A Convenient Wedding

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE night before the wedding every guest room in the castle was filled. Some, but not as many as Jarvis had expected, were taken by Meryl’s friends who’d arrived from America in the previous few days. Most were taken up by local people, Jarvis’s tenants and neighbours, whom Meryl had insisted on inviting to stay that night and the next one, so that they would have no trouble with the tides.

It was the kind of thoughtful gesture Jarvis was coming to expect from her, and it increased his eerie feeling of watching two people. She was the warm-hearted woman who reached out to the people of Larne, eagerly seeking their acceptance. Or she was the temptress hunting his scalp before vanishing with a triumphant laugh. He would watch her, wondering which woman was the true one, and whether she knew the difference herself. Sometimes she seemed to change from one to the other with a smile, the turn of her head.

Dinner on the last night was a cheerful meal, with everyone in good spirits. Meryl’s particular friends, Brenda and Everett Hamlin, a married couple who bred horses, were over from Long Island, and struck up an immediate bond with Sarah. Meryl found herself next to Harry, whom she’d been anxious to meet.

Harry was the local historian, a retired university professor, who knew more about the Larne family than any man alive, including Jarvis. He was elderly and small, with a bald, bullet head and sharp, twinkling eyes.

‘You’re not a sentimentalist, I gather,’ he said when they’d talked for a while.

‘You mean, do I regard myself as the reincarnation of Marguerite?’ she said. ‘Not at all. Ferdy was going to have that ballad sung at the wedding breakfast but I’ve forbidden him on pain of having his toes stamped on. Jarvis would hate all that stuff about a “rich man’s daughter”.’

‘Quite right,’ Harry said approvingly. ‘I’m afraid that prickly sensibility has taken too firm a hold on him to be quite abandoned now.’

‘But it’s strange. I thought British titles often made this kind of marriage.’

‘You’re right. It’s certainly been the norm in the past, but the Larnes have always had a possessive streak, and in him it seems to be doubled. When he was nineteen he became infatuated with the daughter of one of the tenants, a feckless character who was always behind with his rent. Her name was Gina. Pretty girl, very good-natured, but with a laugh that could cut glass. Mallory Larne tolerated the relationship as long as he thought Jarvis was just fooling.’

‘Droit de seigneur?’ Meryl asked mischievously.

Harry laughed. ‘Well, it’s true that you’ll see the Larne face all over the estate, but they come down from the past. I don’t think Jarvis has ever made a contribution. He’s got strict notions of what’s right and proper, and sometimes they get in the way of what’s sensible. He took it into his head to marry this girl, which caused a family bust up. Mallory took action and the girl vanished.’

‘What a horrible story!’ Meryl exclaimed. ‘Did Jarvis ever find out what had happened to her?’

‘Oh, yes. Years later he ran across her behind a bar. Mallory had bought her off and she’d used his money to get a pub. By that time she’d had three husbands and five children-or maybe the other way around, I forget. They had a chat and she admitted that she’d been getting bored with Jarvis anyway. Too serious for her. So it was a weight off his mind, but by that time it was too late. He’d fallen into the habit of expecting to be deserted, and it’s a hard habit to break.’

‘That’s so sad.’

‘Very. There’s usually a prosaic explanation, isn’t there? Marguerite, for instance, was supposed to be a witch, solely because she was never heard of again. According to old Giles she lulled him into a false sense of security by coming to his bed the night before and ‘gave him love in word and deed’, as one contemporary scribe put it. When he awoke next day, she’d gone. She probably settled down somewhere with her steward and lived on whatever the jewels brought them.’

‘It’s the way she left her baby behind I can’t come to terms with.’

‘Women of her rank didn’t see much of their children. There were nurses and wet nurses. They say Giles used to go into his nursery and weep over “his innocent child, left motherless”.’

The evening ended early, and the guests drifted off to bed. As Jarvis headed for his room he found Meryl waiting for him in the corridor.

‘I have a wedding gift for you,’ she said.

‘But you’ve already given me one.’

‘The car was for the estate. This is for you. Come with me.’

There was a fresh eagerness about her which touched him. Half smiling, he followed her into her room.

‘I didn’t dare wrap it, because it’s so big and I was afraid of damaging it,’ she said. ‘Close your eyes.’

He did so, listening to the sound of something being hauled from a hiding place, until she said, ‘You can look now.’

He opened his eyes, and what he saw made him stand in transfixed silence, for almost a minute.

‘Do you like it?’ she asked anxiously.

‘I love it,’ he said.

Propped on a chair was a large framed picture of Rusty and Jacko. The artist had caught the dogs exactly, the colour of their coats, the way they lay, their expressions of dopey amiability.

