“Here I am,” she murmured for his ears only.
“And at last,” he said just as quietly, “so am I.”
They turned together to face the clergyman.
“Dearly beloved,” he began.
And just like that, within a very few minutes, they were married.
Charles was after all glad they had done it this way, with all the pomp of a high church service, with all their family and friends and acquaintances in attendance. He was glad for himself, for he wanted the world to know that he married this woman from choice and from love. He was glad for Matilda, for she glowed from the moment she first smiled at him until the moment when the clergyman pronounced them man and wife. And even then she glowed as he led her to the vestry for the signing of the register. When Alexander, Earl of Riverdale, witnessed her signature and then hugged her, and Adrian witnessed his signature and hugged her too, she glowed at them. She glowed as they left the vestry and proceeded, her arm drawn through Charles’s, back along the nave, smiling from one side to the other as they passed the pews. It was impossible to see everyone who was there. But they would do that at the wedding breakfast in a short while.
She smiled still as they passed through the church doors and emerged into sunshine at the top of the long flight of steps down to their awaiting carriage—an open barouche decorated almost beyond recognition with flowers. She smiled at the crowd of onlookers that had gathered down there to applaud and even cheer. And she laughed when she saw her young nephews and his sons-in-law waiting farther down the steps to pelt them with flower petals before they could reach the dubious safety of the open carriage. And then, halfway down, when the petals were already raining about them in a brightly colored shower, she looked back up to where the congregation was beginning to spill outdoors after them and she lost her smile.
“Ah,” she said, and Charles had the curious impression that she saw something she had been looking for. He looked backward even as he laughed at another shower of petals that was fluttering from the brim of his hat.
Quite a few people had come outside, his daughters and grandchildren, Matilda’s mother and aunt and sisters among them. And one group a little separate from the others, three steps down from the top. A man and a woman, and a child between them, holding a hand of each.
When he thought about it afterward, Charles did not suppose that silence had really descended upon the congregation above, the gathering of the curious below, and the young people on the steps with their handfuls of petals. But it seemed to him at the time that they were suddenly cocooned in silence, Matilda and he, her arm through his, her face turned to look into his—with anxiety?
God. Oh good God.
Neither group moved for what was perhaps a second or two but seemed far longer at the time. Then the woman took a step down, impelling the child and the man to descend too. And Matilda took one step back up, forcing him to do likewise. Who descended or ascended the other steps between them Charles did not afterward know, or who first extended a hand. But suddenly he felt the warm, firm clasp of his son’s hand even as he gripped it in return.
His elder son, that was.
Gil.
“Congratulations, sir,” he said stiffly.
“You came,” Charles said foolishly. “We came.”
And then Matilda was hugging first his son’s wife and then his son and was then bending down to smile at the child—Katy—and say something to her. And Abigail was hugging Charles and lifting Katy to sayhow do you doto her grandpapa, and somehow—oh, somehow his son was hugging him too. Briefly, awkwardly, improbably, surely unintentionally, unforgettably.
“Congratulations, sir,” he said again.
“You came,” Charles said, just to be original.
After every wedding Charles had ever attended, the bride and groom left the church and ran the gamut of mischievous relatives who went out ahead of them in order to decorate their carriage with noisy hardware and throw flowers. The carriage was always on its way by the time large numbers of the congregation left the church behind them. All the greetings and congratulations, all the hugs and kisses, and slapping of backs, and laughter, came later as the guests arrived at the venue for the wedding breakfast.
This wedding was the exception to that tradition. It was too late to escape. Within moments they were surrounded by wedding guests. Matilda was being hugged and kissed and wept over by her mother and her sisters and sister-in-law and cousins and nieces and aunt. She had children about her—most of them, he believed, the offspring of her niece Camille from Bath—all trying to tell her things in piping yells while brushing at the flower petals with which she was strewn. His own daughters and grandchildren were soon gathered about her too. She was bright eyed and rosy cheeked and laughing and lovely. Her brother-in-law and nephews and cousins meanwhile were pumping him by the hand and slapping him on the back, as were his sons-in-law, having abandoned their petal throwing for the moment—or perhaps they had no more to throw. Adrian and Charles’s daughters and grandchildren were hugging him. Other people were calling greetings.
Matilda, some little distance away from Charles, turned to find him and smiled at him in a way that would put sunshine to shame.
She was, he realized, elbowing her way closer to him until she could take his hand in hers, utterly happy.
As was he.
“We had better leave while we still may,” he said, laughing.
“Oh, must we?” But she slid her arm through his and allowed him to lead her down through the path that opened for them and hand her into the barouche.
“I have just one wish remaining,” she said as he sat beside her and took her hand in his, lacing their fingers. “I hope the young people tied a whole arsenal of pots and pans and old boots beneath the carriage. I want to make an unholy din on the way to Westcott House. I have always envied—”
But what or whom she had always envied was drowned out as the coachman gave the horses the signal to start and the barouche rocked into motion. So was Charles’s laughter. And so were the church bells pealing out the good news of a new marriage.
Matilda’s one remaining wish had come true.
She turned her face toward him, and he saw that she was laughing—until the laughter faded and her eyes became luminous beneath the brim of her hat.
