What if someone spoke up during that dreaded silence after the vicar had asked if anyone knew of any impediment to the marriage?
What if his tongue tied itself in knots?
What if he dropped the ring?
What if Raycroft had forgotten to bring it?
“Do you have the ring?” he whispered out of the side of his mouth.
“I do,” Raycroft whispered back with smirking complacency—though he had been just as much of a wreck two months ago when Peter had beenhisbest man. “Just as I did when you asked five minutes ago.”
What if she saidI don’tinstead ofI do? Or was thatI won’tandI will? He could not for the life of him remember what the correct wording was. He must listenverycarefully to the vicar when the time came.
What if?…
Oh, Lord.
And then there was a distinct swell in the hushed murmurings from the pews behind, and he guessed that Susanna must have arrived with Colonel Osbourne. And then he was sure of it as he looked up at the vicar and the Reverend Clapton, who was celebrating the nuptial service with him, and saw that the latter was beaming with grandfatherly pride as his eyes focused on someone at the back of the church.
Peter stood and turned as the organ began to play.
And there she was.
Finally the phrase made perfect sense to him.
She was dressed from head to toe in delicate ivory, her gown fine lace over satin, her bonnet covered with lace, one layer of which covered her face. She looked small, almost fragile, beside her large grandfather with his erect military bearing. She also looked incredibly lovely. And no bonnet or layer of lace could obscure those bright golden-red curls.
As she came closer, he could see her face and her eyes. They were looking back into his own, huge with anxiety and perhaps wonder and—oh, yes, and definitely with love.
Ah, Susanna.
Even now he could not quite believe that they had overcome the odds to reach this moment.
He realized that he had been gazing back, an identical look on his own face. But no one was going to speak during that moment of silence, and no one was going to drop the ring, and Raycroftdidhave it with him. His tongue would remain unknotted, and she would sayI doorI will,whichever it was.
All was well.
He smiled slowly at her and felt such a welling of happiness that it almost threatened to overwhelm him.
He smiled, and suddenly the sunshine shone as brightly inside the church as it did outside.
But he looked so much like the man who had dazzled and terrified her on the lane from Barclay Court almost exactly a year ago that she marveled how a stranger could become the very beat of her heart in so short a time. And this time it did not matter that he was ViscountWhitleaf. It was a name, a title, that she would share in a few minutes’ time.
He was dressed elegantly in black and cream and white.
There surely could be no more handsome man in the world.
Her inexplicable terror vanished.
She had wept in her grandmother’s arms early in the morning but had been unable to explain even to herself why she did so. Grandmama had said it was because she was in love, that if she were marrying for any other reason, she would do so with steely calm. She had blown her nose and laughed.
But the terror had remained, and it had been very difficult to stay dry-eyed when Anne and Frances came to her dressing room to hug her, and very nearly impossible when Claudia had arrived and held her close for surely a whole minute before releasing her.
“Susanna,” she had said, “I found it difficult to let Frances and Anne go—they were and are dear friends. But you are more than a friend. You came to me as a bewildered, sullen, unhappy girl, and I loved you from the first moment, well before your true nature shone through. Iwould notlet you go to any man who was unworthy of you or to anyone you did not love with all your heart. Though what I would do to stop you I do not know.”
She had laughed and stepped back and dried her eyes.
“Ah,” she had said, “why did I neglect to notice that all three of you were young, lovely women? If Ihadnoticed, I would not have befriended any of you in a million years. I would have remained aloof.”