‘I commissioned it from Ferdy,’ Meryl said. ‘I think he’s caught them rather well.’

‘He’s caught them perfectly,’ Jarvis said. He hadn’t taken his eyes from the picture, and Meryl wished he would look at her.

‘You talked about losing them soon,’ she reminded him, ‘and I thought-’

‘This will remind me of them at their best,’ he agreed.

He did look at her then, with a smile that was kind and gentle.

‘It was a lovely idea, Meryl. Thank you.’

‘I was afraid I’d got it wrong.’

‘No, you didn’t get it wrong.’

‘Let’s take it into your room.’ She opened the door that led into the little connecting passage. But this was a mistake.

‘We should have gone around by the big corridor,’ she puffed as they manoeuvred carefully. ‘This passage is much too narrow.’

‘Yes, I’ll never know why they didn’t build it bigger.’

They managed it at last and set the painting up over a chest of drawers between the windows, facing the bed.

It was the first time she’d seen his room, and she looked around with interest. In some ways it was the mirror of her own, the tapestries, the four-poster bed, the oak furniture, the huge fireplace. When she looked around for individual signs of the man’s personality they were harder to find. A few books about farming and accountancy, some history. There was a photograph of a middle-aged man and woman that caught Meryl’s attention.

‘My parents,’ Jarvis said.

‘Your mother looks very sweet,’ Meryl said, studying the picture.

‘She was-what I remember. She died when I was ten.’

‘How sad. Were you with her?’

‘No, I was at boarding school. They didn’t tell me until I came home and by then she’d been dead for weeks.’

Meryl’s horror held her speechless. Then she thought, Another vanishing lady. No wonder he expects it.

‘Did you have an aunt or somebody like that to raise you?’ she asked.

‘No. Just my father.’

And after talking with Harry tonight Meryl knew the kind of man he had been: blunt, direct, even brutal, sure of his own rightness about everything. And Jarvis had grown up with only that harsh man and no softening influences. No wonder he relied so much on his dogs, she thought.

‘I never gave you a wedding gift,’ Jarvis said now, hesitantly. ‘I’ve been trying to think of something. You’re not an easy person to choose for. Perhaps you’d like to have this. It belonged to my mother.’

He took a tiny box from a drawer and opened it. Inside was a ring with one diamond. It was small and not of outstanding quality. Certainly it would be thrown into the shade by her glorious tiara, and she thought she knew why he hadn’t offered it before.

‘I should love to have your mother’s ring,’ she said gently. ‘Will you put it on for me?’ She held out her left hand, fingers extended, and he slipped the ring on for her.

‘Not quite what you’re used to,’ he said wryly.

‘No, it isn’t. But not in the way you mean. I’m not used to people giving me things, Jarvis. Mostly people get disheartened by the fact that I can buy my own. So I end up with nothing.’ She saw the faint quirk of his mouth and said, ‘OK, nothing except more money than I can count. In other words-nothing.’ She held up her hand to see the ring. ‘Nobody’s done anything like this for me, ever.’

‘I’m glad you like it.’

‘And I’m glad you like your picture.’

‘I’ll have it fixed up on the wall, right in that spot, facing the bed. Then I’ll see it as soon as I awaken. You’d better go to bed now. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.’

‘Goodnight, Jarvis.’

‘Goodnight, Meryl.’

In her room she undressed slowly, thoughtfully. Jarvis’s words about seeing the picture as soon as he awoke echoed in her head. If this had been a normal marriage she would have been the first thing he saw.

‘It can’t be helped,’ she told her reflection in the long mirror. ‘I’ve never yet fallen in love with a man who didn’t want me.’

The reflection gazed back wryly, telling her there was a first time for everything.

At the rear of Larne Castle, facing the sea, was the church, with its spire raised up tall and proud in the clear air. On the wedding morning the bells began to peal out early. Sixteen ringers had come over at low tide the night before, sleeping in chairs and couches, for the castle was packed to the roof, and eight of them had started ringing at eight that morning. After an hour they were relieved by the second eight, while they had their breakfast before returning to the fray.

The grey stone pillars of the seven-hundred-year-old church, reared up into the high vaulted roof, their austerity broken now by wreaths of flowers. Ten women had worked all yesterday and far into the night to deck the church with the blossoms of early summer. Now it was done, and the air was heady with the soft tangy smells of life and flowering.

