“I mean,” Agnes said, “are wefullsisters?”
Their father, Oliver, and Dora all had dark coloring and brown eyes. So had their mother. But not Agnes, born so many years after the other two. It was a small thing. There were explanations other than the one she had tried half her life not to consider. Traits of appearance sometimes skipped a generation.
“If we are not,” Dora said, “I have never known it—I was only twelve when you were born, remember. And I have never wanted to know.”
So she had wondered too.
“Idonot want to know,” Dora said with emphasis. “You are mysister, Agnes. My beloved sister. Nothing—nothing—could ever change that.”
“You gave up so much for me,” Agnes said.
Dora had been planning and dreaming about the come-out Season she was to have in London when she was eighteen. The five-year-old Agnes had shared her hopes and her excitement and had thought her grown-up sister vibrantly pretty and certain to get herself a handsome husband. But when their mother was gone suddenly, everything came to an end for Dora, and she had stayed to care for Agnes, to raise her, to love her, to keep house for their father. And she had never been vibrantly pretty since.
“What I gave up,” Dora told her, “Igave up, Agnes. It wasmychoice. Aunt Millicent would have had me. She would have brought me to Harrogate and found a husband for me there. Ichoseto stay, just as Ichoseto come here when Father remarried. This ismylife, Agnes. I have done with it and am doing with it what I have chosen to do. You owe me nothing. Do you hear me?Nothing.If you feel you owe me something anyway, then do this for me, something you could not really do with William, good and worthy though he was. Behappy, Agnes. It is all I ask. And even that is a request, not a demand. I have made no sacrifices for you. I have always done only what I have wanted to do.”
Agnes swallowed awkwardly.
“And I absolutelyforbidyou,” Dora said, her voice wobbling strangely, “to shed tears, Agnes. It is time to leave for church, and you do not want Lord Ponsonby to take one look at you and imagine that I have had to drag you there.”
Agnes laughed and then bit her upper lip.
“I love you,” she said.
“That,” Dora said, wagging a finger at her, “is enough. It is unlike you to be sentimental, Agnes. But it is your wedding day, and I will make allowances and forgive you. Come along, now. You do not want to be late.”
They were not late. It was right on eleven o’clock when they stepped inside the church. There were three carriages outside, one of them festively decorated with flowers. And there were people there too. Word must have spread, though who could have spread it, Agnes could not imagine. News in a village seemed to travel on the very air. People nodded and smiled at her and looked as though they planned to stay awhile.
And then they were inside, and Agnes could see that the church had been decorated too. The familiar smells of ancient stone and incense and candles and old prayer books mingled with the perfumes of spring flowers. And it struck her, as if for the first time, that this was her wedding day. Her second. She was leaving behind her first forever, even relinquishing William’s name today, and entering upon her second.
To Viscount Ponsonby.
Flavian.
She almost panicked for a moment then. Flavianwhat? She did not even know his last name. It was going to be hers within the next few minutes, yet she did not know what it was.
Dora took her hand in a firm clasp and smiled at her, and they proceeded along the aisle together, hand in hand.
He was standing waiting for her, dressed with old-fashioned and magnificent formality in white knee breeches and linen with a dull gold waistcoat and a formfitting dark brown tailed coat. His hair gleamed golden in a shaft of light from one of the high windows. He looked as handsome as a prince in any fairy tale.
Foolish, foolish thought.
***
Last night Flavian had tried to convince Lady Darleigh that they would have the wedding breakfast at the village inn, at his expense, and that he and his bride would be happy to stay for the night somewhere on the road to London. The viscountess was a small lady, a little slip of a thing, in fact, and she looked scarcely older than a girl. But when she made up her mind about something, there was no moving her. And last night, even before he was able to speak up on the matter, she had made up her mind.
They would eat together at Middlebury, she had told him, and she would have the guest suite in the state apartments prepared. It had been furnished a hundred years or so ago, apparently, for a royal prince and his princess who had been expected to grace Middlebury Park with their company. Whether they had come or not was a detail lost to history, but the apartments were still there in all their opulent splendor.
And so it was to Middlebury Park they went after the marriage ceremony was over and the register signed. The church bell was ringing its single note as they stepped outside, and the sun was just breaking free of a cloud, and a small crowd of villagers exclaimed and applauded and set up a self-conscious cheer. And Ralph and Hugo, damn their eyes, were waiting with grins they could have hooked over their ears, and fistfuls of flower petals, which were soon raining about Agnes’s head and his. Flavian would be willing to wager half his fortune that his carriage was now bedecked with more thanjusta ton and a half of flowers.
He turned his head to look at Agnes, so familiar though he had known her for only three weeks and for two dances five or six months ago, and so... safe. He could still think of no more appropriate word. She was flushed and bright eyed and familiar, and he felt a welling of contentment. It sounded almost like a contradiction in terms.
“This is unbelievable,” she said, laughing.
The others were coming out behind them, and there was all that noise and backslapping and hand shaking and hugging and kissing business going on again. And the villagers beamed from out on the street.
“Well, Agnes,” Flavian said at last, taking her by the hand, “sh-shall we lead the way?”
He handed her into the carriage, while George held the door open like a footman, and then shut it upon them and gave the signal to the coachman. Flavian bent his head to kiss his bride so that all the spectators would not be disappointed.
