Juliet capped the whole thing off by reading her wedding present ode again.
Ode to ThreeDuels
One, two three, I challengethee
You did not know but now yousee
Pistols blazing and heart onfire
Willing to perish on a funeralpyre.
“Mind you, Lord Baderston,” Juliet said, as the applause died down, “I’ll have it framed so you can hang it properly.”
“Hang it where?” the dowager said, for some reason appearing alarmed by the idea.
“It might look nice in the great hall,” Viola said, “under the stained-glass windows.”
The dowager gulped down her champagne and held her glass out until it was refilled.
Shortly after, they piled into carriages and trundled their way to Gretna Green. For once nobody, not even Chester, needed to stop for anything.
Mr. Lang joined Viola and Roland’s hands and wrapped them in a silk scarf that had been Viola’s mother’s. In a deep and sonorous voice, he said, “In the joining of hands and the fashion of a knot, so are your lives now bound, one to another. By this cord you are thus bound to your vow.”
He swung the hammer upon the anvil, alerting all in Gretna Green that a new marriage was set to commence.
Roland took Viola in his arms and kissed her. She kissed him back rather enthusiastically, despite so many people being about.
“Come, my love,” Roland said. “Let us fly to this fishing lodge where we are to take our wedding trip.”
“With no chaperone in our carriage,” Viola said.
“And no stopping along the way, I hope.”
“It is said to be four hours away.”
“Four hours,” Roland said. “Just us.”
“We can pull the curtains,” Viola said.
“Gracious,” the earl said, interrupting, “we’d best set off, then.”
And so they did. Viola could not have said in which carriage Miss Mayton ended up riding in. She could not have said what anybody’s arrangements had been outside of her own.
Her own had been rather marvelous. What secrets Bea and Rosalind had kept from her. But then, of course they had, as she did not have the first idea how anybody would explain it. It was not a thing to be explained, but experienced.
The fishing lodge turned out to be a rather large, rambling, and ramshackle sort of place. Neither of them minded it a bit. After taking stock of the accommodations, Roland and Viola promptly took possession of the steward’s cottage, while that fellow helpfully took himself off to relations in the village.
The cottage was made of stone and comprised just one large room, nestled in a wood and a five-minute walk to the lodge. It was not, perhaps, the grandest of accommodations, but the bed was marvelous and topped by a luxurious goose down quilt. What went on under that goose down quilt was rather marvelous too.
They reveled in rainy mornings, when the wind howled out of doors, and they lay abed in front of a fire, drank strong coffee, and spoke of all the things to come.
Roland even managed to make breakfast. He’d spent a lot of his youth hanging about Trewellian Hall’s kitchens and had watched eggs being cooked a thousand times. After a few unsuccessful tries, he had mastered it well enough that it was at least edible. The eggs may have looked unsightly, the bacon was most assuredly burned, and the slices of bread roasted, but they did not mind it.
If the weather were not too bad, they might set off with fishing poles and march across fields. No fish were ever returned with, but they did discover some charming dry corners in the landscape where one might have a picnic and admire the rolling hills in the distance.
In the early evening, Roland and Viola would walk up to the lodge and dine with their relations.
Juliet had written so many odes that she’d run out of paper and had begun writing crosswise over what she already had.
