Page 21 of Bred By the Duke

Chapter Ten

Lucas

Her alarm goes off at five to five, and she has it silenced before I've properly understood what woke me.

“No,” I say into the pillow.

“Yes.” She's already sitting up, hair everywhere, reaching over the side of the bed for the clothes she laid out last night. “Caterers have the kitchen from five. If I'm not down there when Gloria meets them, there will be a jurisdictional incident over the range.”

I get a hand around her wrist and pull, and for about four seconds she comes back to me, warm and heavy across my chest, laughing against my collarbone. Then she plants a hand flat on my sternum and pushes off it like a swimmer leaving the wall.

“You've given everything you’ve got,” she says. “You told me so yourself.”

I did tell her that. I remember it with real clarity, my voice gone to gravel and my body absolutely finished, her sitting up over me with her palms braced on my thighs, wearing an expression of enormous personal satisfaction. She had asked me whether there was anything left. There wasn't. She'd taken all of it, twice, and then she'd curled into my side and fallen asleep in under a minute.

“Come back at seven,” I say.

“I won’t be free at seven.” She briefly disappears into the bathroom, then she stops at the bedroom door with her hand on the frame and looks back at me. My chest goes tight at the sight of her. “Your sister is getting married today.”

“She is.”

“I’m her maid of honor. So today, Your Grace, I have duties to fulfill.”

The house wakes up around me while I shave. Vans crunch on the gravel, the back door bangs, somebody's radio goes to static in the kitchen courtyard, Peregrine bellows to people to be careful of the dog. The old iron pipe clunks twice when I turn the shower on, the way it has since I was a boy. I stand under it for longer than I need to and think about the fact that my father should be here.

By eight the hall smells of dahlias and hot pastry, and there are two women I have never seen before carrying a mirror up the east stairs.

I find Rochelle in the doorway of the marquee with the lever arch file open on one forearm.

She's dressed. That's the first thing. Deep amber silk, the color of the marmalade Gloria makes in February, cut straight across the shoulders and falling to the grass, and she has the skirt pinned up awkwardly and walking boots on underneath it because the lawn is still wet. Her hair is up, twisted in a way that looks complex and beautiful, even though there is a pen through it. She's talking to Barry, who is nodding along like a man receiving instructions from the pulpit.

“Ceremony chairs stay where they are until the registrar releases the space and Cass and Theo go for photographs,” she's saying. “Then your lads have twenty minutes to move in the tables, and arrange the chairs appropriately. I’ll bring the flowers down and turn the room around while everybody's outside the marquee having champagne. Twenty minutes, Barry. The photographer will keep them on the terrace as long as she can, and will call everyone for photos in order.”

“We'll want a system,” Barry says gravely.

“You'll want two men at the top and two at the bottom passing the table in the middle. Then two men in here placing the tables as per the plan.” She hands him the paper. “Peregrine said he can help because it will give him a chance to check on Nester and the pups.”

“That's a system.” Barry is delighted. He goes off to tell his lads about it as though he thought of it.

I stand there a moment longer than I mean to, watching her. She isn't in a hurry. Her calmness is a balm.

She turns and catches me.

“Your Grace,” she says.

“Miss Gallacher.”

“Your mother's been up since six.” She says it neutrally, but there's a flicker at the corner of her mouth. “She brought me a coffee. Actually carried it, in her own hands, up to the room where we were getting ready.”

“Good God.”

“I nearly wept.” She closes the file. “The registrar will be here at half eleven, the ceremony is at twelve, and your sister hasn’t chosen a buttonhole yet.”

By nine o'clock, Honora has stationed herself in the hall with a glass of something golden, and is directing arrivals with the ruthlessness of a woman who has been waiting all week for a job. Theo is gray, and I’m praying it’s just nerves and not something he ate. From what I gather, Mrs. Ivers hasn’t let him anywhere near the kitchen since the food poisoning at the start of the week. Delphine comes down wearing pale blue and is caught immediately by Peregrine, who has been telling everyone about the puppies all morning, and she immediately asks after them.

At ten past nine, my mother stops in the middle of the hall, looks at the eleven men standing about with nothing on their lapels, and says, “The buttonholes.”

I find Rochelle in the morning room. She's got the round table again, the plastic wallet, the printed floor plan gone soft at the folds, and a tray of buttonholes in three styles laid out in front of her while she waits for the bride to make a decision she has now been asked to make four times.