The older woman leaned a bit forward. “Does the major wish it?” she asked in Italian.
“Sì,” Nora said, suppressing doubt.He makes a pretense of it anyway. She refused to let guilt at forcing his hand get in the way. “Sì, yes,” she repeated.
Two days later, she stood alone, dressed in a manner she wouldn’t have contemplated just one month before, and fretted. Her soon-to-be husband failed to appear.
Her dress, a frothy gown of new blue muslin, woven with an open check and decorated with white-on-white embroidered cuffs flattered her. The bonnet she impulsively bought, thinking it might please him, the one that sported lace and blue ribbons, felt heavy on her head. Delight in her appearance eroded moment by moment. She wondered if she had been a fool.
Isabella skipped across the worn stone paving and put her arms around Nora’s knees. “Uncle Jamie, he is late.”
Nora smiled down at her. “Yes, he is.”A full half hour late. Where is the blasted man?
The priest complained to Mother Margarita in rapid Italian, accompanied by dramatic hand gestures that made the lace cuffs of his white robe flap around him and the green stole he wore over the top rise and fall.
Mother, who had arranged the hasty ceremony, spoke sternly to the priest and cast a sympathetic eye on Nora. She was to be the sole witness. Nora didn’t permit herself to think about how Mother, or her mysterious cousin Barnabas, had arranged it so quickly, how the priest may have been convinced to conduct it, or who had the power to order it.
“He will come,” the older woman said.
Nora forced a smile. “Of course,” she replied.
She wished she could sink into the ancient paving stones of the floor. Instead, she leaned over and straightened Isabella’s hair bow for the fourth time.
“I am pretty,” Isabella announced.
“You are ravishing,” a voice responded from the doorway.
Nora’s breath stuck in her throat. Jamie stood framed in yellow sunlight.The wretch!To Nora’s eyes he looked impossibly handsome in a new suit of blue lightweight fabric and a new hat set at a rakish angle.
Beams of colored light streamed across the ancient pavement of the side chapel where she waited. Jamie smiled at her and walked confidently through the rainbows of light without taking his eyes from her, his smile growing as he came.
“You changed your hair,” he said.
She had. She had thought it nonsense, really, but if Nora was getting married, even a masquerade of a marriage, she would do it looking her best.
“So did you,” she said. He had shaved and cut his hair. She suspected he took time with his appearance for her sake, and that had made him late.It is impossible to stay angry with this man,she thought.
“I like it. I like the dress, too,” he went on.
“Me, too, Uncle Jamie,” Isabella insisted.
“Especially you, Angel,” he said, chucking Isabella on the chin but keeping his eyes on Nora.
They grinned at one another like fools. Nora sent a silent prayer of thanks that she had given in to impulse and bought the dress.The admiration in Jamie’s eyes matters,she realized.It matters very much.
The priest hurried forward and gestured them to the front of the marble altar and began to pray. Jamie took her hand but didn’t translate. Instead, he looked somber, listening to every word. The priest spoke to Jamie in Italian and looked at him expectantly.
“Sì, con la grazia di Dio, lo voglio,” Jamie said.
The priest turned to her with the same question. He waited, expecting her reply. She darted a panicked glance at Jamie.
“Repeat what I said,” he whispered. “It means ‘Yes, I do by the grace of God.’”
She did, hoping she hadn’t said anything foolish. She must not have because the priest continued.
Jamie slipped a slim gold band on her left hand.Where did he get this?Her mind wouldn’t process the thought. I have nothing for him. Does that matter?
The ceremony ended as abruptly as it had begun. Jamie turned and looked down at her. Her breath became erratic, and panic came over her at the sight of the well-dressed gentleman with newly groomed brown curls falling down on his forehead dressed like a prosperous solicitor or merchant.
I married a complete stranger,she thought.What happened to my shabby major?
