“I hope you brought an umbrella,” she whispered, unable to think of anything else to say when one greeted her groom at the threshold of forever.
“I didn’t,” he said apologetically. “Mea culpa.”
It made her smile, an ease settling over her shoulders as the vicar pulled himself up to full height, cracked open his book, and began to recite the opening words to the marriage rite, silencing the harp in the process.
Hattie thought it odd that she could not quite parse the words and their meanings as he spoke. She heard them. She repeated the bits she was meant to and must have understood them because her tongue followed their sounds.
But it was perhaps the first time in her life that she said words and did not listen to them as she did so.
And it was because she could not look away from Elias Selwyn.
She could see his name spelled in the air between them. Could feel the shapes of the syllables as warm and soft as his hands holding her own.
Wasn’t that funny? To keep those words and not the others.
And to not feel any of them as she spoke until at the very end, when she said, “I do.”
And then they spoke the silent language because Elias kissed her. He kissed her in front of all of them, and they cheered as he did so.
It was not like their other kisses.
It was not burning and desperate and dizzying. This was sweet and gentle and somehow refreshing, like a little splash ofwater on the face after one has concentrated too hard for too long on one thing.
When they broke apart, Hattie blinked, and it was as though she could see and hear the world again, as she always had.
And the world was smiling.
It was smiling for one more blissful moment, one more roll of the thunder and flash of light, before it had to come apart again.
“Congratulations, Lady Selwyn,” Elias said in her ear, his hand sliding along hers as his fingers laced through her own.
Before she could respond, the doors were thrown open again, and the storm blew in.
Not the raindrops. Not the light or the sound.
But two people she had not seen in many years. People she’d met the day of the funeral and the burn, a lifetime ago.
Elias tensed immediately next to her, a curse leaving his mouth in a sharp, little whisper.
His mother and stepfather had come.
And their arrival dissipated the rain, the showering pattern ending with an abrupt, howling emptiness.
“Elias!” his mother cried, openly horrified. “Tell us we aren’t too late.”
“‘Too late’?” Elias repeated, deceptively soft, as though his entire body hadn’t tightened against Hattie’s side like a copper coil under too much weight. “To congratulate me?”
“Boy, tell us you did not just wed a scullery maid!” his stepfather said, bristling to his full height. “You are a Selwyn! You are the Selwyn name, for God’s sake!”
They were a handsome pair. A little grayer than she remembered them. He was Wallace and she was Catriona. She remembered the spelling of the name on a letter she’d seen once. With more vowels than sounds. How odd it must have been, she reflected, to have married a man and then his cousin. Did she ever get them confused?
“Ugh, and it’s the simple one as well,” his mother said with a wrinkle of her nose. “At least it isn’t… well…” she said, casting a glance at Libba and Malcolm with a meaningful raise of her thin, black brows.
“Mr. and Mrs. Selwyn,” Mr. Harcourt said, popping up from the middle of the pews like a daisy, hair just as white and disposition just as sunny yellow. “What a pleasant surprise. You’ve unfortunately interrupted the end of the ceremony. Would you care to come and chat with me while we await the procession?”
Wallace Selwyn gave a humorless, bombastic laugh. “Harcourt. Been enjoying sitting on our allowance this last month? You greedy toad.”
Harcourt was still wearing a forced smile, beginning to wedge his way through the crowd to get to the couple.
