A Summer to Remember

Chapter 24

Lauren’s dressing room suddenly seemed rather crowded even though she had dismissed her tearful maid five minutes before. The silly girl had sniffed and wept all through the hour of dressing her mistress and styling her hair. She had never been happier in her life, she had declared while hiccuping woefully, and though she did not entirely fancy not seeing her mum, who lived in Lower Newbury, so often, she would be thrilled to move to Alvesley and call Lord Ravensberg master. He was the handsomest, kindest gent she had ever clapped eyes upon.

Lauren had made allowances for the fact that it was a day when emotions could be expected to run high.

It was her wedding day.

Aunt Clara was the first to come to her dressing room. Lauren had not breakfasted with all the guests in the dining room. A tray had been brought up to the bedchamber, laden with appetizing foods, all her favorites. She had not been able to swallow one bite.

Aunt Clara enfolded her in a light hug, so as not to squash either of their wedding finery.

“Lauren,” she said. It was all she could say for a while, even though she smiled.

Oh, yes, it was a day for emotions. Lauren knew that her aunt was delighted for her. She had been dreadfully upset at the broken engagement, convinced as she had been at Alvesley that her niece had found happiness at last. She had actually wept—Neville and Lily had had to console her—when Lauren and Kit had walked into the drawing room at the abbey late on that wet afternoon a month ago. They had not needed to say a word. Everyone had known instantly that they were reconciled. It had been almost embarrassing. It must have been glaringly obvious why they had been so long down on the beach.

Gwen was next to come.

“Oh,” she said, stopping in the doorway, “how absolutely beautiful you are, Lauren. No one else I know—except perhaps Elizabeth—can get away with simplicity and make it look like elegance personified. Some of us are dumpy.”

Lauren laughed with true amusement. Gwen was small and curvy, but dumpy was the last word anyone would use to describe her.

And then Viscount Whitleaf—Cousin Peter—scratched on the door and peered inside, all eager flushes, when Gwen opened it.

“Oh, I say!” he said. “You do look splendid, Cousin. I am just off to the church. I thought I would poke my head in and say good morning and good wishes and all that, me being the only relative present on your papa’s side. I hope this is not an impertinence. The ball last night was rather jolly, was it not?”

Lauren hurried across the room and took both his hands in hers.

“The ball was very jolly,” she said, “in large measure because you came and I met you at last. You have made my happiness complete.”

“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed, looking pleased. “But I must be off.” He spotted Gwen beside the door and made her a bow. “May I thank you again, ma’am, for your extreme kindness in giving up your room for me last night?”

There had not been another available either at the abbey or at the dower house or at the inn. Gwen had slept on a truckle bed in Aunt Clara’s dressing room.

And then, less than two minutes after he had left, Neville and Lily appeared.

“We simply had to run up and see Lauren on our way to church,” Lily said by way of apology. “Oh, Lauren, how absolutely gorgeous you look. I am so happy for you. So happy.” She hugged Lauren, regardless of the danger to their finery—and of the growingly visible bulk of her condition.

Lauren hugged her back. “I love you, Lily,” she whispered.

“Well, I would think so too,” Lily said, quite unabashed. “If it were not for me, this would not be your wedding day, would it?”

Trust Lily to bring all that out into the open.

And then it was Neville’s turn. Like Aunt Clara, he said nothing—not even her name. But he wrapped his arms tightly about her and hugged her close. She twined her arms about him and closed her eyes.

Neville. Her dearly beloved Neville. The dearest, dearest brother a woman ever had. She knew—though they had not spoken of it—just how much today meant to him. It was the day when he would finally see her happiness complete, the day he could finally let go of his terrible guilt.

“Be happy,” he said, releasing her at last and smiling at her. “Promise me?”

“I promise.” She smiled back. “I love him, you see.”

“If we do not leave immediately, Neville,” Aunt Clara said, “the bride is going to race us to the church. What a disgrace that would be.”

They all laughed, and Aunt Clara bent one last, lingering look on Lauren as she left with Neville and Lily.

Lauren was left alone with Gwen. She turned and looked at her, her smile fading.

“Perhaps,” she said, “I should have suggested Alvesley for the wedding after all.”

