It was suddenly very quiet.
"Ready to go home?" Ruvon asked.
"Ready."
He bent down and scooped her up.
She made an undignified sound. The skirt of her dress flared and crumpled, and one of her shoes slipped off and landed somewhere on the path, but she did not care.
"Ruvon! I can walk!"
"I know. But I want to carry you. It's tradition."
"Whose? It's not ours."
"So? I like it. We can appropriate it."
"Oh, why not?" She wound her arms around his neck. "I will return for the shoe in the morning."
He carried her up the path, past the bobbing balloons, under theCongratulationsbanner, and over the threshold of his front door. The door swung open under his shoulder, and he kicked it shut behind them with a soft thud and carried her through the entryway.
"Bedroom?" he asked.
She nodded. "Bedroom."
He carried her down the short hallway to the door at the end of it, kicking that door open too, and Arezoo was already laughing softly against his shoulder before she saw what was waiting inside, and then she stopped laughing and just looked.
The bedroom had also been decorated.
Someone had filled the room with flowers. Tall vases of white roses stood on each nightstand. Pink rose petals had beenscattered across the bedspread in the shape of a heart, and on the dresser, a bottle of champagne was nestled in a silver bucket of ice with two crystal flutes beside it. Next to the bucket, a heart-shaped silver tray held heart-shaped chocolates, each one wrapped individually in different colored foil.
Ruvon set her down carefully, and her bare foot, the one without its shoe, found the soft carpet, and the other foot, still in its remaining heel, balanced unevenly until she reached down and pulled it off.
She set it beside her on the floor and stood there in her wedding dress.
"Whoever did this went to so much trouble," she said. "Any idea who it was?"
"No clue."
She turned to face him and realized that the moment had arrived.
The dress, that beautiful wedding gown made for a princess, had done its job, and it was time to take it off.
"I need help getting out of this," she said. "The lace is so delicate, and I don't want to tear anything."
"I'll be very careful."
"There are tiny pearl buttons all the way down the back. A ridiculous number of them. It took Donya over five minutes to button all of them."
"I will count them with utmost patience."
He stepped behind her, and she felt his hands settle at the small of her back, move up her spine, and then she felt the first small button at the top of her dress slip free.
"There," he said softly. "That was the first one."
He worked down the line of buttons, releasing them carefully one at a time, and the bodice loosened in stages.
Arezoo looked down at the skirt that was pooling around her feet and realized with horror how filthy the hem was.
