“You do not have to convince us,” Eleanor said. “We are not the ones you are marrying.”
Anne’s jaw tightened slightly. “I am not trying to convince anyone.”
“No,” Eleanor agreed. “You are trying not to feel anything about it.”
Margaret looked between them, then sighed softly. “I will say this as plainly as I can before Eleanor turns this into something unnecessarily profound.” She folded her hands in front of her. “You are marrying a man the entire county has opinions about.”
“I am aware,” Anne said.
“And you have known him for what, days?” Margaret continued.
“Long enough to know that he will take care of me,” Anne replied evenly.
Margaret exhaled and stepped to the side, smoothing a crease in Anne’s sleeve that did not exist.
“I only care that you are not walking into this thinking it will remain exactly as it is now,” she said more quietly. “People change once the vows are said, sometimes before they even finish speaking.”
“Dorian Blackwood is not a surprise I am unprepared for. Should it change suddenly, I will be ready for it. Besides, it is not as though we are to spend much time together. He will have his life, and I will have mine.”
“And yet you say that as though you are convincing yourself more than us.”
Anne did not answer immediately. The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of everything she had not said since her father died, everything she had learned to keep contained because there had been no room for it elsewhere.
He was supposed to be with her on her wedding day, and he was not.
“It is a practical match,” she said again, quieter. “It is necessary. That is all it needs to be.”
Margaret looked at her for a long moment, then gave a small, resigned smile.
“Then at the very least,” she said, in a more familiar teasing tone, “try not to look as though you are walking to your own execution. It sets the wrong tone.”
Eleanor’s mouth curved faintly. “Or it sets the correct one, depending on how one views marriage.”
“Eleanor,” Margaret warned lightly.
“I am only saying.” Eleanor shrugged.
Anne’s gaze shifted briefly to the chapel doors again. Beyond them, the congregation awaited, and somewhere among them stood her future husband. The awareness of that alone was enough to unsettle her, though she refused to accept it.
“I am fine,” she said, quieter than before.
She was uncertain who she was speaking to when she said it, for in her heart she knew that she was convincing herself too.
The chapel doors opened, at last. Despite what she had expected, once she began to walk, she found that it was far easier than she had thought it would be.
The Duke stood at the altar, waiting. He had clearly learned how to hold himself steady in rooms full of expectation long ago. The chapel light fell across the dark line of his coat and the untamed ends of his hair, which refused to sit as neatly as the occasion demanded.
Anne spotted Lord Harrow standing beside him, looking entirely too comfortable for a man attending his friend’s wedding. Heleaned slightly toward Dorian, his hands loosely clasped behind his back, his expression bright with open amusement.
She could not quite make out what they were saying, as she was not close enough to hear them, but it was evident that Lord Harrow was enjoying the discussion more than the two. It was almost entertaining, in a way, as the Duke had always been known as the charismatic man who smiled while others felt a certain discomfort.
It was a good distraction as she walked down the aisle.
“You are nervous,” she heard Lord Harrow remark.
“I am not.”
Before they could say anything further, Lord Harrow’s attention shifted past him.
