“I cannot introduce you to her,” Blaise said plainly as he fixed his cravat.
“Why not?” Marcus looked genuinely disappointed, and Blaise could not hide his laugh.
“Because she hates you, son.”
* * *
As a widow, Iris had never enjoyed going to church. Society used to whisper and stare at her even there. And her first marriage seemed to haunt every holy experience, too. But today, the church did not feel like a dreadful place. It felt like a room full of breath and life.
She stood at the entrance of the church with Camelia and Margaret flanking her, and Pamela just behind. Her bouquet of daisies was monstrously extravagant, with mismatched petals opened indecently wide, and its scent was thick and heady, just the way she liked it. It meant even more to her that Blaise planned everything and left her to focus only on the dress.
Iris’s dress was a mess of lace and silky tassels. The corset was fully beaded, and the skirt seemed to flow endlessly, trailing behind her.
Sunlight pushed through stained glass in columns of soft color, painting the guests in blue, red, and green as she waited impatiently for her husband-to-be.
“Stop fidgeting,” Camelia hissed under her breath. “You look as if you wish to bolt.”
“I am not fidgeting,” Iris whispered back. “I am adjusting my gloves. They are new.”
“Your fingers are trembling,” Margaret muttered.
“Do stop,” Pamela said, not softly at all. “You are making us nervous.”
“Youall are making me nervous,” Iris said.
But her heart was ridiculously happy, beating far too fast and throwing itself against her ribs at the slightest smile.
“Where is Papa?” Iris asked to distract herself.
“In the front pew,” Camelia said. “Trying not to cry.”
“And failing miserably,” Margaret added drily.
Iris’s mouth tightened with affection. “Of course he is.”
The organist started a tentative phrase, then stopped. Behind her, a priest muttered something like an oath hidden inside a prayer. Out in the nave, there was a collective shuffling as people turned toward the back doors, eager for their first look at the bride.
“You could still run,” Margaret murmured. “If you wish. We would create a distraction. Camelia could faint or say she is having the baby. Or Pamela could pick a fight with some unsuspecting viscount. And I…” She trailed off, apparently running out of useful talents.
“I am not running,” Iris said, surer of herself than she had been in years.
It startled her a little that she meant it so completely. Three months ago, she could hardly believe that she was getting married again. Marriage had been a trap that she had crawled out of through debt and exhaustion. Going back inside had seemed like madness until she met Blaise.
“You are certain?” Camelia asked, for perhaps the fifth time that morning, softer than before.
Iris glanced at her sister. Camelia’s cheeks were flushed, eyes bright, one hand resting protectively over the swell beneath her fashionable gown. The years had turned her from a girl playing at daring into a woman who wore contentment like another jewel at her throat.
“Yes,” Iris said. “I am certain.”
She was certain in ways she had never imagined: in the way Blaise looked at her as if she were some fascinating, disorganized discovery; in the way he did not flinch from her sharpest edges but instead seemed to enjoy cutting himself on them. In the way he sat beside her father at Lempster House last week, listening with serious patience to a rambling story about pea-shoots and snails, as if nothing on earth could be more important.
And in the way he had stood, naked and unguarded, in their dark library and told her he would not save her from his own actions if she insisted on being punished for being a martyr?—
The organ settled at last into a proper prelude.
“They are coming,” Pamela reported, peering unabashedly toward the front of the church. “Marcus looks like a man walking to his execution.”
“Poor thing,” Margaret said. “Do you remember Raph’s face on your wedding day?”
