.”
“I have noticed,” he said, and he risked horrible scandal by leaning toward her and kissing her briefly on the lips while windows in numerous houses all around them looked accusingly on and his young groom pretended to be looking intently elsewhere.
As the curricle moved off in the direction of Hyde Park, Matilda, in marvelous ladylike fashion, threw back her head and laughed.
Nine
Several times over the following month, Charles sat alone in his library, wishing that he had not suddenly found himself at the center of a whirlpool or a tornado—both seemed appropriate metaphors. For of course the notice of his betrothal appeared in every London paper and perhaps a few provincial ones too. And wherever he went, he faced congratulations or—at his clubs—endless witticisms over which he was forced to laugh. His son and one of his sons-in-law dragged him off to his tailor and his boot maker and his hatmaker and Lord knew where else so that on his wedding day he would be able to astonish thetonwith new and fashionable everything.
His daughters and every female on earth who had a connection with the Westcott family, no matter how slim, held meeting after meeting to discuss every aspect of the wedding that women invariably found to discuss and wrangle over. Though to be fair, he heard no reports of arguments or raised voices or heated discussions or rivalries between the two families. Early predictions proved quite accurate. The wedding breakfast was to be served at Westcott House, the home of Alexander, Earl of Riverdale, on South Audley Street. Invitations were sent. If any member of thetonthen staying in or within a twenty-mile radius of London had been omitted, Charles would be enormously surprised. Relatives from farther afield had been summoned, including a few cousins he scarcely knew but whose presence on his wedding day was deemed by his daughters to be essential to his happiness.
Charles would just as happily have done what the Netherbys had once done and sneaked off to marry Matilda in an obscure church somewhere, special license in hand, while their families were in a flurry of plotting and planning for a grand wedding to outdo all others this year. But despite ever-changing misgivings and second and third and sixth thoughts through which Matilda suffered during the course of the month, he understood that a big public wedding was what she really wanted. And what Matilda wanted she would have. She had waited long enough for her wedding—thirty-six years.
What she had feared most was being laughed at. Charles felt no doubt that there were certain elements of society that ridiculed her behind her back. There always were. The world would never be rid of unkind people who compensated for their own insecurities by dragging down other happier, more successful people to their own level through their gossip. They were to be heartily ignored. She was well received wherever she went. Barbara held a soiree in her honor, and Jane had her as a special guest in Wallace’s private box at the theater the very evening after the announcement appeared in the papers. The Duke and Duchess of Netherby hosted a betrothal party at their home, and the Marquess and Marchioness of Dorchester organized an afternoon tea. Charles took her driving in the park several times and escorted her to a private concert and a literary evening.
She received well-wishers with quiet dignity wherever she went. No longer was she the fussy spinster forever in her mother’s shadow, though perhaps that had something to do with the fact that her mother flatly refused to have her there any longer. And Matilda need not fear for her care, her mother informed Charles when he broached the subject of her coming to live with them after their marriage.
“You need not fear either, Lord Dirkson,” she had added. “I am quite capable of looking after myself. And has Matilda not told you? My sister is coming to live with me when I return to the country after the Season is over. She will be bringing her longtime companion with her, an estimable lady who will offer companionship without trying to worry me into my grave.”
Charles had understood immediately that life had been about to change very much for the worse for Matilda, who would no doubt have found herself constantly being compared unfavorably with her aunt’s ideal companion.
“I really do not know how I would have borne it,” Matilda had admitted to him when he mentioned what her mother had told him. “I would have gone mad. Adelaide Boniface is the gloomiest creature of my acquaintance. And shesniffs.”
“Now I know,” he had said, “why you accepted my marriage proposal.”
“Oh, absolutely!” she had assured him, and laughed gleefully.
He loved her laughter. He loved her happiness. Oh, she behaved in public with quiet dignity, though even then he was aware of an inner glow in her that warmed him too. In private she smiled a great deal, and the glow was brighter. Her eyes when she looked at him had a sparkle that made them appear to smile even if the rest of her face was in repose.
He felt awed and humbled by her happiness.
And by the fact that he shared it.
He had never given much thought to being happy. It was not a word much in his vocabulary—though hehadbeen happy when each of his children was born and whenever he had spent time with them during their growing years. He had been happy when his daughters married and when his grandchildren were born. He had just not used that particular word to describe his feelings. He had not known the conscious exuberance of happiness since Matilda had disappeared from his life when he was still no more than a puppy.
Now he knew himself happy again. Even if hedidspend great swaths of time shut up in his library during the month before his nuptials wishing he did not have the ghastly ordeal of a grandtonwedding to face before he could bear Matilda off home and live out his life with her there. He was even dreaming of happily-ever-after, though fortunately it was contained inside him. Sometimes he could still think and feel like that young puppy he had been. It was downright embarrassing.
He was going to be very glad when the wedding was over.
In the meanwhile, he was equally glad that Matilda, despite all her frequent misgivings, was at last going to have the wedding she ought to have had more than thirty years ago.
* * *
Charles was quite right in his perceptions. There had been no wrangling, no unpleasantness between his daughters on the one hand and the ladies of the Westcott family on the other as they planned the wedding. All of them, once the Westcotts had recovered from the shock they had felt upon learning that Matilda, that most confirmed of spinsters, was going to marry at last, had thrown themselves with enthusiasm into the planning of the wedding of the Season. And if Louise and Mildred, Matilda’s younger sisters, still felt wary of the bridegroom’s notorious past, they soon set their fears aside in favor of rejoicing that their precious Matilda, that rock of sisterly support upon which they had leaned since they were girls, was to find happiness of her own at last. The bridegroom’s daughters were genuinely pleased for their father, having concluded that Lady Matilda Westcott was vastly different from any of the other ladies he had escorted about London since their mother’s passing. And vastly preferable too.
There was no wrangling, then. There was, however, an awkward moment. It came when they were making lists of potential guests and everyone was throwing out suggestions, most of which were accepted without question. Viola, Marchioness of Dorchester, had suggested Harry—Major Harry Westcott, her son—who was not far away at Hinsford Manor in Hampshire, and Camille, her elder daughter, who was in Bath with her husband and family. She was interrupted before she could say more.
“I certainly hope Camille and Joel will come,” Wren, Countess of Riverdale, said. “But will they, Viola? With all seven children?”
All but one of those children were under ten years of age. Four of them were adopted, three Camille and Joel’s own.
“They came to Hinsford a few months ago to see Harry when he came home from war at last,” Viola said. “Whether they will now come all the way to London for Matilda’s wedding is another matter, of course.”
“They must be invited anyway,” Elizabeth, Wren’s sister-in-law, said. “It will be up to them whether they come or not.”
