It was such thoughts during the morning that had calmed her—surprisingly, perhaps. For there was no point in trying to think of something no one could even define. One could only live one’s life day by day, minute by minute, holding true to the choices and decisions one made and hope that somehow one would find... what? Love? But she refused to allow her thoughts and emotions to spin in endless circles.
She set her hand in Devlin’s as she descended from the carriage and looked up the steps to the open doors of Arden House. The butler, looking both stately and avuncular, awaited them. She did not know what to expect inside. One great blessing, though, wasthat somehow or other—certainly not by prearrangement—all her immediate family would be present at her wedding. She might have wept over Owen last night if by the time she arrived home and saw him she had not been numb to all feeling.
As the butler bowed them into the hall, Viscount Mayberry was coming downstairs, a warm smile on his face, a twinkle in his eye.
“I am to hand you this,” he said to Philippa after greeting them all. He picked up a long package from the hall table, unwound the white cloth in which it had been loosely rolled, and handed her a perfect peach rosebud. The long stem had been ingeniously wrapped about with golden gauze to protect her hand from the thorns.
“Thank you,” she said, raising the flower to her nose and inhaling its sweet perfume.
The gold would complement her gown. It was one of her new ballgowns. She had not worn it before because it had seemed too gorgeous even for a grandtonball. Perhaps she would keep it for a ball at Stratton House if Gwyneth and Devlin chose to host one, she had thought. But then along had come today—her wedding day. It was pure white, with fine lace wafting over soft silk. It was high-waisted, low-necked, short-sleeved. It fell in straight folds from beneath her bosom to give her a narrow, Grecian profile, but it billowed a bit as she moved—to add femininity and draw attention to her slender figure, Mama’s modiste had explained before suggesting gold sequins to catch the light and add distinction to the gown. They encrusted the bodice and sleeves quite thickly and were dotted sparingly over the skirt, almost unnoticeable until she moved and they caught the light. She was wearing gold slippers and long white gloves. Her hair, dressed simply with only a few fine, wavy ringlets, was unadorned.
“Ma’am?” Viscount Mayberry was bowing to the dowager countess and offering his arm. “Allow me to escort you up to thedrawing room. You may follow as soon as you are ready, Stratton, with your sisters. All is in order, and His Grace sets great store by punctuality. Having said which, I will add, since he is not present to overhear me, that it ought to be a bride’s privilege to be late by a minute or two or even ten if she so chooses.” He winked at Philippa.
Her mother, elegant as always, dressed in blue, ascended the stairs on his arm, and Stephanie fussed with the hem of Philippa’s gown though there was no need to do so. She was wearing her pretty sprigged muslin dress, one of the few new garments to which she had consented. Her hair was dressed in its usual thick braids wrapped over the top of her head.
Joy might have been a bridesmaid too, as she had been for Gwyneth and Devlin’s wedding before Christmas. But when Philippa had asked her this morning, she had shaken her head vigorously, moving all her soft curls and her whole body with it, and checked to see that her papa was not far away.
“Not even with Aunt Steph as your fellow bridesmaid to hold your hand?” Stephanie had asked.
Stephanie was perhaps Joy’s favorite person after her papa, with the possible exception of Owen. But she was not to be moved and had shaken her head again and gone to wrap her arms about one of Ben’s legs. The weeks she had spent at Penallen with him seemed to have brought back some of the early shyness she had shown when Ben first brought her to England and Ravenswood with him after the Battle of Toulouse.
“You look gorgeous, Pippa,” Stephanie said now.
“You do indeed,” Devlin agreed, and at last there was a smile in his eyes. “Ready?”
Yes, she was ready. She ascended the stairs, her hand through his arm. Stephanie came behind them. Philippa could hear the soft murmur of voices coming from the drawing room. ViscountMayberry stood in the doorway and waited for them to cross the landing from the top of the stairs before smiling warmly at them and turning to give a signal to a person Philippa could not see.
Someone played a sweeping chord on a harp, and Devlin turned his head to smile fully down at Philippa. He patted her hand on his arm.
“Gwyneth’s little surprise,” he murmured.
Gwyneth was sitting across the room beside the fireplace—just where she, Philippa, had been sitting with Jenny one afternoon not long ago when she turned her head to see the Marquess of Roath standing in this very doorway. It was Gwyneth who had played the run on the harp, though it was not her own instrument.
The murmur of voices from the other end of the room had stopped. And Gwyneth played and sang in her lovely contralto voice. She sang the very hymn the choir had sung at the start of her own wedding in the church at Boscombe before Christmas. The choir had sung unaccompanied because Gwyneth was the bride and Sir Ifor Rhys, her father and the organist at the church, was leading her in, just as Devlin was now leading Philippa into the drawing room.
Now Philippa felt the breath catch in her throat. They had stepped onto a white strip of carpet. She could see people standing in neat rows to one side of the fireplace—the servants of the house, all clad in what were surely their best uniforms, starched and ironed for the occasion. The carpet turned in the middle of the room and led them toward the far window and banks of flowers and rows of chairs, all of them occupied, and a stately, white-haired clergyman in full clerical vestments standing before a table upon which a branch of candles burned. He held a leather-bound book clasped to his bosom with both hands crossed over it.
And...
And the Marquess of Roath stood straight before a great wing chair, his hands clasped at his back, his cousin at his side, his eyes upon Philippa.
The room smelled like all the beauty of summer.
The music, played softly, sung softly, nevertheless filled the room and made perfectly clear to all those gathered there, though they were in a private drawing room rather than a church, that this was a holy occasion, one of the most solemn of anyone’s lifetime.
“Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above”
Philippa swallowed, and Devlin hugged her arm more tightly to his side.
She had not expected to feel any great emotion. She had not expected to want to weep. She had not expected to feel such a rush of...somethingfor the man who waited for her. Last night she had thought these nuptials would be brief, passionless, and colorless. A mere means to an end. If they happened at all, that was. She had been more than half convinced that the Duke of Wilby would not survive the night. And then what? Would they marry anyway? She had had no idea.
He had survived the night. And he had come to the drawing room with the duchess to see his grandson and heir wed the woman they had chosen for him and been quite determined hewouldmarry. They were seated in the large chairs at the front, across the white carpet from her mother and her brothers.
