“What does this change?” he asked. He spoke so flatly and rapidly that it took a moment to work out that he was asking her a question.
He was asking if the wedding was to be canceled.
She felt a pang of loss, a flash of panic, the sort of hot, deep spark that created firestorms. Alex, she thought. Smile at me. Tell me you love me.
On the heels of this thought, which her lips even opened to speak, came a lash of anger.
Again and again and again. How many times would she repeat her mistakes? Lie to me. Tell me what I wish to hear. Sing me sweet lies.
“Will you be at the altar tomorrow?” she asked. Her voice came out so coldly. It seemed to belong to some other woman, who never cried.
“Yes,” he said. His eyes never left hers. “I do not break a promise.”
Now, no talk of love. Now the talk turned to responsibility. “No,” she said. “You never do break a promise, I suppose. But there is always a first time. I encourage you to consider the novelty.”
“Gwen.” He spoke slowly and emphatically. “This is God’s own truth: I will leave the altar after you do.”
“I suppose we’ll find out.” She pulled her mask back over her face and turned on her heel.
This time, he did not try to stop her from leaving.
Chapter Sixteen
As Alex waited the next morning in his brother’s library, he almost hoped that Gwen did not show up. He hoped it for his own sake as much as hers, but not because he would make a poor husband to her. If she gave him the chance, he would love her more fiercely and constantly and creatively than any of the spineless bastards who had ever danced her across a sweaty ballroom or lifted their eyes to her on the street. And he did not hope it for his own sake because he had regrets about this path; he had seen himself too clearly now to imagine that freedom lay in flight, or to believe that any city across the world would ever awaken his exhilaration again without another pair of eyes, her eyes, through which to see it.
He hoped, then, as he waited and his sisters leaned over their husbands to chat with Lady Weston and various girl children gamboled on the floor and Gerard spoke in low, officious, threatening tones to the cowed minister, that she would not appear. If she appeared now, knowing what she did, knowing the one thing that Alex had thought to keep from her (because why should she know at this late date? She had not loved Trent; she would not have married him had she known; no harm had been done; the secret was old and expired and inert and harmless, like gunpowder left to rot on the ocean floor; also, he was a bloody high-handed idiot)—if she appeared now knowing that he had kept this from her, she came to marry a man who didn’t deserve her. And he wanted her only if she knew her own worth and deemed him worthy of her all the same.
He was a twisted bastard, and if he had a shred of honor in him, he would tell her to tell him to go to hell. If he had a single instinct of self-preservation, he would do the same, because he did not think their union would flourish if she went into it in this fashion. He would love her with all the intensity in him—but he knew himself well enough to know his own faults. Impatient and judgmental and stubborn and often too quick to act: he would try never to crush her, never to overwhelm her or bend her to his will, but if she did not demand only the best from him, it would happen. It might happen. Possibly.
A good man would have found a way to pull her aside and tell her these things. To warn her.
To hell with good men. They made for very sympathetic characters when they lost, but he aimed to win.
The door opened. Elma and Henry Beecham walked in, Gwen between them. She was dressed in a simple white morning gown, the neckline shrouded by a fringed white pashmina; in her left hand was a bouquet of pink roses. She met his eyes and held them as the minister crossed to stand behind the makeshift pulpit—a podium Gerard had purloined from his club. The twins exclaimed and came to their feet, pulling up their assorted daughters; their husbands remained seated, looking a bit puzzled, as well they might, about why such ceremony was required in somebody’s goddamned library. Alex was already standing at his station. He had been standing here for some time. He had not wanted to risk Gwen’s early appearance and an empty altar to greet her.
“Cue bridal music,” Caroline cried out gaily as Elma released Gwen. Henry Beecham, silver mustache twitching in what might equally have been a smile or a grimace, squared his shoulders and led Gwen the short steps to Alex’s side.
He could not read the expression in her rich brown eyes. Or perhaps he was misreading it, for to his mind, she stared at him as belligerently as any opponent in the salle d’armes. He took her hand, and her fingers tapped across his, a decisive little Morse code whose meaning he would give an arm to decipher. Her plump mouth was a flat, determined line.