The night before her wedding, Callie woke in the middle of the night to the sound of rain falling, pattering steadily on the window panes and gurgling down the gutters.
It wasn’t the rain that had woken her. It was dreams. Dreams of kisses. Disturbing kisses that woke her in the night, hot and with her nightgown twisted around her.
It was very hard to take a kiss calmly and politely, especially the way Gabriel did it.
She wished he kissed like Rupert.
No, she didn’t.
She didn’t know what she wanted.
Yes, she did. But it wasn’t going to happen. This was going to be a paper marriage, a maneuver, a chess strategy. As soon as Count Anton was defeated, it would be over. They would go their different ways, married but with separate lives.
Would Count Anton ever be defeated?
She slipped out of bed. She should not be dwelling on gloomy things. Just because it was night and raining didn’t mean she had to be dreary, too. She pushed her feet into the too-big slippers she still had from Mrs. Barrow and shuffled to the window. Drawing back the curtains, she looked out.
The rain had softened from its initial heavy downpour. Now it continued in a steady drizzle, making constantly changing rivulets down the windowpane, trickles of water meeting and joining, then splitting again. Like people.
Gabriel would go his own way one day, too. Pure disinterested gallantry would only stretch so far.
The lights of the gas streetlamps glowed through the rain like fuzzy golden haloes glowing in the darkness. The rain dripped from the eaves, picking up the light of the gas lamps like a string of golden pearls.
She glanced at her pearls, sitting on the dressing table where she’d dropped them, and picked them up. They were so long she used to wear them wrapped around her neck several times. Such pure, perfectly graded spheres. She ran them through her fingers, admiring the luster and sheen and feel of them, and remembering.
The first time she’d worn them had been at her sixteenth birthday party. She’d worn them a few days later, at her wedding to the handsome, golden prince, the embodiment of all her lonely dreams.
She hadn’t worn her pearls for years. Not since the day she’d visited Rupert in the woods.
But they were beautiful. She recalled Gabriel’s words,The pearls your father gave you for your sixteenth birthday are not for sale. They are for your daughter, or your granddaughter.
He was right, she decided. It was not Papa’s fault, nor the pearls, that Rupert had not loved her. She would keep them for her future granddaughter. And in the meantime she would wear them again, starting with her wedding tomorrow, a gesture of faith in the future.
Fifteen
Callie took a deep breath and stepped inside the church.
And stopped, horrified.
The church was full. Not standing-room-only full, but more than a hundred people full. Mostly sitting on the groom’s side of the church.
It was supposed to be a small, private ceremony.
Now she had more than a hundred witnesses for what she was about to do. She’d been feeling sick with nerves all morning. Now she started to shake.
The music of the organ swelled. A ripple of anticipation went through the congregation and a hundred faces turned toward her.
She wanted to bolt.
“Come on, Mama.” Her son tugged her hand. Her little boy in his formal suit looked so handsome and earnest and determined. Nicky was giving the bride away.
Tibby, her bridesmaid in blue, stepped forward. “Callie, what’s the matter?” she whispered.
“I can’t do this, not with all these people there,” Callie whispered back.
“Why not? It is the same thing, whether there is one or a hundred people watching,” Nicky said in a reasonable voice.
Callie had to laugh. Men started young at this. Being rational when the problem was emotional. It settled her. In just such a patient voice he’d explained to her that west was where the sun set. When they were standing in the sea at midnight.
