And with unsteady knees. And two hands full of thumbs, any two or three of which were bound to drop the wedding ring at the key moment.
Cyril was no help, and Percy wondered if he should have chosen someone else to be his best man.
“What if I should drop the ring?” Cyril asked on the way to church.
Surely one of the functions of a best man—theprincipalfunction, in fact—was to calm the nerves of the bridegroom.
“Then you crawl around on the floor until you recover it,” Percy said. “It will not happen.”
“I have never done this before,” Cyril added.
“Neither have I,” Percy told him.
All the pews inside the church would surely have been filled just with family members and close friends. But of course, because this was aproper wedding,everyone who had a remote connection to thetonhad been invited, and since the Season was just getting nicely launched and this was the very first fashionable wedding of the year—there would be others, since the Season was also the great marriage mart—everyone and his dog had accepted. Well, not dogs, actually. Hector’s nose was severely out of joint. When he had tried to trot unobtrusively out to the carriage, Percy had put his foot down, not an easy thing to do with an animal that sometimes had difficulty with the master/creature distinction.
The church was packed. There might even be a few people sitting up on the roof. There should be a few rows of chairs up there.
Cyril’s teeth were chattering almost audibly. Percy, seated with him at the front of the church, concentrated upon his ten thumbs and the necessity of converting eight of them back into fingers before they arrived at the ring part of the ceremony. He flexed them and did a mental check of his knees. He could not get married sitting down, could he?
And then it was starting—reallystarting. The clergyman, gorgeously vested, arrived at the front of the church, the buzz of conversation died to an expectant hush, the congregation got to its feet, and the organ struck up with something impressively proper.
Percy’s knees worked, and he turned to watch his bride approach along the nave, on the arm of her brother.
Lord, dear Lord.
She was all ice blue simplicity and elegance. Not a frill or a flounce or even half a yard of lace in sight. Not a curl or a wavy tendril of hair escaping from her plain straw bonnet trimmed only with a wide ribbon to match her dress. Not a jewel, except for something sparkling in her ears.
She passed elaborate splendor in the pews on both sides of her as she came. They paled into insignificance. She looked like a Nordic goddess or a Viking princess or some such thing.
She was Imogen.
For a moment when she drew closer he thought she was the marble lady. Her face was pale and set, her eyes fixed upon him. And then—watch it, knees!—she smiled. And there was no need of candles or any other illumination in St. George’s. The church was flooded with light. Or perhaps it was only his heart. Or his soul.
He did a mental check of his facial muscles and discovered that he was smiling back at her.
It was really a dashed shame, he thought later, for a fellow to miss his own wedding. But he effectively did just that, so dazzled was he by the light she brought with her and the warmth that reached out from her to envelop him too. He thought he remembered someone sayingDearly beloved,in the tone only a clergyman ever used, and hedidremember a moment’s anxiety as he saw Cyril’s hand shaking like a leaf in a strong breeze while it held a gold ring, and he certainly remembered hearing that he and Imogen were now man and wife together and no man should even dream of putting them asunder and those other things that all meant simply that one was married right and tight for all eternity.
But he missed everything else.
He came back to himself only when he and his bride were in the vestry signing the register and Imogen was signing her old name for the last time.
“Though it remains the same,” her brother remarked with a chuckle, “with the addition of Countess of Hardford.”
“No,” she said softly, “it changes. All of it. I am married to Percy now.”
Percy could have bawled, but—fortunately—did not.
And then they were walking back along the nave together—he remembered to imitate the speed of a turtle—while the organ played an anthem that seemed designed to lift the top right off one’s head so that one’s soul could soar straight to heaven, and Imogen’s mother and auntsandMrs. Ferby and his own mother and assorted aunts wept shamelessly and everyone else smiled enough to cause wrinkles.
“For two pins,” he murmured to his bride, “I would start skipping like a boy.”
“For two pins,” she murmured back, smiling to both right and left, “I would join you.”
“But we are at a proper wedding,” he said.
“Alas.”
And then they were outside and the sun that had been at war with the clouds covering the sky earlier had won and a cheering multitude of gawkers and the merely curious greeted them as well as a small army of grinning Survivors and cousins and friends armed with the petals of a few thousand unfortunate flowers. The petals were soon raining down about them and quite ruining the lovely paleness of their wedding attire.
