“I believe, Miss Martin,” Lady Hallmere told her, “you said it all in the letter you left with Mr. Hatchard a few weeks ago. I appreciate your thanks though I do not need them. I am sorry I spoke rashly a few minutes ago. I would have far preferred it if you had never known. You must certainly not feel beholden to me. That would be absurd. Come along, Joshua. Our presence is de trop here, I believe.”
“Which I tried to tell you a few minutes ago, sweetheart,” he said.
Claudia held out her right hand. Lady Hallmere looked at it, her expression at its haughtiest again, and then placed her own in it.
They shook hands.
“Well,” Joseph said as the other two walked away, “this stage play is full of unexpected twists and turns. But I believe the closing lines are about to be spoken, love, and they are yours. Whatarethey?”
She turned to look fully at him.
“How foolish a notionindependenceis,” she said. “There is no such thing, is there? None of us is ever independent of others. We all need one another.” She stared at him, exasperated. “Do you need me?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And I need you,” she told him. “Oh, Joseph,howI need you! Changing my life into a wholly new course is going to be just as terrifying this time as it was when I was seventeen, I am sure, but if I could do it then when I had lost a love, I can certainly do it now when I have found one. I am going to do it. I am going to marry you.”
He smiled slowly at her.
“And so we come to the epilogue,” he said.
And he went down on one knee and arranged himself in picturesque and deliberately theatrical fashion on the grass, the lake behind him. He possessed himself of one of her hands.
“Claudia, my dearest love,” he said, “will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
She laughed—though actually it came out sounding remarkably like a watery gurgle.
“You look quite absurd,” she said, “and really rather romantic. And impossibly handsome. Oh, of course I will. I have just said so, have I not? Do get up, Joseph. You are going to have grass stains on the knee of your pantaloons.”
“It might as well be both knees, then,” he said. “They will match.”
And he drew her down until they were kneeling face-to-face, their arms about each other.
“Ah, Claudia,” he said, his mouth against hers, “do we dare believe in such happiness?”
“Oh, yes,” she assured him, “we certainly do. I am not giving up a whole career for anything less.”
“No, ma’am,” he agreed, and kissed her.
25
Bath had probably never known such a grand day as thaton which Miss Claudia Martin, owner and headmistress of Miss Martin’s School for Girls, married the Marquess of Attingsborough at Bath Abbey.
There were so many titled people among the guests that one wag was heard to wonder as he waited with a large crowd of other interested persons in the cobbled yard outside the Pump Room for the bride to arrive if the rest of England was empty of titles for the present.
“And nobody would ever miss ’em,” he added, causing a large woman with an even larger basket over one arm to wonder why he had come to watch, then.
All who had any claim to be related to the marquess were on the guest list, of course. So were large numbers of his friends and acquaintances, including all the Bedwyns except Lord and Lady Rannulf, who were in imminent expectation of adding to their family. The Duke of Bewcastle had permitted his duchess to attend with him since Bath was not very far from home and she had been enjoying vigorous good health despite her delicate condition.
Claudia did not fail to see the irony of it all.
Indeed, while Frances’s personal maid, brought to the school for the express purpose of dressing her hair, was in the middle of creating a style that was elegant but not too fussy, she started to laugh and could not stop. The poor maid was forced to pause in her task of forming a cluster of smooth curls to replace the usual simple knot at Claudia’s neck.
Susanna, Frances, and Anne were all crowded into the bedchamber, watching. Eleanor and Lila Walton had already left for the abbey with a neat crocodile of boarders and charity girls, all in their best dresses and on their best behavior. The day pupils would attend with their parents. The nonresident teachers would be there too.
“This is going to be the most absurd marriage ever,” Claudia said between laughs. “I could not have imagined anything more bizarre in my oddest dreams.”
“Absurd,”Susanna said, looking from Anne to Frances. “I suppose itisan apt description. Claudia is going to be married in the presence of a good half of theton.”
