‘She has a lot to answer for,’ Marianne said sternly as the carriage reached the front door of Owlet Manor only moments after it set out from the church.
‘Never mind her now, this is the best day of my life so far and I am not going to spoil it by picking over old griefs and sorrows. Yours are different.’
‘You mean Daniel?’
‘Of course.’
‘If there was a way of doing it, he would dance at our wedding today, Alaric. He truly loved me and would have hated to see me so haunted and miserable and grief-stricken as I was for so long after I got back to England and until the day I met you, if I am being strictly truthful. You are the very man he would have picked out for me because you are the best man I have ever met apart from him. I will never forget him, but that does not mean I cannot love you every bit as much as I loved him.’
Marianne felt as if this conversation was even more important than the vows they had made one another in front of God and their nearest and dearest, if that was possible. ‘I love you so much, Alaric. I thought it was impossible for a woman to be lucky enough to love with all her heart twice in one lifetime, but you have proved to me how wrong I was.’
‘You have all of my heart, Marianne. I never thought I could love like this at all, so just look what you have taught me,’ Alaric said and they kissed under the ball of mistletoe and bright ribbons the servants must have placed there once the wedding party set out for the tiny church. Breathless and excited and looking forward to loving this man in every sense of the word once again and as soon as they could get some privacy and a bed to celebrate it in, Marianne felt the earth spin under her feet and the stars shift in their spheres. Alaric kissed her with such passion she wondered if it was possible to be driven out of your senses by love and desire and they could have been anywhere, at any time of year, for all she could feel of the lazy December wind and an overcast sky that said there might be snow in it somewhere or more probably rain what with this being England and the weather likely to change from hour to hour.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Darius interrupted them who knew how many minutes later as the next carriage rumbled up to the door and swept around the newly laid carriage sweep with a flourish. ‘At least get inside out of the cold so we can get on with the Christmas feast you have promised us, Stratford. My sister will take to her bed with the influenza instead of the reason you want her there if you do not stop kissing one another soon and get inside.’
‘Very well, Papa,’ Marianne said mockingly and was astonished to see her brother blush for the first time since they were children. ‘You are not, are you?’ she asked him and when he only stood there on his own carriage sweep looking like a boy caught out in mischief she looked to Fliss for an answer instead.
‘I told him it was to be our secret until after today, but sometimes he is such a boy I cannot rely on him to keep a still tongue in his head,’ her sister-in-law scolded her large and mature husband and Marianne could see him turning to mush in front of her eyes. He was going to be such a wonderful father and if this happened to be a little girl she could just imagine him being wound around her little finger the second she was born.
‘But that is such wonderful news you should not have kept it quiet for our sake.’
‘No, this is your day. We had ours...um...’ Fliss stopped as if remembering a bit too much of that night when she and Darius first made love up in the hills the day Juno went missing and shortly before Lord Stratford knocked at Miss Donne’s door and demanded to see Fliss. ‘In August,’ Fliss finished bravely, although it remained to be seen if their babe might give away exactly when that day was or if he or she arrived a tactful nine months after Fliss and Darius’s wedding.
‘I am so pleased for you both,’ Marianne said and truly meant it. She felt Alaric’s anxiety for her hearing such news when they were never likely to have their own child as he wrapped a strong arm round her waist and pulled her closer. ‘I have all I want right here,’ she told him softly and forgot family and guests all over again. ‘And there are those runaways and urchins to look forward to taking in if you truly do not mind your title going to waste one day.’
‘Good riddance to it,’ he said and kissed her again because it was a shame to waste a good kissing bough.
‘You will wear it out,’ Darius said with a push to get them inside and out of the cold at long last, then he made thorough use of it himself before pulling a blushing, laughing, flustered Fliss inside after him so they could make way for more soberly happy wedding guests who eyed the kissing bough with either suspicion or nostalgia, then sped inside unkissed rather than risk getting cold.
‘Your brother is a rogue,’ Alaric told Marianne between welcoming their guests and at least Mrs Yelverton was too much in awe of him to try and push her way in front of him as she had with Fliss and Darius at their wedding.
‘I know, but Juno would never have come to Broadley if she was
