Charles didn’t mind as she continued telling him about the French side of her family, and how she’d become The Honorable Miss Rare-Foure the previous year when her father also inherited the barony.
In fact, as they faced forward toward the distant horizon, he was so wrapped in their love, he could no longer feel even a hint of the gusting breeze. And despite the pungent sea air that had filled his nostrils all morning, now all he could smell was her delicate aroma of flowers and citrus.
“Good Lord!” she suddenly declared. “We’re eloping. How exciting!
He grinned at her.
“Your dimple,” she exclaimed. “It’s the first time I’ve seen it in days, and I have missed it so.”
“I have missed you so,” he told her. “Up until now, I’ve been a rather boring person, but I hope this is just the first of a lifetime of adventures.”
“I don’t see why not,” she said sounding so practical about such a matter, he had to laugh again.
“No, I don’t see why not either.”
Epilogue
Charlotte had been incorrect in her assumption her parents wouldn’t mind missing their youngest daughter’s wedding. As soon as a telegram was sent from Paris to London and delivered to the Rare-Foure home on Baker Street, one was sent in return and delivered to her grandparents’ home on the Boulevard des Capucines.
“Wait! We’re coming.” Charlotte read the short message aloud over dinner to her father’s parents and to Charles, who then slipped on his glasses to reread it.
“I guess we are not marrying tomorrow after all,” he said.
Instead, they went through the formality of banns being published at the mayoralty of the city in preparation for their civil wedding at City Hall.
Meanwhile, both her grandparents were delighted to chaperone the engaged couple wherever they wished to go. Their first stop was Boucicaut’s multi-floored emporium, Le Bon Marché, since Charlotte had nothing with her except her small traveling bag. In the spacious department store, Charles insisted she let him buy her a new wardrobe, not simply for the duration of their stay before the wedding, but also a trousseau befitting a viscountess for their wedding trip.
Naturally, they couldn’t do all that at the ready-to-wear department of a single shop. Once her parents arrived — surprising her with Beatrice and her husband, too, as well as Waverly as best man — the shopping and eating began in earnest. For the sheer excess of it, they strolled three arcades in one day. Since it was sunny out, the covered shopping malls were not crowded. The sunlight streamed down through the glass overhead onto the flagstones of the oldest of them, the Passage des Panorama.
When they came out, they crossed the Boulevard Montmartre directly into the next row of covered shops at the Passage Jouffroy. When they’d enjoyed every type of shop imaginable, from books to tiny teacups to parasols, Felicity declared herself famished. After leading them in a lively debate whether to eat at Le Grand Véfour or her favorite, Le Procope, Charlotte’s mother settled for the former as it was closer to the last arcade they intended to visit. Yet immediately after the sumptuous meal, they couldn’t resume shopping without a stop at Stohrer’s.
“Mother’s beloved patisserie,” Charlotte told Charles, leaning in as she often did, just to breathe in his beloved scent. “It’s supposed to be the oldest one in Paris, too. If we decide to serve anything other than beverages and our sweets upstairs at Rare Confectionery, we will want to find someone who can make pastries like these.”
Then she paused before adding, “If you try to order anything other than a rum baba, Mother will make you also buy a rum baba. Everyone must have one who goes to Stohrer’s, or so she thinks.”
“What do you think?” he asked her.
“My favorite are the eclairs, which I may get, as well as a—”
“Rum baba,” he supplied.
“Precisely so. You will get along well with my family.”
They ended their day at the third arcade, the Passage Verdeau with its magnificent pitched glass ceiling and timber shopfronts.
“This was the perfect day,” Charlotte proclaimed later when they had returned to her grandparents’ spacious apartment on the wide, tree-lined boulevard. Sitting in the garden behind it, she added, “The only thing that would have made it better was the presence of Amity and her duke.”
“So, you think you can havemorethan perfect?” Beatrice asked.
Charlotte looked at Charles who smiled back, showing his dimple. “Definitely,” she said.
A week later, Charles and Charlotte were married at the Hotel de Ville, still undergoing its finishing touches after being burned in 1871, but already looking extremely majestic.
“Even the name sounds so much grander than calling it merely City Hall,” Charlotte whispered as they stood on the gorgeous red carpet before Monsieur Moreau, mayor of the 19th arrondissement in Paris.
Naturally, officiating in French, he read from a book, while bureaucrats remained seated on either side of him. As witnesses, she supposed. Behind her, her family and Lord Waverly were seated, and behind them were her grandparents’ friends, standing between the mural-clad walls depicting the countryside, reminding Charlotte of her grandparents’ farm outside the city.
“I hope you’re not disappointed,” she said. “It’s not St. George’s, but it’s a fine building nonetheless.”
