Wednesday the best day of all…
The ditty of days to marry turned in her head like some macabre promise.
‘I do not believe this. Is he blackmailing you or threatening you in some way?’ The horrible realisation made Lillian feel faint. This was not her father. This was not the careful and prudent man who would cut off his right arm rather than let the estate of Fairley Manor pass into the hands of an unsatisfactory groom.
‘If he were, I should instruct you to turn him down.’
‘And if I do just that, regardless?’
‘Then we shall be for ever marooned here in Hertfordshire, neither a part of society or of village life because of your one unmindful mistake.’
Her mistake! The sacrifice of herself or of her family?
‘If you force me into this travesty, Father, I will not forgive you for it and I will never understand it.’
‘I beg to disagree, Daughter, for honestly in time I think that you will.’
She made no real effort with her wedding gown. In fact, at the very last moment she chose to wear a cream organza gown from her last Season because the new dress from Madame Berenger suggested an exertion that she felt far from making. In her hands, however, she held fragrant white winter daphne from the Fairley glasshouse because a small part of her could not quite abandon all form of good taste.
Lucas Clairmont stood at the top of the aisle watching her. She had not seen him since she had stormed away from him and the bruises were today a lurid green and yellow, his left eye still largely swollen. The way he held his right hand against his ribs also suggested substantial pain. His whole life seemed to tilt between contretemps, she thought, never settling into the easier peace of a comfortable and gentlemanly existence.
The tears that had not been far from her eyes all week banked yet again, the differences between them boding ill for any future they might be able to fashion.
The guests on her side of the chapel were packed into the pews with standing room only at the back. On his side, however, two couples sat. The St Auburns and Lord Stephen Hawkhurst, accompanied by a very old man.
Concentrating on the vase of flowers on a table behind the font, she noted them to be aged white carnations, some relative’s clumsy touch evident in the overdone blooms and the fussy paper decorations around all the pews. She wanted to rip them away as she walked, but her dress was taking all of her attention, the wide skirt requiring a certain walk so that the material did not snag on the overhangs of the oak seats.
When the music stopped she stopped too, beside her husband-to-be, his clothes today surprisingly well tailored. Had Lord Hawkhurst leant him a frockcoat? she wondered, and then dismissed the whole thought. It did not matter what he wore or how he looked. It did not matter that today he had made an effort with his attire she had not seen him make before. Perhaps he felt with the windfall of her dowry he had to be more careful to fit in, though when she took a quick peep at him he hardly looked overawed by a congregation of people far and away above him in rank, position and finances.
Even with his cuts and bruises he looked…confident. A man in the very place that he wanted to be!
Would she ever understand him? Would he ever know just how much he had hurt her? Her father obviously had some idea, the worry on his face making him look old and tired.
The clergyman raised his Bible. ‘We are here today to marry Lucas Morgan Clairmont and Lillian Jewell Davenport.’
Lillian Clairmont! As the service continued the words that the priest wanted from her were difficult to say.
‘…to love and to cherish from this day forward until death do us part.’
Such an empty troth! She wondered why an omnipotent God did not smite the church with an earthquake or a shower of hail or at the very least inveigle his man to question the intent. But the clergyman droned on as if it had oft been his misfortune to marry a less-than-jubilant bride.
Nothing about this wedding was anything like she had imagined it would be; when Lucas Morgan Clairmont reached out for her hand and slid the ring on her finger, it seemed like just another extension of an awful day.
The wedding band was a lurid yellow gold and embossed with a heavily set ruby, a ring that worked on the premise that bigger was better and that comfort was barely to be considered. No cheap piece either, but one fashioned only with the wish to impress.
Had he stolen it? Had he won it in a game of cards? She tucked her hand away into the folds of her skirt and wished he had not given her such an obvious piece. In contrast, the band she had given him was of classic plain gold and engraved with their initials and a date.
When the priest intimated that the bride and groom might now kiss, Lucas merely shook the suggestion away and turned for the door, leaving her to follow in his wake as she tried not to catch the eyes of all those present on her side of the church. The wedding dress bumped against her legs as she hurried to keep up.
Lord, when the hell would this be over? Luc thought, as he tried to maintain a peace of mind that he had not felt in all the days since being back in England.
He had hit the water with a shock of fear, ten miles off a coast he had no knowledge of and the black ink of ocean stretching for ever. It was only for Lillian that he had kept going, stroke after stroke through the currents and the endless waves, the sea in his eyes and nose and throat. Yet now? His wife looked as though she hated him and her aunt Jean Taylor-Reid behind gave the impression of a woman seeing a ghost back from the dead.
Luc breathed out, wishing he might confront Lillian’s aunt with his accusations and knowing at this minute that he just could not.
Lord, what was it he was doing? He had made the mistake of marrying badly once before and the first thrall of exaltation he had felt when Lilly had agreed to marry him was now fading into apprehension.
He hated weddings, hated the empty promise of them and the forced joviality that was almost always accompanied by a large dollop of uncertainty.
At least at his last wedding the bride had worn a dress that let him get near her and the words she had given were edged in hope rather than anger. Yet look where that had got him!
Lillian had barely glanced at him and had snatched her hand from his as soon as the ring was placed on her finger, the special licence he had purchased suddenly looking like a reckless thing.
Better perhaps to have taken her professed dislike of his character at face value and departed for America, where his lands and houses waited and the living was easy.
Easy? He could not have said that even three months ago with the guilt of Elizabeth crippling him and a drinking problem he could do little about.
Lilly with her pale goodness seemed to have cured him, made what before was impossible, possible. A woman he respected and liked. No, he could not just walk away.
‘You look pensive, Luc?’
Hawk offered him a glass of lemonade and he took it.
‘I was thinking that my bride doesn’t look particularly happy…’
‘Nat said that Cassie was as miserable at their wedding.’
‘She ran away from him the next day, remember?’
Stephen smiled. ‘I had forgotten about that.’
A flash of cream to one side of the room had them both turning.
‘It seems that Alfred has made himself known to your new spouse. How long do you think it will be before she realises my uncle is somewhat soft in the head?’
‘About now, I’d say,’ Luc interjected. ‘He seems to be trying to extract my wedding ring from her finger. Perhaps you could persuade him not to, Hawk.’
But before either man had moved Lillian had solved the problem completely. With little fuss she removed the band and handed it to him, watching as he held it up to the window for a better look at the jewel in the light.
‘Well,’ said Hawk, ‘that’s a first. Usually they run screaming from him.’
‘She didn’t wait to collect the ring back either,’ Luc added as he watched her move on. ‘Do you think she has any notion as to how much it is worth?’
‘She is a lady of taste, Lucas. Of course she knows it and right down to the last copper farthing, if I had my guess.’
‘Then why would she just leave it with him?’
‘Your grandmother was never one known for her artistic eye.’
‘She was given the piece by the Duke of Gloucester’s mistress.’
‘And it shows!’
