Page 25 of Atone, Adonis

“Isn’t it just?” He withdrew a folded parchment from his breast pocket and set it upon the desk. “A promise of funds. Unconditional, of course. Though not sufficient to meet all the need.” He met the Bishop’s stare. “There could be more to follow.”

Bishop Ellicott glared at the parchment for several long seconds as a thick, heavy silence settled between them. Until, at last, his resolve crumbled. Slowly, he reached into his desk, drew forth the license, and signed it.

He began to push it across the desk when Fred said, “The seal.”

Without a word, the Bishop applied the thin, red wafer seal below his name and stamped it. Fred took it without thanks and turned for the door.

“She will hate you forever, you know,” the Bishop called after him.

He only paused for a moment. “I know.”

NOTICE OF CLOSURE

Parish of St. Oswald’s, Dorset

Be it known unto the parishioners that the Church of St. Oswald shall be closed to the public on Thursday next, the 19th of April, 1860, between the hours of ten o’clock in the forenoon and two o’clock in the afternoon, for the Solemnisation of Matrimony between:

The Right Honourable Frederick Sedgewick, Earl of Chester

and

Miss Julianna Farrow of Dorset.

By order of the Bishop, Dr. Ellicott, Diocesan.

Chapter

9

Julianna stared at her reflection in the looking glass, her fists clenched in the folds of ivory muslin that made up her wedding gown. Fred had done a competent job of pinning it and the alterations thereafter were not difficult. It fit now, physically at least.

“It’s my wedding day, Mama,” she whispered to her reflection. “How different from yours.”

For a moment, she let the memories take her and she was once again in the cottage of her youth, where she could smell baking bread and jam, the faint scent of grass and mown hay on a summer evening. Where she could hear her father’s pianoforte in the next room, his melodies always so bright and clear.

She could see her mother, Eliza, at the table with pins in her mouth, eyes shining as she fussed with a ribbon she was attaching to the sleeve of her best gown.

“Listen to that—he’s almost got it,” Eliza had whispered affectionately, while Julianna’s father played the same phrase again and again, building it into the sound that was his own: romantic and melodic and perfect.

Julianna had been small then, barely tall enough to peer over the tabletop. Thomas had been making faces at her and grinning in the corner like the jester he’d always been. And Fred—he was there too. Lounging in the doorway with his muddy boots and sun-tipped hair, a biscuit half-eaten in his hand.

Her father had looked up from the keys and said, “What do you think, darling girl?” and her mother had only laughed, soft and delighted, because they had both answered him at the same time.

“I fell in love with him through my ears,” her mother had whispered to her as she so often did.

According to Eliza, Ignatius Farrow, the rising composer of melodies, had made music so lovely she had never been able to forget it. His music, and the man himself, had beelined straight for her heart and colonized it forever after.

Although my eyes didn’t object in the least, Eliza sometimes added, which made the young Julianna clap her hands over her ears and run shrieking from the room.

Her parents had been a love match. Nothing could have stood in sharper contrast to her own wedding but there was nothing more to be done. Julianna had given her word. She’d altered the dress. She’d go through with the wedding. The fact that she didn’t care to become the Countess of Chester was of little importance to anyone except herself.

She stared at her own throat in the mirror, at the pulse beating there, enclosed in its lace. It went too fast, and for one panicked second she thought: I can still run.

Or, she could simply…sit down. Like an ornery mule might. Refuse to finish buttoning her gown. Refuse to stand in a chapel and say vows she did not mean. Let Fred rage and Thomas rail and the whole county talk.

Her fingers tightened in the muslin until it wrinkled beneath her hands. Then, carefully, she let it go.

No. She would not be the one to run away. Not today.