“Hm,” Augusta said, a part of her curious as to what the negotiation side of her nuptials looked like. However, Reginald would never tell her, so she kept her curiosity to herself.
“So,” Reginald said, a small smile creeping onto his face. “A special license, hm? It must have been a truly exceptional ball last night.”
Augusta wrinkled her nose. “Oh, don’t be gauche, Reginald. You have gotten what you wanted, now be respectable and gloat in private.”
That got a laugh from her brother. The laughter, however, died down later that afternoon, as both Augusta and her brother waited on Sebastian’s arrival. With the task of telling Reginald now complete, Augusta gave herself over to worry.
There was always the possibility that her betrothed would have changed his mind. After all, it was one thing to say that he loved her despite her condition whilst facing the person in the romance of the dark night. It was another to go through with it in the light of day.
The seconds ticked away on the grandfather clock in the drawing room as the duo sat and waited. Tea sandwiches sat untouched between them.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
Finally, just past one, the butler gave them the announcement that both had been waiting for; Lord Brightwater had arrived.Augusta and Reginald stood stiffly.
Augusta’s heart pitter-pattered against her chest as she awaited her fiance’s appearance in the doorway. When he stepped forth, looking disheveled and as though he had been awake all night, she still thought to herself that he was the handsomest man in the world.
He walked up to them with papers in his hands.
“Browning,” he said to Reginald with a nod.
The two men shared a serious look that Augusta did not understand. She wondered briefly if their relationship had suffered any strain from the past few weeks. While Reginald seemed in favor of the marriage, it could not be easy to navigate his friend courting his sister. Likely, she was witnessing the aftermath of such a struggle.
When Sebastian looked at her, even the redness in his eyes and the way his blond hair stood on end appeared pleasant to her.
“Augusta,” he said in a low timbre.
A thrill went through her, and she felt terribly silly. It was only her name, for goodness sake.
But oh, did it sound so nice coming from his lips.
He held up the papers in his hand. “I have received the special license. We are free to marry as soon as we would like.”
Before Augusta could say anything, Reginald nodded. “I suspect the sooner, the better. Am I correct?” He looked to Augusta for confirmation.
“Yes,” she said, perhaps a bit too fast if Reginald’s knowing smile was anything to go by. She was going to throttle him, once she stopped being so damned flustered and…well, happy. “Yes, I do believe soon would be lovely. I should like for it to be small, anyhow, so there ought to be less planning tobe done.”
She looked then at Sebastian, wondering if he would blanch against a small wedding. Her comment did not seem to affect him at all. He merely said, “How does Wednesday evening sound?”
“Three days?” Augusta said, slightly mystified at just how soon that was. Then again, she had just said that sooner would please her. Her fiance was only trying to meet her own wishes. “Erm, yes. Wednesday evening it shall be.”
“A trousseau,” Reginald said suddenly. “You will need one. I will call for Miss Greene to accompany you to the modiste tomorrow. And of course invitations will be sent out - do not worry, we shall keep it small, but there will be some who absolutely must be present, for posterity.”
He went on like that for a bit, laying out the details which Augusta could not wrap her mind around for the life of her. He spoke of carriages to the church and rushed invitations. It was Reginald at his best - preparing the business of love’s many theatrics, ensuring that all went smoothly and everyone was appeased by the display.
It was all happening so fast. She’d said yes only last night, in an instant of passionate falling. Now it was all unfolding without her hand in any of it. It felt as though the whole thing had occurred without her say-so, sans the ‘yes’ she had given to him.
Perhaps, she told herself, this was what love and marriage were supposed to feel like. She had never had either before. Therefore, who was she to say whether or not things were moving at a rapid pace? She only ought to count herself lucky that both Sebastian and Reginald appeared to know what they were doing.
*****
The next three days were such a blur to Augusta that she hardly had a moment to pause and think again on how strange thewhole affair was. Before she knew it, it was Wednesday evening, and she stood in an ivory dress at the altar of the church.
The faces in the pews were many, far more than she had expected or wanted. But that had all been Reginald’s doing. The only face she cared about belonged to her groom.
He was always handsome, but standing in front of her, dressed in his finest suit, his curled hair soft against his fine, strong features…she thought that there was no man better in the world, though logically, of course, that could not be true. Still, she believed it. He smiled at her, and it was so beautiful that she smiled back without having to try.
They had hardly spoken since the drawing room. Augusta had been carted about from place to place, modiste to bakery to dinner and back again, while Reginald and Sebastian had spent much time in her brother’s study, talking.
