Careful hands set the last of the pearl beads amidst the curls atop Clara’s head. Clara watched in the reflection of her mirror while Jocelyn did her artful best.
“You look like a princess,” Emilia said.She sat on a bench beside the dressing table, beautiful in a raw silk blue dress.
“A princess?” Jocelyn snorted with derision. “A queen. A goddess.”
Clara stood and gazed down at the result of hours of preparation. She did look like a goddess in this exquisite white dress. It had silk embroidery that spiraled around her body and pearl beads that glistened. She certainly felt like one.
Sunlight from the dressing room window caught those beads and made them shine with subtle richness. She had worried a late July date might mean rain would mar the wedding. Instead when Emilia rushed in to wake her at dawn today, bright light and a delicious breeze greeted her yawns and Emilia’s giggles.
She had not slept well. She supposed no bride did the night before her wedding. Of course most brides were nervous about some things, such as the wedding night, that Clara had no cause to fear. Other worries preyed on her instead. Surprising ones, considering how secure she believed her decisions to be.
“I suppose I am ready,” Clara said while she struggled to conquer her nervousness. “I trust my groom is too.”
“He is below already, with his mother,” Emilia reported.
“Is Grandmamma with them?”
Emilia made a long face. “She is still in her apartment.”
“We cannot have that.” Clara aimed for the door. She had returned to Gifford House at her grandmother’s request, so she would be married from the family home. She had allowed Grandmamma to plan the wedding breakfast. She had tried her best to distract everyone who lived here from the pending doom of that article being published. She had even held back the next edition ofParnassusso that the scandal would not follow them all into the church.
If it meant that a few people wondered about the logic of this match, so be it. Soon enough they would probably wonder all the more anyway.
She paused outside her grandmother’s apartment, as she always did, before she knocked. This door never failed to evoke memories of that whipping years ago. She wondered if they ever would fade away.
She found her grandmother inside, but not in the dressing room. Rather she sat on a chair in her bedchamber, bewigged and ready, draped in the pale lavender dress she had commissioned for the occasion. She was reading. Clara recognized the pages in her grandmother’s hand.
Clara said nothing, but waited for the thunder to sound.
Her grandmother set aside the unbound copy ofParnassus,and closed her eyes. “I suppose it is as generous as I could expect. It does not damn me, at least. Thank you for begging an early copy off the publisher so I might know what I face.”
Clara waited a few moments before speaking. “You appear ready to leave. Shall we go down?”
Some of the old flint entered her grandmother’s eyes. “Isshehere?”
“If you mean the Dowager Duchess of Stratton, I was told that she is.”
Her grandmother cocked her head toward the table holding the journal. “Did she receive one too?”
“Adam did. I expect he shared it with her.”
That old, knowing chortle emerged, with its implications of suppressed scorn. “Oh, she is going to enjoy today, I am sure.”
“Her son marries today, so I hope she enjoys it. I hope you do too, as much as you can. You planned it, after all. It has your mark on it, and your style.”
“How many copies of that journal do you think are already circulating?”
“Only the two given to me, I am sure. It is not all around town yet, Grandmamma. I was told even my receiving two advanced copies was a very rare favor.”
Her grandmother’s posture relaxed, her body falling in on itself. Then, as if buffeted by a sudden wind, it straightened into the formidable body that Clara knew so well. Pale eyes examined her sharply.
“A few too many pearl beads for daytime, Clara.”
“Probably.” After so many months of deprivation, she had been drunk at the dressmaker, draper and warehouse. The wonder was that in the end this dress appeared as appropriate as it did.
“Definitely. However, you appear lovely, and more than his match. I wish--- I wish your father could see you, my dear.”
Grief drummed through Clara. Memories rushed. Her eyes filmed. Her grandmother’s gaze met hers, equally tearful.