Gwen understood. How could she not? They had been sisters and dearest friends for all of twenty-three years.

“No,” she said. “Your dignity and your courage have not failed you for more than a year and a half, Lauren. They will not fail you now.”

Lauren’s maid tapped on the door then and poked her head around it. She was still looking tearful. Baron Galton awaited Miss Edgeworth and Lady Muir in the hall below, she announced.

It was all so very reminiscent. . . .

It had been spring the last time—March. It was late October this time. The weather was just as lovely, cool but sunny. The trees surrounding the dower house and lining the short stretch of driveway before the carriage reached the park gates and drove out to the village and the church beyond were decked out in all the glorious colors of autumn. The driveway was carpeted with leaves already fallen.

The village green was dotted with villagers. A denser crowd of them clustered about the churchyard gates. The roadway surrounding the green was lined with empty carriages of all kinds. Their coachmen stood idly about, gawking at all the excitement, their colorful liveries distinguishing them from the villagers.

Ah, yes, eerily reminiscent.

Standing inside the church porch a few minutes later while Gwen stooped to straighten her hem and arrange her train, Lauren could sense crowds of people filling the church just beyond the line of her vision. The vicar would be waiting at the altar rail. So would Kit and Sydnam. She could visualize all the people outside, waiting for the ringing of the church bells to herald the completion of the marriage ceremony, waiting to catch a glimpse of bride and groom as they came out of church, newly married.

And she could almost feel a small, shabbily clad woman dashing up the churchyard path and into the porch and brushing past Lauren to hurry on into the church to bring the world crashing to an end.

Her grandfather was waiting patiently, smiling benevolently at her.

She thought she would surely faint. Worse, she felt horribly bilious. Panic clawed at the edges of her control. Then Gwen looked up at her—and stood up to take her hand and squeeze it tightly in both her own.

“Lauren,” she said softly, “it is all over now. The past is gone. The future awaits you. This is today—your wedding day. Your real wedding day.”

The great pipe organ began playing. Lauren’s grandfather offered his arm. And they stepped inside the church, into the long nave.

For a few moments she could see everything, as if it were all etching itself onto her memory for all time. Faces turned back to watch her approach, most of them familiar, almost all of them smiling. She even noticed individuals—Joseph, daring to wink at her, Claude and Daphne Willard, Aunt Sadie and Uncle Webster, the Duke of Bewcastle and Lord Rannulf Bedwyn, Elizabeth and the Duke of Portfrey, Cousin Peter, Kit’s grandmother, nodding and beaming, Lily and Neville, Aunt Clara, the Earl and Countess of Redfield.

But only for a few moments. Then her eyes focused on the end of the nave, where a man stood watching her come. He was not as tall as either the vicar on one side of him or Sydnam on the other. But he was handsome beyond belief and dressed with consummate elegance in a black, form-fitting tailed coat with ivory satin knee breeches and embroidered waistcoat and sparkling white linen and stockings. Lace frothed at his throat and wrists.

Kit!

He looked formal and solemn. But no! As she drew closer, Lauren could see that his eyes smiled. Not with his customary merriment and roguery, but with something that took her breath away even though she had known beyond any doubt for a whole month that he loved her. He had written daily from Alvesley—sometimes twice daily, once three times—to tell her so, often in outrageously florid language that he knew would have her laughing.

His eyes drew her to him. They warmed her from head to toe, they devoured her, they made her beautiful and desirable and very much wanted. His eyes adored her.

She wondered suddenly if she was smiling and discovered that she was.

She was also as terrified as she had been all through a sleepless night, all through the dressing for her wedding, all through coming to church and standing in the porch. Terrified that even now, even now when Grandpapa was answering the vicar’s question and giving her hand into Kit’s, something would happen. The wedding service— her wedding—had begun, she realized, but she could not concentrate on it. She thought it altogether possible that she might be going to faint.

He had never seen her more beautiful. Her dress of shimmering white satin was unadorned except at the hem and around the bottom of the train, at the edge of the short sleeves and about the scooped neckline, where it was delicately scalloped and decorated with silver embroidery and hundreds—perhaps thousands—of tiny pearls. Her bonnet, slippers, and long gloves were all white, the former adorned with the finest lace veil, which fell over her face. The only touches of color were the violet ribbon beneath her bosom, its ends trailing to her hem, and the small posy of violets and dark green leaves she carried in one hand.

