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“I am still hurt,” she told him.

“I should be surprised if you were not.”

“An apology does not put us back where we were in the Park.”

“No.” He left his hand on his own knee. She noticed that he made no attempt to reach for hers. “What would you like me to do?”

“If I wished to postpone Thursday, would you support me, even against your mother’s objections?”

“I would.”

Lydia left the packet where it was until he had gone. Then she took it into the adjoining room. Her mother had set the book face down on her knee. “Thursday?” she asked. Lydia sat beside her before answering. She described what he had said about children, including the part she would have preferred to soften. Her mother listened. When Lydia said that she still meant to marry him, the countess did not embrace her at once, and Lydia was grateful for that. They sat together until the light moved off the carpet.

The wedding was on Thursday at eleven o’clock, at St. George’s in Hanover Square, under a sky the color of dishwater.

Lydia remembered the morning in fragments. Mary, doing her hair with unusual violence. The smell of lavender and starch. Her father waiting in the hall at the foot of the stairs in his best coat, his face arranged into serenity by sheer force of will, and his voice when she came down, saying only, “Well.” Then the carriage, and the wet cobbles, and the sound of the bells coming across the roofs, and Henry’s face in the window of the second carriage, pulling a comic expression of horror for her benefit and being cuffed by Edmund.

“You may still turn back,” her father said, in the porch of the church, while the organ played inside and a crowd of curious onlookers and pigeons watched from the pavement.

“I know.”

“No one would think the less of you.”

“I know, Papa.” She took his arm. “I have spoken to him. I want to go on.”

He looked at her for a moment with an expression she had not seen since she was a child. Then he patted her hand and led her in.

The aisle seemed longer than it had when she attended ordinary services. Her family occupied the front pews; beyond them were the friends invited to witness the marriage. Amelia, Duchess of Ravensmere, caught her eye and smiled. The Duke of Dunhaven gave a small nod. Near the front, the Dowager Duchess sat rigid, her gaze fixed on her son. Lydia was grateful that her father did not hurry her.

And she saw Tristan.

He stood at the altar in a dark blue coat with his hands at his sides. A flower had been pinned to his buttonhole, and he had evidently resisted the temptation to adjust it. His face was grave, and pale under its tan, and so composed that it might have been carved. He did not look at her until she was within a yard. Then his eyes came up and met hers, and something in them moved, fast, like a fish under ice, and was gone.

“Dearly beloved,” said the clergyman.

She heard the words as one hears rain on a roof, a steady sound from a long way off. She said hers when she was told to. Her voice did not shake. She heard his, low and even, promising to have and to hold, and she was so absorbed in the exact quality of the sound that she almost missed the moment when he took her hand. His fingers were warm. They closed around hers with a care that was nearly reverent, and she looked down and saw that they were not entirely steady, and that he had seen her notice it.

The ring went on, cool against her skin. When he released her hand, his thumb passed once over the band, testing that it rested comfortably. She noticed the slight crookedness of a knuckle, the mark of an old injury, and felt a tenderness she was not yet ready to give him without caution.

“Those whom God hath joined together,” said the clergyman.

They knelt for the prayers. Lydia fixed her eyes on the carved edge of the rail and listened. There would be ordinary mornings after this one, disagreements no clergyman could settle, a house she would have to learn to inhabit. Beside her, Tristan bowed his head. For once neither could escape the same solemn promise by making a clever answer.

When the service was over, they went to sign the register. Lydia’s signature looked unusually small beneath the formal particulars of the marriage. Tristan waited until she had set down the pen before offering his arm, and they returned through a murmur of congratulations to the church porch.

Their families paused behind them while a footman opened the carriage. Rain had begun, fine enough to hang in the air. Tristan looked down at her, and his attention moved briefly to her mouth before returning to her eyes.

“May I?” he asked, too quietly for anyone but her to hear.

She could have pretended not to understand. Instead, she inclined her head. He bent to kiss her, and for a moment it was only the lightest pressure of his lips. Then she answered him. His hand tightened beneath hers, and he stayed close for a breath longer than courtesy required. She had spent days guarding herself against his uncertainty. Discovering how easily a single kiss could undo those defenses frightened her almost as much as it pleased her.

He drew back. Rain clung to a loose strand of hair near his temple. Lydia wanted to smooth it away and kept her hand on his sleeve instead. Behind them Henry cleared his throat, and the ordinary business of a wedding resumed.

Tristan guided her toward the waiting carriage. She kept her eyes on the wet step. It was strange to feel both changed and entirely herself, still angry about the passage, still remembering the pressure of his mouth. Marriage had not settled either feeling.

“Your Grace,” said the footman, holding the carriage door.

She had forgotten it was her title too. She stepped up into the carriage, and Tristan followed, and the door closed, and the sound of the bells faded to a hum. They sat side by side in the leather dark, four inches apart, looking straight ahead.