When Lottie was finished, Rose leaned forward and kissed her cheek. She felt stupidly like crying again. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything. For taking care of me.”
“You were very easy to look after, cara,” Lottie said, and her eyes glistened.
“No, I wasn’t,” Rose said. “I was a little beast.”
Lottie shook her head. “You are a fine, brave young woman, Rose. I hope you realise that one day.”
Rose stared, taken aback. But before she could ask Lottie what she meant, the other woman added, “Are you sure about this wedding? No one else has asked you, I know. You are about to marry a young man you do not know at all. Are you quite sure you want to do it?”
“It’s a little late to ask me that!” Rose teased, forcing herself to laugh. In truth, there was a part of her that wanted to whisper yes, she had changed her mind. But she had promised she would marry Gilbert Truman, Viscount Waite today, and it would be cowardly to run away just because—well, because the smile he’d given her that first day hadn’t reappeared. That was a childish basis for any doubts she had. The fact was, Waite was probably just as nervous as she was. He was as new to the idea of marriage as she. But after today, he would be her husband and she would be his wife. They would face the future together, side by side.
“It’s not too late though,” Lottie said intently. “I know your papa wants this marriage very much—but if you tell him you cannot do it, while he may protest and try to persuade you otherwise, he will not force you. I won’t let him, cara.”
“Oh, Lottie,” Rose mumbled, touched. “I am quite sure, truly. You needn’t worry.”
Lottie looked as though she would say more, but then there was another knock at the door, and this time it was Papa. She told him to enter, and he opened the door, smiling brightly.
“Time to go, Rosebud.”
She pasted a matching smile on her own face and took his arm.
The wedding was to take place in an unfashionable church a good way away from Mayfair. There would only to be a few guests. It would be a private affair, Papa had explained. There was little point in having a great Ton wedding when Rose hadn’t even been presented to the Queen and when she knew no one in society. Rose was relieved. She had found the engagement party a trial, even though fifty guests was paltry, according to Antonia. Fifty pairs of eyes judging her deficient looks had been more than enough for Rose.
The rain poured down all the way to the church. When they arrived and Papa opened the carriage door, she saw that the church was an unattractive square building with a squat-looking tower. It seemed to hunch over itself in the rain. It was not the sort of church she had imagined getting married in. In her girlish fantasies, she had walked into a lofty cathedral, and the sun had been streaming through a hundred stained-glass windows.
Thankfully, it was only a few steps from the carriage to the portico where the vicar waited for them. While Papa spoke with the vicar, Rose peeped down the church. Waite stood at the altar with his brother beside him as his groomsman. They looked magnificent in matching dark blue coats.
Rose felt a queer ache looking at Waite. He was everything a woman should want in her husband, yet Rose could take no pleasure in the moment, and she realised, with some horror, that she felt unworthy of him.
Hastily, she looked away from him to the guests sitting in the pews behind. The earl was sitting with Antonia and an older lady who had been introduced to Rose at the engagement party as Cousin Harriet. Behind them sat a middle-aged couple—Waite’s uncle and aunt. On the other side of the church were Papa’s brother, Sir Philip Davenport, and his wife Celia with their son John.
All at once, it was time to get married. She laid her hand on her father’s arm and smiled at him. He beamed back at her, looking handsome and happy.
Rose walked down the aisle with considerably more composure than she felt. Her fingers did not tremble when her father placed them in Waite’s large hand. Her voice emerged clearly and promptly as she spoke her vows. Not by one gesture or a single word did she reveal that she had ever entertained the slightest doubt about this marriage. All in all, she was rather proud of her performance.
As for Waite, he was impeccable. He bowed over her hand when it was placed in his own. He spoke his vows in his deep voice without hesitation. But still, there was no warmth in his eyes for her, not even when he lightly brushed his lips against her own after the pronouncement that they were now man and wife. And as they walked back down the aisle, past their smiling wedding guests, Rose wondered for the first time whether she had actually imagined the kindness in his eyes at that first meeting.