“Good news?” Mrs McConnor asked.
“The very best.” Serena slipped the letter into the small reticule she would carry with her today. “A reminder that I am not so alone as I sometimes think.”
“You are not alone at all, mis—my lady. And you never shall be again.”
My lady.The title sounded strange to Serena’s ears—unfamiliar, yet not unwelcome. She supposed she would grow accustomed to it in time, as she would grow accustomed to many things: the grandeur of the main house, the deference of servants, the quiet weight of a title she had never expected to bear.
But she would never grow accustomed to all of Nathaniel. Of that she was certain. He would always surprise her, always challenge her, always make her heart quicken when he entered a room.
Some things, she suspected, were not meant to become ordinary.
“It is time,” Mrs McConnor said gently. “His lordship is waiting.”
Serena took one last look at herself in the mirror—at the woman she had become, and the woman she was still becoming—and smiled.
“Then let us not keep him waiting any longer.”
***
The chapel at Greystone Hall was small and ancient, its stone walls worn smooth by centuries of prayers and promises.
Serena paused at the threshold, her hand resting upon the arm of Morrison, the butler. She had no family to perform the duty—no father, no brother, no uncle to escort her down the aisle. Yet Morrison had been a quiet, constant presence since her arrival at Greystone, steady and unfailingly kind, and when she had asked, he had accepted the honour with solemn dignity that had very nearly undone her.
“Are you ready, my lady?” he asked softly.
Serena looked down the short aisle to where Nathaniel stood waiting.
He was beautiful. There was no other word for it. He wore his finest coat, his cravat tied with uncharacteristic precision, his dark hair neatly combed for once. Yet it was not his appearance that stole her breath—it was his expression. The way he looked at her as though she were the answer to every question he had ever asked. The way his eyes shone, bright with emotion that looked perilously close to tears.
“Ready,” she said.
The walk down the aisle seemed to stretch into both eternity and nothing at all. She was dimly aware of the small congregation—servants who had become friends, a handful of neighbours who had proved more open-minded than expected—but her attention was fixed entirely upon Nathaniel. Upon the smile that curved his lips as she approached. Upon the hand he extended to help her ascend the final step.
“You came,” he murmured, so quietly that only she could hear.
“Did you doubt it?”
“I thought I might wake and discover it was all a dream.”
“If it is,” Serena said softly, “then let us never wake.”
The ceremony was brief and beautiful. They spoke their vows in steady voices, hands clasped between them, eyes never straying from one another’s faces. When the vicar pronounced them husband and wife, Nathaniel’s smile was nothing short of radiant.
“I am your husband now.” He said the word with obvious relish, as though he had been waiting his whole life to speak it.
Serena smiled—she could not help it—and let him lead her back down the aisle, through the crowd of well-wishers, out into the grey morning that had finally, impossibly, begun to brighten.
The sun was breaking through the clouds.
***
The wedding breakfast passed in a blur of toasts and congratulations, of dishes Serena scarcely tasted and conversations she could hardly follow. All she could truly attend to was Nathaniel—his hand warm in hers beneath the table, his thumb tracing idle circles in her palm, his eyes seeking hers across the crowded room with an expression that made her heart flutter.
When at last the celebrations wound down and the final guests departed, Serena found herself alone with her husband for the first time since they had spoken their vows.
“Lady Greystone,” Nathaniel said, testing the title as though it were something precious and unfamiliar. “How does it feel?”
“Strange. Wonderful. Terrifying,” Serena replied with a smile. “All at once.”
