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Chapter 22
A Union Most Blessed
Alicia pulled the curtain aside with one finger, sneaking a glimpse of the assembled masses on the Dunwood village green. Swallowing, she felt the anticipation that had plagued her for days become overwhelmed by a different sensation altogether: a strange feeling that she had been here before.
It came to her after only a moment, and Alicia let the curtain fall flat as she plunged into memory. She was nine years old. Her parents were still alive. She and Grace were behind a curtain at Missus Miggins’ grand Portsmouth estate, and the two girls were expected to show off their talents for the assembled adults.
Alicia smiled, remembering how diligently she had practised the lines of the poem she had memorized, and how those lines had nearly evaporated from her brain the second she peeked out from behind the curtain at all those expectant faces. Now, taking another look at the happy crowd just outside the little village church, she felt the same sense of exhilarated fear.
Except this time, I will not be out there in front of everyone on my own, Alicia thought.This time it will be Laurence and I together, for the first time and for all time after this.
She glanced at the old wooden clock on the wall of the vestry.If he is not late, that is. Alicia had spent the morning furiously preparing herself for her wedding day. Now that Jenny and Mary-Anne had finished helping her primp and dress herself for the “modest affair,” as Laurence kept calling it, all she had to do was wait to be collected by Laurence and the ceremony could begin.
She looked out over the crowd a little more carefully, hoping they would not catch her staring from her window. A few faces she recognized and grinned as she took in the picture of them in their finest attire: Mary-Anne in a fashionable turquoise gown, James Barton in a dapper suit, Dennis in a slightly more moth-eaten one, Jenny wearing her usual black dress—though without her knitting for once, Alicia noted happily. She even caught sight of Missus Miggins and her companion chatting amiably with Margaret, and for a moment wished she could take part in the conversation.
There were far more faces she did not recognize, though from their familiar tall noses and high cheekbones she assumed they must belong to the “pack of cousins” Laurence told her would be in attendance. All were laughing, playing, or conversing merrily in the late summer sunshine, rambling beside the stream that ran through the town or sitting beneath the shady arms of a massive wych elm with the barest hint of yellow beginning to appear at the corners of its leaves.
Laurence thought it might not be proper for us to be wed outside, beautiful as it is,she mused, smiling.Thank goodness Mary-Anne talked sense into him. If I’d wanted to be shut away in a drafty old building like this church, we may as well have stayed in London!
Of course, there was one face that she could not see out in the yard—the one she had really been looking for. Alicia was not sure whether she was relieved or disappointed, but when she caught her fingers unconsciously worrying at a thread on her splendid blue wedding gown, the truth seemed relatively obvious.
She shot a glance at the old wooden clock on the wall. Laurence was now fifteen minutes late.Whatever could be keeping the man?Alicia wondered. For the briefest of instants, she remembered how terrible the waiting had been for him those long days after returning from London…but then she sighed blissfully at the memory of the days that followed that.
The days of planning their wedding and lazing by the stream in the summer heat, of learning the names of a panoply of new flowers and fruits and birds that arose into the world in the late summer. And the nights, deliciously sensual in their tenderness, all the more fervent and tempestuous that they knew they need wait only a little longer until…until…
Alicia blew out a puff of air, wiping a trickle of sweat from her brow.No more of those thoughts now,she chastised herself.You do not want to walk out to your wedding with flushed cheeks and a racing pulse.
To distract herself, she examined herself once more in the small mirror Father Hamlin had graciously left for her to prepare for the ceremony. Her brown hair was arranged in a complicated tangle of curls atop her head, and her dress was a simple but beautiful affair in turquoise silk—she had ordered it special-made using the last of her allowance, and it had arrived just yesterday.
Alicia frowned and ran her hands over the garment once more, noting how it hugged her waist a bit tightly. Then again, as Mary-Anne had pointed out, that bit of discomfort did draw the eye nicely to her bare arms and décolletage, both of which were beautifully flushed with colour after the weeks she had spent gambolling in the summer sun with Laurence.
For a moment she idly wondered if what she wore would be perceived as appropriate by the townspeople in attendance. But this thought was quickly discarded.I only hope Laurence likes the way I look,she thought, licking her lips anxiously.That’s what matters.
A sound came at the door.It’s time!she thought, reminding herself to continue breathing. Alicia picked up the bouquet of summer roses so hastily she nearly cut herself on the thorns and spun about to greet her groom and commence with the ceremony of their joining.
…And she nearly dropped the bouquet once more when her eyes fell not on her handsome husband-to-be, but on a slender brunette woman in a bizarre maroon dress.
“Grace!”
“Hello, Alicia,” said Grace in a subdued tone.
For a long while nothing was said. The two sisters stared at one another for several moments, then their eyes darted about the room furtively only to inspect one another’s bearing, dress, posture. Grace crossed and uncrossed her arms as Alicia felt her hands try once again to pull at that dratted thread in her dress.
“I…see my invitation arrived, then,” Alicia said at last.
“Yes. Yes, the other day.”
As she carefully studied her sister’s reaction, Alicia saw Grace’s eye float about the church vestry, resting momentarily on this detail or that.Probably looking for things to find fault with, Alicia could not help but think.Too shabby, too country, too ostentatious, or not ostentatious enough. Then again, knowing Grace, she probably has not spared a single thought for anything around her, as none of it concerns her.
Then Alicia shook her head, sending this judgment out of her mind with great force of will.You will only perpetuate this fight if you keep thinking about her like that, Alicia. Let her be as awful as she likes, and respond accordingly, but do not condemn her before she says a word.
Alicia was only too happy to have this latter determination confirmed as Grace finally looked directly at her with a sickly smile. “Well,” said Grace after another long pause. “It’s…nice. Your dress, I mean. Simple. Plain, perhaps. But, ah…that suits you, doesn’t it?”
That is as close to a compliment as I have heard Grace pay anyone in…well, ever!Alicia breathed, finding herself smiling in wonderment.Perhaps there is yet room for miracles in this world of ours after all.
“Of course,” Grace continued without hesitation, “when Mister Cavendish and I marry it will be in a much grander location. We are to marry, you know—he would have asked me much sooner, but I put him off for the sake of propriety. Still, now that we are promised, I imagine the cathedral will do for our own ceremony, if it is available. As befits the elder sister, wouldn’t you say?”
Ah. So my sister has not disappeared entirely.
