Tommy only smiled, a gold filling at the back of her mouth catching the light. “Oh, Lady Bentley,” she said with a shake of her head, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Wedding chaos was a mercy.
For the remainder of the day and the one following it, Claire found herself caught and tossed about in the riptide of nuptial logistics, dramatics, and aesthetics.
“Orange blossoms?” Patricia had said with a sigh. “Really? I think we’re well past that, Raul.”
“We are not necessarily,” he had replied, kissing his bride-to-be’s hand. “I intend to test the matter.”
“Raul!” she’d gasped, blushing furiously.
Claire did not drop the pincushion. She considered this a feat on its own. In addition to retaining her grip on it, she committed to feigning deafness from across the room, where she was knelt by a stool, helping the tailor pin a tiny, royal blue sash on her son. No matter how much they took in, it was always just a little bit too long.
“What test?” Oliver asked, frowning. “I don’t want a test.”
“Papa Raul is teasing me,” Patricia answered from across the room, evidently not as shy about the subject as Claire was. “He thinks we ought to have a baby. What do you think, Ollie, dearest?”
“That is what happens,” Oliver said with an uncertain flick of his eyes from one adult to the next, “after a wedding. Isn’t it?”
“It is,” Raul confirmed with a smirk, much to Patricia’s annoyance.
“I am almost fifty years old!” she protested, which only spread the deafness bug from Claire to Raul himself.
“There was a woman back in Kildare,” Ember said lazily from the sofa by the window, “who kept having babies until she was near sixty.”
“That isn’t helping, dear.” Patricia sighed, looking around for her fan, which she used to wave her groom out of the room with the sheer force of gentle, summoned wind.
“I wasn’t trying to help,” Ember had returned pleasantly, winning her a glare from Dot and a half-hearted swat on the arm from Millie.
“I’m going, I’m going,” Raul had said with a chuckle. “Shall I take the boy with me?”
“Yes!” said Oliver.
“Not yet!” said Claire.
“Go!” said Patricia.
After which, another hour or so passed in a flurry of flowers and place settings and the pronunciation of words liketravesseiros,until finally, the bride took her leave to begin her private preparations and Claire was able to collapse on the chair opposite her compatriots.
“Remind me to thank Joe,” Ember had said with a little raise of her brows, “for the simplicity of our own vows.”
“It isn’t so bad,” Dot had protested. “I had a wedding with quite a lot of flowers and fluff myself, didn’t I?”
“Yours had the good sense to be in London,” Ember reminded her. “Millie’s too.”
Then, as though they had all just realized that she, too, was married, the three of them turned in tandem to stare at Claire.
She made a face rather than acknowledge it.
“Well, but you eloped, didn’t you?” Ember continued as though Claire had not only participated in the conversation, but welcomed further comment. “What did that look like?”
“It looked like a couple of idiots on the bow of a ship,” Claire snapped, “making decisions they hadn’t thought through.”
“A ship!” Millie repeated, her dark eyes widening. “You never told me that. You wed on the Channel? Not in Paris?”
“On a ship,” Claire repeated, hating how vividly it rose into her mind, how easily she could smell the foggy steam and the low mist on the air, how quickly she could recall the endless spray of stars above them, haloed by a crescent moon. “At night.”
“At night!” Ember put in, clearly delighted.
