“Up the aisle?” Gwen asked softly.
“No, not yet. Oh, Gwen, what a brilliant match. I’m so happy for you!”
“We all are,” said Lucy. “The nicest girl in England, and the handsomest heir in the realm! Why, it’s like some fairy tale.”
Charlotte clapped. “Oh, do tell us, Gwen—don’t you love him awfully?”
“Of course she does,” snapped Lady Anne. “Really, what an absurd question to ask at her wedding.”
Charlotte shrank. Lucy, patting her arm, sent a knowing look to Gwen.
Gwen pretended not to see it, but she took the meaning. Lady Anne had nursed a terrible crush on Thomas last season. She couldn’t afford him, of course; her father’s magnificent estates near Lincoln were as heavily mortgaged as his. But her eyes had followed him across the floor at every ball.
Gwen felt very bad for her. Only four weeks ago, she’d felt utterly wretched. But then she’d learned that Lady Anne had volunteered her to knit ten sweaters for Lady Milton’s orphanage before its spring excursion to Ramsgate. Ten sweaters in a month! Gwen was not a loom! It’s a marvelous opportunity to prove your dedication, Lady Anne had told her. But this was not the first time she’d made impossible promises on Gwen’s behalf. Last season, shortly after Thomas had paid his first call, it had been thirty embroidered handkerchiefs for Lady Milton’s charity bazaar, not three weeks away. It seemed clear that these sweaters were Lady Anne’s latest attempt to sabotage Gwen’s bid for a seat on the charity committee.
All the same, Gwen had smiled and thanked her and put in an order for merino. Madness was forgivable in the heartbroken. (Why, after Lord Trent had jilted her, she’d briefly taken an interest in learning Latin!) Still, when the newspapers claimed that she was “everyone’s bosom friend” on account of her “inborn good cheer,” they missed how much work the position actually required—not to mention the toll it took on her wrists.
Perhaps, she thought, she would give up knitting after marriage.
And embroidery, while she was at it.
What a thrilling notion. Did she dare?
A knock came at the door. The bridesmaids leapt back. Aunt Elma entered, smiling. When Uncle Henry appeared behind her, Gwen’s mouth went dry. “Is it time?” she whispered.
“So it is,” Elma said warmly. “I’ve come for your bridesmaids, dear.”
They turned to Gwen, clapping, crying out encouragement, blowing her kisses as they hurried out.
And then the door closed, and it was only she and Uncle Henry who remained.
Silence filled the room. Without her friends’ chatter to oppose it, the noise filtering through the door from the nave seemed much louder, like the roaring of the crowd at a circus. Surely three hundred people wasn’t that many?
That’s six hundred eyes.
“Well,” she said brightly.
Henry Beecham was not given to garrulity. He cleared his throat, nodded at her, ran a hand over his silver mustache, and then resumed his inspection of his shoes.
She smiled, remembering that the first time she’d arrived on his doorstep, he’d greeted her just so, with a stroke of his mustache and a snuffle. His wife, Elma, had told him to say something lest Gwen think him a mute. “All right then,” he’d said, and that had been the last Gwen had heard from him for a day or two.
As a thirteen-year-old, she’d found his silence quite puzzling. Frightening, even. Now, ten years later, she would not have the first idea what to do if he began to soliloquize. Call for a doctor, maybe.
She was glad he would walk her up the aisle. Her brother had paid the Beechams to raise her, but their affection had long since grown genuine. Since Richard’s death, they were the closest thing she had to family.
But not in half an hour. By noon, I will have a real family.
It would still be purchased, though.
The thought was dark and evil and skittered across her brain like a big black beetle. She shook her head to cast it out—mindful to do so carefully, lest she disturb the veil. This was not at all like the arrangement her brother had struck with the Beechams. The viscount loved her. And if she admired his station, that was only natural. His family tree was old and much distinguished, whereas hers . . . well, hers was more in the way of a very stumpy shrub. That it also happened to be gilded in gold—or the dyes her father had invented; no difference, really—made her more attractive to Thomas than she would have been otherwise. She knew that. Still, she was not paying him to be her husband. And as for his motives . . . well, her fortune hadn’t persuaded Lord Trent to the altar, had it?
“Auspicious day,” Henry muttered.