Page 26 of Atone, Adonis

“Do you need a hand, dear?”

Julianna turned, frowning at the sight of the nurse. “That would be lovely, yes.” She had failed to fasten the final pearl button at her nape and had resigned herself to hoping Thomas could manage it.

The woman crossed the room and with deft fingers secured the clasp. “There. Beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Julianna said.

“Such a lucky woman you are, marrying the Earl of Chester. The odds of the Darling of Dorset settling down—” The nurse trailed off and shook her head.

Yes, Julianna thought. Imagine the odds, indeed.

She hadn’t studied mathematics but if asked before today the odds of her and Fred marrying, she would have sworn they were less than none. And yet here she stood in her wedding gown.

“This marriage is a kindness, Julianna,” Thomas said, squeezing himself into her space beside the nurse. His cheeks were flushed, his chest heaving from the exertion of having taken the stairs. But the nursing must have been some sort of boon to his health that he’d even attempted, much less successfully navigated them. “Be grateful for it.”

Gratitude was the last thing she felt toward Frederick Sedgewick. “Come. I won’t be late for my own wedding, no matter how much I detest the notion of it.”

“It may not be so terrible, sister. You will have more security afterward than you could even imagine. And you look beautiful. Mother’s gown suits you.”

Julianna’s throat tightened as she stepped forward to fold her arms about him. Security was far less important to her than it was to Thomas but she could give him this; she could ease his mind, just as the physician had suggested.

He was so light in her embrace, all gaunt angles and fragility. Yet he held her tightly, pressing his cheek to her hair as if she was the one who needed steadying and not himself.

“Let us go,” she said, quieter now, refusing to let him see her cry. “The carriage must already be outside waiting.”

But his arms tightened around her again, almost possessively this time. “What if I don’t want you to leave?”

All she could do was swallow hard and say, “I won’t. It’s a marriage, not an emigration.”

“Thank you,” he whispered in her ear before he let her go.

As he drew back, she wondered if he regretted it, this plan of his to have her marry Fred. If he hadn’t truly thought through what it might mean for either of them when he’d devised it. But there was nothing either of them could do about it now. She could hear the coachman outside.

The chapel Fred had chosen was discreet, tucked behind a quiet square. Bishop Ellicott had not deigned to officiate, although he must have granted the license, or she wouldn’t be marrying today. And his surrogate would make their vows just as legally binding.

There were no flowers. Nor music. Only the polished stone floor, the pale shafts of light filtering through simple stained glass, and Thomas and the nurse as witnesses.

Julianna walked slowly down the aisle, her gaze flicking toward her brother, seated in the front pew. He was thin as a reed, but upright, his cheeks flushed by his efforts to remain so. Mrs. Sykes sat beside him.

It was generous of Fred to have engaged the nurse and Julianna recognized it as such. But she still hated him for it. Because none of this would have been necessary had Fred not been so reckless to begin with. Her parents would still be alive. Her brother would not be dying. She would not be forced into marrying him.

She closed her eyes and took another step forward.

Fred stood at the altar, the line of his shoulders tense and hard. She could tell even from the back that his suit was exquisitely cut. Elegant but cold, like the man himself. And yet, when she advanced, her ivory muslin skirts rustling, and he turned toward her, something in his face shifted. His blue eyes swept over her, and for an instant that icy mask cracked. A tide of emotions swept across those classical features. His eyes, always so glacial, nearly burned with some emotion she could not recognize.

For one breathless second it looked almost like…pride? Regret? Anger?

She couldn’t tell.

It didn’t matter. The mask dropped back into place again, blanketing whatever emotion she’d just seen there.

When she reached his side, the surrogate spoke the rites, and she repeated the vows. Her mouth formed the words well enough but halfway through, her voice faltered—just a hitch, a traitorous tremor she could not help.

She felt Thomas’s gaze on her and the nurse’s quiet attention. Fred’s stillness as he stood beside her, rigid as if he’d been carved from stone and set there like some glacial erratic. And the single tear that slipped out before she could blink it away, then the soft fabric of Fred’s handkerchief as he reached up and briskly wiped it from her face.

Then Thomas coughed, as he always, always did now, and she finished her vows.

When the time came to slip the ring upon her finger, Fred drew a short, audible breath that he quickly mastered. He clenched his jaw, making his dimples appear and she knew he wanted this no more than she did. And yet, here they stood. The Earl and Countess of Chester.