She tried to pull a face, but she was laughing—that high, lilting laughter he so loved winding around him like a warm quilt. “We’re getting married!” he exclaimed.
“We’re getting married!” she agreed, and he whooped and picked her up and twirled her around. As he set her down, he said, “Do you remember when you used to read novels in trees?”
“I do indeed. In fact, I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about those novels.”
“In what way?”
“Well, I’d been thinking how real life is generally very unlike novels, but now I may have to revise that opinion.”
“How so?”
“Well, I don’t want to seem overconfident, but I believe I am about to marry an earl and live happily ever after?”
“You are indeed.”
“Not that I care about the earl part, so perhaps it’s better said that I am about to marry the person I love and admire most in the world and live happily ever after.”
Oh, his heart. It was possible he wasn’t going to survive this day. Well, at least he would die perfectly happy, sure of the love of both his mother and his . . . Clem.
He swallowed a lump in his throat. “I think we ought to go find a tree and climb up it. What do you say?”
She smiled, but very wickedly. “I say yes, but only if we may anticipate our marriage vows at the base of it first.”
20
After the End
In novels, the happily ever after was generally the wedding. The heroine married the hero, and that was that.
Clementine had never cared much for the idea of a wedding, and that was understating it entirely.
Which wasn’t to say she hadn’t enjoyed hers. Allowing Olive to coo and fuss over her, to adorn her and generally treat her like a beloved doll had been rather enjoyable, once she surrendered to it.
And standing at the front of the chapel in Chiddington three weeks and two days after her visit to Mollybrook—Archie had spoken to her father and they’d had the banns called immediately after their reunion—had been surprisingly sentimental. There had been a moment, when she looked out into the pews to see the small but beloved crowd of guests, when she almost wept.
Fatherdidweep.
Which, ironically, was what saved her from having to. In fact, it made her want tolaugh. It did Olive, too, judging from the merry look her sister shot her at the sound of her father’s first sob. Olive was wearing that ridiculous hat they’d had made to entrap the fictional Mr. Ozymandias Macduff. It featured not one but two Scottish crossbills, handsome black-and-red birds the milliner had managed to make almost alarmingly lifelike, and as Olive shook her head to stave off laughter, Clementine could almost believe one or both of them might take flight.
The wedding breakfast had been pleasant. Archie had seen to it that there was plenty she could eat. In fact, she could eat everything except a ham that he had made sure was placed at the far end of the table from her—and she noticed he didn’t eat any of it, either. Archie’s mother wasn’t lucid during the meal, but she was calm and content, and Lord Marsden and Miss Brown took especial care of her.
But for Clementine, the real happy ending came that evening. She changed out of her wedding finery, donned her favorite blue dress and yellow shawl, and made her way outside.
“Lady Harcourt!” Lord Featherfinch called. “Huzzah!” She tried to tell him and Lord Marsden, who were scrambling to their feet, not to get up on her account.
Archie, by contrast, did not get up. He merely laid on the carpet they’d spread out under the big beech tree and gazed up at her with love that was so plain, and looked so long-standing, that she marveled again that she hadn’t seen it before. They really had been daft, the pair of them.
“May I make you a plate?” Lord Marsden asked. Archie had ordered up a vegetarian picnic dinner for them and their friends, complete with the pears everyone loved.
“I still can’t believe you’re spending your wedding night with us!” Olive exclaimed.
“Come now,” Archie, finally coming to seated, said. “It’s just dinner.” He shot Clementine an alarmed look. “Itisjust dinner, yes?”
“Yes,” she said laughingly. And to Olive, she added, “I couldn’t imagine anything I wanted to do more this evening than to dine al fresco at Mollybrook with my sister and my friends.”
Everyone made murmurs of appreciation and agreement.
“Olive,” said Archie, “we do have some post-wedding travel plans. We’re leaving next month for Italy.”
