Marianne considered her words carefully, remembering her own wedding night—the terror and exhilaration of giving herself to Adrian completely. “Have you and Timothy discussed... expectations?”
“We have discussed architectural expectations. Room arrangements. Breakfast preferences.” Colour rose in Catherine’s cheeks. “We have discussed breakfast at length. The importance of proper morning sustenance. Toast versus scones.The optimal temperature for tea. We have not discussed... the other matter.”
“Would you speak of it? Discuss it, I mean. With me?”
A quick nod. “Adrian certainly won’t prove useful. He would threaten Timothy, then lock me in a tower until I’m thirty. Or deceased. Whichever comes first.”
“Adrian’s protective instincts aside, what are you nervous about specifically?”
“Everything? Nothing? I cannot say.” She twisted her gloves into hopeless wrinkles. “I know the mechanics. I have read medical texts—do not look at me so; I was curious—and I have heard enough gossip to grasp the principles. But the reality… Timothy is so careful he hardly dares hold my hand without leave. What if he is too careful? What if I am too nervous? What if it is dreadful? What ifIam dreadful?”
“It may be awkward at first,” Marianne said honestly, recalling fevered beginnings where passion outran finesse. “Adrian and I had the advantage of—enthusiasm. But you and Timothy possess what we lacked at first: friendship and understanding. That matters even more than heat.”
“You had passion from the beginning?”
Marianne laughed at the memory of the conservatory and the near combustion of a single touch. “Enough to set glass steaming. But we hadn’t yet learnt trust. You and Timothy have built that—over mathematics and beauty. It is the sounder foundation.”
“What if there is no passion at all? What if we are too cerebral and spend our wedding night discussing the principles of bed construction?”
“Catherine, I have seen how he watches you explain an arch. That is not cerebral. That is a man deeply in love, clinging to propriety. And the way you colour when he calls youdarling? That is not your mind responding.”
They reached Madame Delacroix’s on Bond Street, its elegant windows whispering exclusivity. Madame herself—tiny, decisive, and fond of implying she had dressed queens—swept them into the fitting-room in a flurry of pins and French endearments.
The room was a small temple of mirrors and velvet. Upon the dress-form waited the gown: cream silk with cascades of ruffles that somehow contrived to look like spun moonlight rather than excess.
“Ah, the beautiful bride! And the duchess, glowing with impending motherhood! Come, come, we must see thecréation!It ismagnifique, if I say so myself, which I do!”
“You look like a princess,ma chère,” Marianne murmured when Catherine stepped from behind the screen.
“I look like a wedding cake. A very expensive, very elaborate wedding cake.”
“A beautiful wedding cake. Timothy will forget all about mathematics when he sees you.”
“That seems unlikely. He will probably calculate the volume of ruffles. Actually, I might calculate them myself—it would give me something to focus on during the ceremony besides everyone staring at me.”
Madame Delacroix flew about with pins, tutting gently. “The waist—another inch, yes?La nervositéhas taken your appetite.”
“I forget meals when we are drawing plans,” Catherine confessed. “Yesterday I ate nothing till tea—we were disputing kitchen placement.”
“Kitchen placement!” Madame cried, scandalised. “This is not romance. Romance is flowers, poetry, stolen kisses by moonlight!”
“We had one stolen kiss,” Catherine said. “Adrian almost murdered Timothy over it. There was shouting. And threats with particulars.”
“Ah, protective brothers. They kill romance. So I am told.”
“Adrian has threatened at least five men who showed me attention. Six if you count the curate who asked me to dance at the harvest fête when I was seventeen.”
They were interrupted by the shop bell’s delicate chime, and Lady Weatherby entered with her daughter Emma, both looking perfectly put together despite the threatening rain outside.
“Catherine! How wonderful! And Your Grace, positively blooming! You look like a fertility goddess!”
“I look as though I have swallowed a pumpkin,” Marianne said cheerfully.
“A most becoming pumpkin,” Emma said, settling beside her with the careful grace of someone who’d recently been through pregnancy herself. “How are you feeling? Any odd cravings yet? I desperately desired pickled herring with strawberry jam for three months.”
“That’s revolting,” Catherine said from her pedestal where Madame Delacroix was attacking the hem with pins.
“It was delicious at the time. My poor husband would send servants all over London at midnight searching for herring.” Emma turned to Marianne. “Has Harrowmere been properly attentive?”
