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‘Liv hasn’t decided whether to use a horse-drawn carriage, or the vintage car,’ Carly explained with an air of innocence that suggested she knew something. ‘She might even walk to the chapel—’
‘Walk to the chapel?’ That certainly distracted their mother. ‘I very much hope that any daughter of mine would say no to the prospect of walking to her own wedding! Was that Cade’s idea?’ she demanded, eager to pass the blame for such a breach of etiquette, as she saw it, to someone outside her immediate family.
‘Why would walking be a problem?’ Liv said thoughtfully. ‘Would it shock them at the golf club?’
Carly had to hide her face, while their mother’s face grew wistful. ‘Horace still has hopes, you know.’
‘Horace—’ Carly grimaced at Liv ‘—can dream on, I imagine…’
‘You two can smile,’ their mother observed, snapping the catch on her handbag for emphasis, ‘but, if you must know, Horace said you could borrow his car for the wedding, and it’s a very nice sedan car. If you asked him nicely, Olivia, I doubt he’d even charge you for the day’s hire.’
Liv tried her hardest not to smile while telling her mother gently, ‘However I arrive on the day, Mother, I can assure you it will not be in Horace Heptinstall’s nice sedan car.’
‘Are you ready?’ Cade asked Liv on the day of their wedding. Strictly speaking, they shouldn’t even be seeing each other before the ceremony, but on an occasion like this it was unavoidable.
‘No…I’ve changed my mind.’ She shifted anxiously in Cade’s embrace. ‘I just can’t—’
‘Can’t?’
‘I’m scared…’
‘There’s nothing to be scared of. Haven’t we done extreme a thousand times before?’
‘Not like this!’ She clung to him all the tighter. ‘I can’t—’
‘Yes, you can. Don’t you trust me?’
‘You know I—’
Liv’s screams were heard over half the county. And then she recovered sufficiently to open her eyes, at which point she started enjoying herself.
A lot.
‘Where is that girl?’ Mrs Tate demanded tensely, glancing at her wrist-watch for the umpteenth time. ‘Everyone else can be bothered to arrive for the wedding on time, but not my daughter. I hope she isn’t going to let me down a second time…’
Turning around in the pew, Mrs Tate bestowed a hopeful look on Horace, who had just arrived and was making everyone else in the row get up so he could have the best vantage point.
‘More to the point, where’s Cade?’ Carly said, unable to resist a little mischief. ‘I mean, isn’t the groom supposed to be here before the bride?’
‘You’d best worry about your own husband,’ Mrs Tate snapped. ‘I’d like to know why Lorenzo is still outside. Weighing up the talent, I expect, like all those Latin alpha males.’
Fortunately, Carly didn’t have time to stay for the rest of her mother’s lecture, because Lorenzo was beckoning to her from the entrance to the chapel. At his signal Carly took up her position in the aisle. ‘Excuse me, everyone…Could I have your attention for a moment, please?’
A concerned hush fell over the congregation. ‘I think the bride’s here…’ Carly exchanged a loving smile with her husband. ‘So, if you’d all like to follow me, Liv asked most particularly that you’d all be outside to greet her…Cade will be there too,’ she said when an anxious murmur started up.
There was a stampede out of the chapel. Anything out of the ordinary in Branchester was an excuse for a drama, and a Tate wedding had attained a certain notoriety…
By the time Carly brought her mother outside the guests were milling about in a ferment of speculation. ‘What can be going on?’ Mr Tate, who was proudly waiting to escort his second daughter to the altar, demanded, winking at Carly.
‘No need for you to look so pleased with yourself,’ the girls’ mother informed him sharply. ‘Where are they? That’s what I’d like to know…’ Shading her eyes, Mrs Tate stared down the lane.
‘Try looking up, Mother,’ Carly suggested, starting to wave frantically like everyone else.
Mrs Tate gasped.
The bride wore white. A white jumpsuit, to be precise. And, much to Liv’s relief, she was securely attached to the groom. Cade executed the perfect landing, as you might expect from a Lieutenant Colonel of Her Majesty’s Air Services, and a Special Forces padre landed shortly after them. The wedding ceremony had been performed during the skydive, and now the padre would perform the wedding blessing in the chapel.
The moment Cade and Liv landed, Lorenzo and Carly concealed the bridal pair behind a large white cover, giving them the opportunity to exchange rings—and perhaps a kiss.
Definitely a kiss.
‘Are they ever coming out of there?’ Mrs Tate complained.
Liv had chance to strip off her jump suit and don the veil and lacy skirt Carly handed her…not forgetting the fabulous designer shoes in cream satin she had chosen with stratospheric heels.
‘I’d better carry you into church,’ Cade observed dryly, ‘or you’re likely to plant yourself in the grass with those heels.’
There was a great cheer as he swung her into his arms. Cade was in full uniform, which had been brought to the field for him by the adjutant of his regiment, and, if she did say so herself, Liv thought her new husband looked magnificent.
Holding onto her hat with one hand and her eldest grandchild with the other, even Mrs Tate was smiling by the time she hurried after the bride and groom. Well, everyone else was having fun, she reasoned, so why shouldn’t she? All the guests were in party mood and loving every moment of the surprise. And it had to be said the bride seemed particularly flushed…
During the hushed and solemn ceremony it was as if all the good, kind thoughts over the centuries had gathered to bless Liv and Cade in the tiny chapel at Featherstone Hall. Those happy thoughts were echoed by the friends and relatives who had gathered to support them, as well as the health professionals and service men and women who had come to share their dream. The vow Liv made to her new husband was as down to earth as any words of love could be: ‘To love and be loved is the greatest happiness of existence,’ she told Cade.
And everyone reached for a hanky when Lieutenant Colonel Grant told his wife, ‘In as much as love grows in you, so in you beauty grows, for love is the beauty of the soul…’
