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“Maybe I deserve to be miserable,” Elizabeth said with a soft shake of her head, then lifted her gaze to pin her sister’s. “Maybe I deserve everything I’m getting.”
“How can you speak like that?”
“I should have told him.” She straightened her shoulders. “I made a mistake.”
“Oh, Ellie--,”
“No.” Ellie’s interruption was soft, but laced with intent. “You’re pregnant. You’ve seen what that means to Apollo. Now imagine any circumstances that would justify you keeping that from him.”
Nell opened her mouth to speak and then slammed it shut. “It’s different.”
“Fundamentally, it isn’t,” Ellie contradicted. “A child’s a child. I should never have hidden from this. Xavier is Joshua’s father and he deserves to be a part of his life.”
“His life, yes. But your life is your own…”
“I’m done hurting people,” Elizabeth said firmly. “Done. Over. No more. I need to fix this – starting today.”
“At what cost?” Nell prompted, stroking Elizabeth’s shoulder gently.
“There is no cost too high. I have to do this.”
“Damn it, Ellie, you’re not thinking straight.”
“Eleanor, I’m thinking straight for the first time in years. So much of this happened because I wasn’t strong enough to make the right decision. I should have fought for Xavier in the hospital with all of my heart. I should have confronted Arabella, and I should have confronted his parents. I should have forced my way into his life to tell him about Joshua, and I should have made him see, four weeks ago, that I have been trying my hardest to do the right thing this whole time. I have made so many mistakes, but marrying him? That’s not a mistake.”
Nell’s eyes swirled with doubts, but Ellie’s were loaded with determination. She had no doubts that she was making the right decision – even if it did feel a little like a lamb being led to slaughter. Her voice was softened when she picked up the thread of her thoughts. “I’m standing in the church, wearing the dress, and my son is out there, with his father, waiting for me to walk down the aisle and make us a real family. So don’t argue with me now. Not now. Not here.” She had to bite down on her lower lip to stop the tears that were threatening to fall.
Nell groaned softly and then wrapped her twin sister in a hug. “I just want you to know I’m here for you.”
“I do know that. And I’m grateful to you. But I have to do this.”
As Elizabeth walked down the aisle, Xavier couldn’t help but contrast her with the way she’d been at that ball in London. He’d watched her from afar for long enough to see that she glowed with a radiant inner-confidence; he’d seen her as a beautiful, happy, shimmering creature, part mythical for how perfect she was.
And now?
She was the farthest from that she could be. She was tense. Miserable. Reluctant.
Perhaps no one else would notice those emotions, but to Xavier, he could see every betraying gesture and indication. He knew how she felt as well as he did his own heart.
She walked towards him with a tight smile on her face that went nowhere near her eyes – eyes that wouldn’t meet his, but focused instead on a point somewhere to his right. With every step she took, that brought her closer to him, he was aware of more signs of her despair. Fingers that shook, skin that was pale, shoulders that were impossibly tense.
But she kept walking, and at the front of the church, opposite him, she turned slowly, facing him, and he wanted to say something to make her laugh, or make her smile. Something to relax her.
But what? Which words would work? Nothing felt sufficient. And though the wedding had been his idea, in that moment, he wanted to click his fingers and make everyone else disappear. They’d been estranged for days, silent and unspeaking, and now he wanted to speak all the words in his mind and his heart. He wanted to hold her hand and rub his thumb over her palm, calming her, soothing her, until his words were poured from him.
But she was closed to him; utterly and completely. She was like a statue – a shadow of the woman he’d first met, a shadow of the woman he’d watched from a distance and felt ghosts of his past stir to life.
The cardinal began to speak, and Xavier couldn’t help but wonder if a special place in hell would be reserved for him – that he’d used his political power to have one of the highest members of the Catholic church conduct this farce of a ceremony.
Elizabeth listened with the appearance of concentration, but he wondered if she was as distracted by this as he was?
Her chin was tilted, her face pointed towards the Cardinal as he spoke. Xavier did likewise, but impatience was tearing him apart.
I, Xavier Salbatore, take you, Elizabeth Jones, to be my wife. I promise to be faithful to you in times of prosperity and adversity. In healthy times, and times of sickness. I pledge here, on this day, that I will love and respect you on all the days of my life.
He repeated the words after the Cardinal, but each one landed against him like a bullet. When he’d proposed this marriage, he’d seen Elizabeth as property. Little more than something he wanted, and could acquire by maneuvering the pieces in the proper fashion. It never occurred to him that pledging himself to her would feel as though he were gradually walking towards the edge of a cliff – with no concept of how far he would fall.
Worse, when she said the words back to him, in reverse, it was an agony. To hear the hollowness to her tone, the dutiful recreation of sounds that meant nothing. The pledging to marry him not because of love or honour, but because he’d made it impossible for her not to.