Big as the church was, it could only just take the numbers that poured in next morning. High up in a loft, almost obscured by leaves, the organist played softly. The groom and best man were waiting. Jarvis kept his eyes on the far door through which he knew Meryl would arrive. The church was slightly raised above ground level, reached by five steps, and through the wide open doors he had a view of the sea stretching to the horizon, brilliant in the sunlight.

He hadn’t seen her that morning, nor tried to. The dream had fractured suddenly, and the full impact of what he was about to do had broken over him like the waves that crashed on Larne shore. He had come to this place of solemnity to take vows that no man should take except with his whole heart. And he was doing it for money. He was a man with a strict sense of propriety. Too strict, Ferdy had often told him. No man with such a conscience could survive in this day and age. Now he was doing something so dishonest that his whole soul revolted. For money.

But not for money alone. Meryl was there in his mind, turning her head so that her glorious hair swung free, and her face changed as he looked, one woman becoming another. He watched urgently to see if she changed back, but she vanished.

If he could only catch her at the crucial moment where her eyes were soft and her voice gentle, and find the spell that would make her remain that way for ever! This was the true woman, the one who threatened his heart. Or maybe the true woman was the other, the glossy sophisticated one, who could put on an act that would entrance him, who’d bought and paid for him financially, and wouldn’t be content until she had him emotionally too, as Sarah had warned.

And when she’d claimed her prey the enchantress would take wing from the top of the tower, vanish into the darkness and never be heard of again. Actually she would take wing from Manchester airport, and be heard of constantly in the glossy magazines. But in his state of morbid awareness it amounted to the same thing.

At any moment she would appear, the diamond tiara sparkling on her head, the luxurious dress flashing with jewels, ‘a rich man’s daughter’ come to claim her kingdom-until she tired of it.

A buzz of excitement came from near the entrance. Those who could see outside were smiling, turning to their neighbours, sending a frisson through the whole congregation. High overhead the organ pealed out ‘Here Comes The Bride’, and the next moment he saw her head and shoulders, rising slowly as she climbed the steps and stood for a moment silhouetted in the doorway as though she’d risen from the sea behind her.

The sun blinded him, and he had to blink, trying to make out who this woman was, because she bore no relation to the predatory female of his fears. As she began to move slowly down the aisle, her hand on Larry’s arm, Jarvis squinted, not daring to feel the hope that was rising madly within him.

No ‘rich man’s daughter’, but a wild flower whose beauty lay in grace and simplicity. Her black hair was worn loose, flowing down almost to her waist. She wore no veil, and no diamond tiara, only a spray of white flowers in her hair. More white flowers rested in her arms. Her wedding gown was made of some soft material that fell in straight lines to the floor. The effect was plain to the point of austerity, and utterly entrancing.

Behind her trotted six little girls dressed in blue satin, also decked with flowers. They were all from the estate, and Jarvis wondered when she’d found the time to meet them, and what instinct had made her get this so right.

He closed his eyes and opened them slowly. It was happening again, two women in one, the glossy creature blending into a sweet, gentle woman who had some secret understanding that sent her to her wedding without adornment except for the glow in her eyes.

Meryl, her gaze fixed on Jarvis, knew that she’d astonished him, as she’d hoped. For one moment his wariness was gone as he reached for her with a hand that enfolded hers warmly, eagerly. It was almost as though he would draw her to him. But then he remembered his surroundings.

They were to be married by the vicar of St Luke’s, the one who’d enlisted her for the fête. Two of his little daughters were among the bridesmaids, and he was smiling broadly at the task before him.

‘I require and charge you both, as you will answer at the day of judgement, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed…’

The secrets of all hearts. Meryl heard the words as if for the first time. The secret that had flowered unexpectedly in her own heart was still new to her, still something to be pondered with wonder and hope, and kept hidden until the day she could dare to reveal it.

‘…if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony…’

Was it an impediment that she’d browbeaten him into marriage against his will, even though she had discovered at last that this was the man her heart had chosen? Was it an impediment that he disliked and distrusted her, and would be rid of her as soon as he could?

‘Jarvis Adrian Michael, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife-?’

Now she understood why Larry had protested against this ceremony. He’d looked ahead to the solemn vows for life and known that they were the last two people who should take them.

‘Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour and keep her…?’

But if Jarvis heard the irony in those words there was no sign of it in his voice as he said firmly, ‘I will.’

‘Meryl Alicia Jeanne, wilt thou have this man-?’

Oh, they were terrible promises, she thought as the words swirled about her. Serve him, love, honour and keep him. But she had already performed one great service for him, and it was the source of all trouble between them.

‘…forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as you both shall live?’

For as long as he’ll let me, she thought.

