So, kindness and warmth. Gratitude. Those were her weapons, and she could deploy them in spades when given the opportunity, and a place like the Cotswolds offered more opportunities than most.
The people knew her face from the harvest festivals and the holiday lights and the maypole and the great picnic the parish put on every summer. The wedding would finally cement her into local memory, she thought. The spectacle of it all, the grandeur of the ceremony and the banquet that would follow, would showcase all she had become as their countess.
This year, after the hubbub of the wedding, there was another large event she’d finally get a chance to oversee as the countess. That event, a series of sporting games, was brimming just on the horizon, right after the wedding.
She hadn’t been able to attend when Oliver was still very small and she was still learning her way around her new post, but this was the year.
She’d be spending a couple of weeks in Chipping Camden for it. It would be an excuse to remove herself and Oliver from Crooked Nook, a blessing if Freddy hadn’t yet departed. Surely their absence would activate his boredom and he’d go back to London then, without any victims in his purview.
Surely.
She stood by the doors as they were thrown open and climbed onto the little pulpit box near the mailbox to announce that the guests could come inside. The scent of night-blooming flowers and orange blossoms tumbled out of the nave, drawing in the villagers to their long-awaited spectacle.
“Oh, my lady!” said the miller’s wife. “Oh, you look very fine!”
“Where is the young master?” asked her husband, hovering by the door as people filed around him. “Where is little Oliver?”
“He wished to travel with the rest of the men,” Claire said with a twist of her lips. “I suppose he is one of them, after all.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” said the wife. “When my sons stopped clinging to my hand, I had a full day of crying, each and every time.”
“She did,” confirmed the miller, kissing her cheek, “but they all come back to their mothers again, in the end. I still do, don’t I, Agnes?”
“Ugh,” said the miller’s wife with a frown. “We’ll see you inside, my lady.”
As they walked away, Claire saw them whisper to each other, saw them smile like a pair who had always been in love. She saw them clasp hands.
She did not sigh.
She followed them all into the church and made sure the presentation was correct, that the aisle was shining, that the flowers were thriving. She looked at the family pew she would be sitting upon and decided that it was just a bench, just a bit of wood, and she could sit there alone just now or later with Freddy and it would make very little difference.
It was only a pew.
She glanced up at a sudden burst of sound near the door, a sure sign that the men had arrived. Were they reacting to the movement of the wedding? To little Oliver looking so very handsome in his sash? Surely it wasn’t …
“It’s the earl!” the miller’s wife exclaimed, gripping her husband’s arm. “It’s young Freddy! Oh, my love, let’s go greet him. I’ve missed him so.”
The miller glanced over his shoulder at Claire with a curious raise of his brows. He followed his wife, whispering something to her. His lips moved around a word that looked suspiciously likereconciled.
This time she did sigh.
The men entered in a line with Dom Raul at the head and Freddy just behind him, holding Oliver’s hand.
“Ah, my Lady Bentley,” said Dom Raul upon reaching her. “You must wish me good fortune.”
“You do not need good fortune,” Claire replied with a smile as he kissed her hand. “You will soon have something even better.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “My Patricia.”
The pews filled quickly after that, with Freddy and Oliver staying near the doors to greet arrivals with wide smiles and a lot of palm pressing.
The bride would come last, of course. The player she had chosen to attend the pianoforte had already begun to play from the platform in the sanctuary, filling the space with delicate notes that ushered in the remainder of the twilight and delivered them past the dusk.
A deacon arrived to start lighting the candles that lined the aisle, casting vibrant, dancing shadows on the blue runner that had been laid down for Patricia’s arrival.
Claire wondered if she could have had a wedding like this, if she’d made different choices. This was something akin to what she’d imagined as a girl. It had all the magic and beauty of her fantasies, all the power and hope wrapped into something the world could see and feel. Her heart stirred, anticipating howbeautiful Patricia would look as she floated down this aisleway, and she smiled gently as her little boy glanced over at her, meeting her eyes from across the church, and waved.
She held her hand up in return.
