“Oh, most assuredly,” Luke said. “We had better take you in to breakfast, Aunt Marjorie and Theo. If we await the return of Emily and Ashley, we might well be here until dinnertime. We might well all starve. Madam?” He bowed elegantly and offered Lady Quinn his arm.
“Dear Emily,” she said with a sigh. “And dear Ashley.”
“I warrant you, Marj,” Lord Quinn said, roaring his comment after his retreating spouse as he gave his arm to Anna, “she will be brought to bed of a boy come nine months from today.”
“Nine months from thewedding day,’tis to be hoped, Theo,” his wife said placidly while Anna blushed and Luke raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips again.
•••
Lukehad discouraged him from coming to Bowden Abbey until the day before his wedding. And family members, Ashley had discovered to his chagrin, moved about England with tortoiselike speed. Despite the fact that he had acquired a special license the very day after Emily had agreed to marry him, more than two weeks passed before he was finally permitted to go to Bowden to claim his bride.
And when he finally arrived there and finally saw her again, it was to find her ringed about,walledabout with sisters and sisters-in-law and assorted other relatives, so that all he could do was bow formally over her hand, inquire formally after her health, and converse formally about the weather and other such scintillating subjects. And then she was whisked off to spend the night at Wycherly with her sister Agnes. Anna and Charlotte followed her there early on the morning of the wedding day.
His wedding day!
“Zounds, I feel like a damned Paris beau,” he said when he was ready to leave for the church. He frowned at his image in the pier glass of his dressing room. He was resplendent in silver embossed satin skirted coat with silver embroidered waistcoat, gray breeches, white stockings and linen, and heeled and buckled shoes. His hair was powdered white, carefully rolled at the sides and bagged in black silk behind.
Luke met his eyes in the mirror. “You have something against Paris beaux, Ash?”
Ashley grinned. As usual on dress occasions, Luke, all in rich green and gold and white, would turn heads even on Paris’s most fashionable boulevard.
They were early at the church. Or Emmy was late. He did not know which. But it seemed that he waited an eternity at the front of the village church, trying to look dignified, trying to feel calm. What if she had changed her mind? What if she did not come at all? Would she send a message? Or would he stand here like this, feeling the eye of every guest in the pews on him, until noon came and went, until dusk descended?
And then she was there.
She looked incredibly beautiful. He watched her as she came closer down the aisle, her hand resting on Royce’s sleeve. She wore an elaborately trimmed sack dress of palest gold, with a train. The heavy robings down the edges of the open gown were of a darker gold and matched the color of her frilled, flounced petticoat and of her heavily embroidered stomacher. The two deep lace frills at her elbows were also trimmed with gold lace. Her hair was piled rather high over pads. Gold rosebuds and green leaves were entwined in it. It was unpowdered.
She was the other Emily. The one he had first seen and admired without knowing who she was on the night of his return to Bowden. The one he had seen and admired in London. And yet when her eyes met his and when she smiled—her bright, warm, serene smile—she was his Emmy too. His little fawn of the loose dress and the bare feet and the wild mane of fair hair. She was each and both and all. She was everything. He smiled back at her.
The service began, the marriage service that would make them man and wife, that would bind them together with love for the rest of their lives. The Reverend Jeremiah Hornsby led them through it with a slightly pompous competence until it came Emily’s turn to make her vows. She was to watch Hornsby’s lips and nod her acceptance of the words as her own. But a look passed between Hornsby and Emily, a look of mutual understanding. Almost a look of conspiracy.
“I, Emily Louisa, take thee, Ashley Charles,” Hornsby said.
“I, Emily Louisa, take thee, Ahshley Charles,” Emmy said.
Ashley guessed that they had practiced it endlessly, the two of them. He knew she would speak the whole of it, that she would pledge herself to him in words for him to hear, for the whole world to hear. He knew too that they must have practiced in secret—he was half aware of the distinctly audible gasp and murmuring from their gathered relatives. But he did not look at them. He looked only at her, deep into her eyes, each time she turned back from watching Hornsby’s lips. He tightened his grasp of her hands.
And he smiled at her.
“Until death do us part. So help me Gahd.”
He would tease her about that pronunciation later.
“God,” she said, correcting herself and then smiling in triumph.
Ashley heard nothing else of the service until Hornsby was telling them and the world that they were man and wife. She was his—for the rest of his life. How could he possibly have come to deserve such happiness? But of course he had not. All he had done was love—and allow himself to be loved. So simple—so complex.
He lowered his head and kissed her. His wife. His love. His serenity and peace and joy.
Her eyes, when he raised his head again, said all the same things back to him.
They were married.
•••
Theyhad decided to stay at Bowden Abbey for the night and leave for Penshurst early enough in the morning that they could make the journey in one day.
They had retired early to Ashley’s old suite of rooms amid the knowing smiles, the tears—from Anna, Agnes, and Constance—and the mildly ribald comments of Lord Quinn. They had gone immediately to bed and had made love with lingering slowness and exquisite sweetness. And Ashley had called her his wife, whispering the words against her mouth—at least, she guessed that that was what he had whispered when he lifted his head and apparently repeated the words so that she could see them in the candlelight.
