Once I’m in my dress, a footman comes in with a velvet case of royal jewels. I flip open the case to find a pair of diamond drop earrings and a matching necklace. Bram will place a tiara on my head at the altar, as is tradition.
Attached to the jewelry case is a note in Bram’s elegant hand.I cannot wait to be your husband. —Bram.
My heart swells.
I don’t love Bram. I’m honest enough with myself to acknowledge that. But Iwilllove him. In time.
I can picture it so clearly, like love is something I’ve felt before and need to remember how to do again. It’s a ghost I’m chasing around corners, just out of reach.
My mother fastens the final piece of my bridal ensemble, not a veil, but a delicate lace cape, attached at my throat with a ribbon, with a billowing hood over my head. My bouquet is small, a tasteful arrangement of lily of the valley, but I clutch it hard to keep my sweaty hands from shaking.
My mother appears over my shoulder in the mirror and gives me a squeeze. “He’s the luckiest man in England,” she says.
He’s not a man, though, not quite. He’s something else. But I don’t correct her.
I have the same uncanny feeling I had on the day of the Pact Parade, as if I’m looking at myself through a spyglass from the future. The course has already been set, there’s no stopping it now.
Lydia goes to stand with the other bridesmaids, my mother leaves to sit with the crowd, and then it is just my father and me waiting at the side door of the cottage.
Prince Emmett appears in the door, tall and broad-shouldered in his ink-black frock coat. He offers a weak smile. “The processional will begin shortly.” He glances down at my father’s lapel. “You’ve forgotten your boutonniere.”
My father grasps his chest, then mutters “Oh!” and scurries off to retrieve it from the other room, leaving Prince Emmett and me alone.
He drags his eyes from my hem back up to my face and takes a strange, abbreviated breath. I don’t know him well enough tounderstand the expression on his face, but something about it makes my ribs ache.
“I’m sorry we haven’t gotten the chance to get to know each other better,” I offer, because it seems the polite thing to say.
“We’ll have all the time in the world now that you’re to be my sister-in-law.”
“True,” I reply, though I doubt the prince has any intention of sticking around Kensington Palace, not when he’s been absent all season.
“Do you love him?” he asks me.
I blink in shock.
He frowns. “I’m sorry, that was rude of me.”
“Have you ever been in love?” I ask in return. I don’t know what makes me say it.
He nods slowly, like it pains him. “Just once.”
“What did it feel like?”
He thinks for a moment, his eyes boring into mine all the while. “Like getting run over by a carriage.”
“Hmm.” I look down at my bouquet, unable to stand the force of his eye contact. “I wouldn’t know what that feels like.”
Emmett huffs out a laugh but doesn’t smile. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”
My father bursts back into the room, his boutonniere crooked. Prince Emmett straightens it for him while my father mutters something about forgetting his head if it wasn’t attached to his neck.
Hundreds of chairs have been set around the long, rectangular pool in the sunken garden. The aisle has been built on a platform over the water. At the far end is the altar, crawling with a rainbow of flowers.
It’s a perfect evening here on the longest day of the year, and the sun makes sure to give us all a show. It flashes golden and pink, setting rainbows off the jewels around the necks and silk gowns of all of London’s high society. This is the event of the century, and I am the star.
When the sky turns purple and the music from the full orchestra swells, my father squeezes my hand. “There’s still time to run,” he jokes. But there isn’t. Not really.
I run my tongue over the smooth gap in my gum where my molar used to be, and I step out onto the aisle.
