Notto me, butwith me.
Twenty-five
The morning of Harry’s birthday, which was to have been filled with all sorts of frenzied last-minute preparations for the birthday ball, was given over instead to the totally unexpected matter of a wedding to attend. The Westcott ladies might have been forgiven if they had thrown up their hands in despair as they contemplated disaster to their carefully crafted plan B. They were, however, made of sterner stuff andadapted.
The cold luncheon that had been planned for the noon hour was replaced by a grand wedding breakfast. Heart palpitations had been averted, however, when Elizabeth had suggested that they simply move the preball banquet forward by a few hours. The champagne that would have been used to toast Harry would now be used to toast the newlywedsandHarry.
“Alexander and Avery make speeches in the House of Lords all the time,” the dowager countess had reminded them. “They can make speeches at the breakfast. Gil too, since he is to be Harry’s best man. And Marcel or Joel might wish to say a few words too.”
“Or Viola or Camille or Abigail,” Wren had added, a twinkle in her eye. “Or Anna.”
The wedding cake, magnificently iced, had been purely the initiative of Harry’s cook and had taken them all by surprise.
Plans for the evening had been changed too. Harry was to have stood in the receiving line with his mother and his three sisters, greeting the outside guests as they arrived and allowing them all a moment to wish him a happy birthday. Harry and Camille were to have led off the dancing with a country set. There was to have been another toast to Harry at the late supper and the cutting of the birthday cake.
Harry was no longer to be in the receiving line. He was, in fact, to be nowhere in sight until after everyone else had arrived. The entry of the new Mr. and Mrs. Harry Westcott was to be an Event in itself—Matilda wrote it on her new planning list with a capital letter. And the dancing was to begin not with a country set but with awaltz—to be danced for the first few minutes by the bride and groom alone.
“Could there be anything more romantic?” Mary Kingsley had asked with a sigh.
“Nothing in the world, Mary,” Viola had said, and looked dreamy-eyed for a moment until Matilda brought them back to order by asking who should announce the arrival of the bridal couple.
Alexander had been appointed in his absence.
And so it was that well before the middle of the evening, the small ballroom at Hinsford Manor, decorated to resemble the most lavish of gardens, was packed with family, house guests, villagers, neighboring gentry, and tenants. Viola and Marcel and her daughters and Anna and their husbands no longer stood in the receiving line. But the dancing had not yet begun, for everyone still awaited the arrival of the bride and groom. The orchestra, instruments tuned and ready, awaited instructions.
“And so,” Estelle Lamarr said to her twin, “the last of our stepsiblings is married. And that leaves only us, Bertrand.”
He draped an arm loosely about her shoulders and grinned at her. “Do I detect a wistful note in your voice, Stell?” he asked.
They were in their middle twenties, both still single. They had mingled with society for a number of years, both of them with a great deal of success—they were, after all, the children of the Marquess of Dorchester, and both were darkly handsome. But two years ago they had decided to retire together to the country home where they had grown up with an aunt and uncle; no one lived there now but the two of them and their servants. Both felt the need to do some reflecting before moving on with their lives.
“You must admit,” Estelle said, “that there is something very … affecting about a romance. And a wedding.”
He chuckled. “I admit nothing.”
Camille, half hiding behind Joel in order to push back into her elaborate and very elegant coiffure an errant lock—the usual one—that had broken ranks with its fellows to fall down over her shoulder, sighed audibly.
“Can we possibly have been married fornine years?” she asked him.
“Does it feel more like ninety some days?” he asked.
She laughed and nudged him with her elbow. “It seems like yesterday,” she said. “Bath Abbey. Was it not the most wonderful wedding ever?”
“I could point out a few couples in this very room who might disagree,” he said. “But yes, it was. Indisputably. And it is a good thing wehavebeen married that long when you stop to count our children.”
“Are we not the most fortunate couple in the world?” She beamed at him.
“We are.” He smiled at her. “Here, Camille, let me fix your hair for you.”
Colin, Lord Hodges, tucked Elizabeth’s arm beneath his as she turned away from her mother. “You are happy?” he asked her.
“I am,” she said. “I was worried about Harry. We all were. He seemed so … lost after he came home from Paris. We would all have given the world to help him, but it is never quite enough, is it? It is sometimes so hard to help other people.”
“I think you all did—weall did—the only thing we could do,” he told her. “We gave him love and we gave him space.”
“Space,” she said. “Sometimes it is the hardest thing to give. Why are you so wise?”
He chuckled. “Perhaps because I am married to you and have caught it from you?” he suggested, provoking answering laughter from her.
