They walked slowly down the aisle. New York’s Grace Church’s pews were filled with the elite of theFour Hundred. Their family was back in its place at the height of society. The chapel was decorated with more white flowers than a garden and green palms that were forty feet high.
She listened to the choir sing:
O perfect Love, all human thought transcending,
Lowly we kneel in prayer before thy throne,
That theirs may be the love which knows no ending,
Whom thou in sacred vow dost join in one.
Cordelia had to purse her lips to stop herself from laughing hysterically. “O Perfect Love” was a perfect farce.
Lord Farnham stood at the front of the chapel next to the bishop. He looked younger, slimmer, and paler than she had expected. Not at all like Stuyvesant. The lord couldn’t be more than few years older than she, and he appeared to be as miserable as she was. His brown hair was slicked back and his face clean-shaven. He wasn’t precisely handsome, but his features weren’t unattractive. As they walked closer, she could see that his eyes were the pale brown of an acorn. They raked over her face and form. He must have liked what he saw, for he offered her a thin-lipped smile. Cordelia could not return it.
What sort of man marries a stranger for money? Someone he has never seen?
A despicable one.
Her father stopped and Cordelia’s heart fell to her feet. The Bishop of New York began the ceremony and his sermon on marriage. Cordelia kept glancing over her shoulder, hoping Stuyvesant had come to help her escape. But he was probably on the other side of the world and she couldn’t escape from who she was. Not from this. Not without ruining her sister and her family’s reputation.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
And then another.
Until a steady stream of tears fell from her eyes.
“Do you, Cordelia Violet Jones, take this man to be thy lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?” the bishop asked.
She looked at her father, who smiled back at her, and then to her mother, who sat in the first row, her face stern. Finally to Edith, who sat beside her mother. Cordelia could do this for Edith.
“I do,” she whispered.
The Bishop of New York asked the pale earl the same question.
He did not hesitate before saying, “I do.”
“Forasmuch as the bride and the groom have consented together in holy matrimony, and have pledged their love and loyalty to each other, and have declared the same by the joining and the giving of rings, by the power vested in me, and as witnessed by friends and family, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
The organist began to play and the choir started to sing “Bind Us Together.”
The earl lifted her veil and leaned in to kiss her briefly, dispassionately on her mouth. His lips were dry and chapped. It was not at all like the magical kisses she’d shared with Stuyvesant. But this man was not her handsome prince. He was a stranger and she was bound to him for the rest of her life.
She tried to breathe in, but there was no air in her lungs. Her corset was so tight. Dropping her bouquet of orchids as her knees buckled, she started to fall. The chapel spun into darkness. Her last thought was that she hoped her exquisite dress wouldn’t get dirty when her body hit the floor.
10
Thomas thought that nothing could be worse than marrying a stranger. He’d been wrong. Attending a wedding reception without a wife was infinitely worse. Standing in the opulent grandeur of the Joneses’ ballroom, he was forced to smile while complete strangers said, “You sly, British dog, snatching her up before she’d even come out.”
He didn’t know that she hadn’t beenout. That he was marrying a girl from the schoolroom or nursery, depending on whom he spoke to. He forced himself to give civil responses and shake hands. Mrs. Jones stood next to him, all smiles, seemingly unconcerned that her daughter was unwell upstairs.
Hiswife.
Cordelia Violet Jones had not been what he expected. He didn’t know what he had expected, but not a beautiful, tear-stained young woman. Mrs. Jones had insisted that he not meet Cordelia before the wedding, and he was too desperate for their money to protest. He felt like a villain in a melodrama taking advantage of an innocent girl. He should have stopped the wedding, or at least paused it, and asked Cordelia what she wanted. But he hadn’t. Shame burned through his soul as he forced his gaze away from her and clenched his fists until his fingernails made crescents on his palm. He made himself think of Ashdown Abbey. Of the people who needed him—of Pen.
He sacrificed himself, and this stranger, for them.
Thomas walked away from his mother-in-law and took a flute of champagne from a servant’s tray. He sipped it, but it didn’t calm the roiling in his stomach. He heard his new father-in-law laugh across the crowded ballroom. Neither of her parents seemed particularly concerned that their daughter had fainted and had remained unconscious for several minutes.