She heard herself say, ‘I will.’ Then Jarvis was taking her hand in his, telling the world that she would be his wedded wife, speaking of loving and cherishing. His voice was deep, and slower than usual, as though he was lingering over the words, savouring their meaning before he uttered them. He might almost have meant them.

It was her turn to take him as her wedded husband, ‘for richer for poorer…’ She didn’t dare look at his face as she spoke.

She offered him her left hand, now bearing his mother’s ring. He glanced at it and gave a faint smile as he slid the wedding ring onto her finger.

‘With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship…’ She felt the tremor that went through him and knew that here was the unresolved question between them. He was ready to worship her with his body while his mind remained aloof and his heart was undecided. How much time did she have?

‘-and with all my worldly goods I thee endow-’

She met his eyes and saw irony in them, but also warmth. He returned her smile, almost making it a private joke between them. Her hopes rose. Where there was humour there could be understanding. Where there was understanding there could be peace. And where there was peace, there could be love.

‘You may kiss the bride.’

The vicar’s words broke into her thoughts. Before she had time to wonder how Jarvis would deal with this one his hands were lightly on her shoulders and he was drawing her towards him to rest his lips against hers. And such a feeling of happiness pervaded her that she gave a little gasp that he sensed.

His own happiness had caught him by surprise. He’d been worried about this moment-performing for an audience was how he thought of it-but as soon as he held her the audience vanished. They were alone with the scent of summer all around, and it was as though her lightness of heart had communicated itself directly to him; he who had never known what it was to be light-hearted.

He smiled at her. She smiled back and was still smiling as she and Jarvis walked the length of the aisle and out into the sunlight. Everyone who saw that smile read it differently. Sarah thought it was a smile of triumph and bit her lip. Some of the watchers thought she was enjoying a good joke from which she would soon tire. One or two of them read her correctly, and among them was Larry Rivers, who saw much that he never spoke of.

The wedding feast might have been awkward, but wasn’t, thanks mainly to Ferdy, who kept his speech short and tactful. Everyone noticed that Jarvis couldn’t tear his eyes from his bride, and there was eager applause when he took her in his arms for the first dance.

‘You did everything perfectly,’ he murmured. ‘How did you realise?’

‘I understand far more than you think, Jarvis.’

He smiled, not with his mouth but with his eyes, and her heart started to pound strongly. This was their wedding night. They’d never talked about how it would end, although she guessed he would keep his distance if he could. But she was too much a woman to let him keep that resolve.

There were duty dances to be done. Jarvis took the vicar’s wife onto the floor while Meryl waltzed with Everett Hamlin, who sang Sarah’s praises.

‘She really knows her stuff about horses. We’ve invited her over for a visit later in the year.’

Meryl joined in the praise, grateful for anything that would ease Sarah’s suppressed resentment. A few minutes later she was dancing with Benedict, who was struggling to keep his spirits up, and not succeeding.

‘Thank you for everything,’ she said. ‘I know I’ve been a trial to you, letting you finish the first dress and then changing my mind three days ago. You worked a miracle getting everything done on time.’

‘As long as you’re happy,’ he said, forcing a smile.

‘Oh, Benedict, is it as bad as that?’

‘I got to thinking about the day I married Amanda, how happy we were, how beautiful she looked in her wedding dress. Oh, Meryl, what am I going to do?’

‘Things will get better. She loves you; she’ll come back in the end.’

‘I don’t believe it. I’ve got nothing to look forward to.’

‘Except that you’re going into business in a big way. I’ll be taking a flying trip to New York to help start it up. I want to be involved in everything. It’s going to be so thrilling.’

‘Yes,’ he said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘Thrilling.’

‘Hey,’ she teased, ‘don’t tell me I did all this for nothing.’

That made him smile. ‘Meryl, I’ll be grateful all my life for what you’ve done for me-’

‘Skip that,’ she said hastily. ‘You said it all on the first day. What’s your point?’

‘This. Don’t kid a kidder. I’m just your cover. First of all you did it to tell Larry where he got off, and recently-well, let’s just say you had another agenda.’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘Only to me. But then, I’m in love, too.’

‘Shh!’ She placed her finger over her lips in the manner of a conspirator.

‘Look at her,’ Sarah said, glancing over her shoulder as she waltzed with Jarvis. ‘Sharing a secret joke with him at your wedding. Don’t you realise it’s you they’re laughing at?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Jarvis replied gravely. ‘I’m beginning to think-I might have been wrong about Meryl-maybe-’

‘That’s what she wants you to think.’

‘Hush, my dear. Don’t say anything bad about her. I don’t like to hear it.’

She fell silent, and the party swirled on to its close.