He had never expected his wedding day to be the happiest of his life. Weddings—with the possible exception of the wedding night—were tedious, rather embarrassing affairs for the man, he had always thought. But today he was prepared to concede that there was something to be said for the old clichй. A great deal, in fact. She looked rather like the old marble Lauren Edgeworth at first. But then, when her eyes focused upon him and she came closer, she smiled.

His heart turned over. Another clichй. Perhaps weddings were clichйs personified. He had missed her during the past month. And yesterday he had scarcely been able to get near her. Today . . . well, today was the happiest of his life.

And then he saw the terror behind her smile and felt the rigidity in her hand. It was not simple nervousness. He knew her well enough, by God, to know that. And of course—of course! He had wondered about the suitability of the church at Newbury—the scene of her first wedding—for their nuptials. But he had concluded that it would be good for her to have it happen here, to be able to lay the final ghosts to rest. Foolish of him— stupid of him—not to have realized what an ordeal this part of today would be for her.

He tried to reassure her with his hands, with his eyes. He tried to wrap the security of his love about her. He stopped concentrating on the marriage service.

“I require and charge you both,” the vicar was saying when Kit paid attention again—and he could see that Lauren was suddenly listening too, “as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful.”

Her hand stiffened further in his.

No, my love, no one will break the silence. There is no impediment. It will all be over in a moment now—all the irrational fear. Courage, my love.

“Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?”

It was over. It was over. She relaxed instantly and smiled radiantly at him. There was no impediment.

Soon—very soon—they were man and wife. Joined together as one until death did them part. He lifted the veil back from her face and folded it over the brim of her bonnet. He smiled into her eyes.

His love. His viscountess. His wife.

The terror—the foolish terror—was all forgotten. The register signed, the church bells pealing joyfully to the world outside, the organ playing jubilantly, the newly married couple made their way back up the nave, smiling at all their family and friends, who smiled right back at them.

But some of the congregation had not waited. Cousins from both families and a few others had slipped out and armed themselves before Kit and Lauren stepped out into the bright sunshine and the villagers raised a cheer, almost all of them now clustered about the gateway and the open barouche—lavishly decorated with white ribbons and streamers—that would convey them to the abbey for the wedding breakfast. The cousins were lined up on either side of the churchyard path, all grinning maliciously, all armed with mounds of autumn leaves.

“Hmm,” Kit said while Lauren smiled radiantly about her. Nothing had the power to mar her happiness for the remainder of her wedding day. “Shall we cower here and hope to be lost to sight among the crowd in a few minutes’ time? Or shall we make a run for it?”

“It would be unsporting,” she said, “to spoil their fun.”

“Unsporting.” He grinned down at her. “And so it would. But they will be sorely disappointed if we do not put our heads down and run for it. Shall we disappoint them?”

“Absolutely,” she agreed, and she took his arm and walked sedately down the churchyard path with him, smiling and waving and being rained upon by gloriously colored leaves.

They waved again to the crowds as Kit handed her into the barouche and then vaulted in beside her. Their coachman yelled a good-natured command, the crowds parted to let them through, the carriage lurched into motion, and Kit tossed out handfuls of coins that had been lying ready on the seat. The wedding guests were beginning to spill out of the church.

Kit’s hand found Lauren’s and clasped it warmly. They looked at each other and smiled as the barouche slowly circled the green before moving between the gateposts into the park.

“Alone together at last,” he said. “Or almost alone. This past month has been interminable.”

“Yes, but it is over.” Her eyes sparkled with sudden tears. “And this morning is over.”

He squeezed her hand more tightly. “Everything was perfect,” he said. “My wife. Always and forever my wife, Lauren. Always and forever my love.”

“My love,” she repeated softly. And then her smile grew more radiant. “Oh, Kit, I am glad you fought in the park that day and I walked there. I am glad you made that horrid wager with your friends. I am glad—”

He bent his head and kissed her.

From behind them came an increased roar of cheers. And a single piercing whistle.

The church bells pealed merrily on.