Chapter 13
Carrying a candle and still in his nightshirt and cap, the Reverend Harold Paine swept into the room in a high dudgeon. A special license? An immediate marriage? Could this not wait until a decent hour? Could they not wait for the banns to be posted? He went on sputtering until Gareth calmly reached into his pocket and pulled out some money. The vicar stared, then went still. His eyes grew round, his lips parted in a perfect O, and he hurriedly sent the poor, yawning housekeeper off to bring his guests tea, bread, and butter.
"Sit down, sit down!" he cried, suddenly all smiles.
Gareth seated Juliet, then took a chair beside her. By the light of a candle, and with the Den of Debauchery members hovering over their shoulders, he began counting out money. It took a third of what he had to convince the clergyman to perform the ceremony — and another quarter of what was left to bring the man back on course when he balked upon learning that the bridegroom's brother was none other than the mighty Duke of Blackheath — who, Paine protested nervously, was sure to oppose this "hasty and clandestine union to a 'colonial nobody'." But Gareth, not so unlike his older brother, was in total command of the situation.
"Then I suppose I must go elsewhere, my dear fellow," he said with cheerful nonchalance. "There are plenty of vicars in and around London who will marry us if you will not."
Paine hesitated, torn between greed and fear of the notoriously dangerous Duke of Blackheath. Gareth shrugged and began to take the money back. His bluff worked. Moments later a messenger was despatched. By the time the sun was high and the traffic heavy in the street outside, the servant had returned with a special license from the archbishop.
Immediately, they all filed into the church.
It was cold and still inside. The scent of old, musty tapestries, of damp stone and candles long since burned, filled the huge nave. The vastness of the chamber echoed their every footstep, their every cough, their every nervous whisper. As the others moved down the flagstoned aisle toward the chancel, Gareth paused to take off his surtout, gently placing it around Juliet's shoulders. Hugging the baby to her, she flashed him a smile of gratitude and looked away, but not before he saw the anguish in her eyes, the tightness around her mouth and the tiny lines that pleated her forehead. He raised his eyebrows, surprised.
"Such a woeful face!" he teased, adjusting the overcoat. "Cheer up, lest they all think you do not want me!"
"It's not that, Lord Gareth."
"Then what is it?"
"It doesn't matter. Come, let's just get on with it."
Let's just get on with it. Her air of resigned defeat alarmed and hurt him. What was wrong? Did she find him wanting? Was she angry with him, thinking he was marrying her only to get back at Lucien? Or was she — please God, no — comparing him to Charles and finding him lacking?
After all, that's what everyone else had always done.
As he offered his elbow, she stayed him with gentle pressure on his arm. "But then again, maybe the reverend's right, Lord Gareth," she said slowly, for his ears alone. "I'm just a colonial nobody, and you can do much better than me."
"I'm not even going to honor that remark with an answer," he said with false brightness. Bloody hell. Is it Charles? "And furthermore, I think it's time we dispense with the 'Lord Gareth' and 'Miss Paige' bit, don't you? After all, we shall soon be married."
"Marriage is not a union in which to enter lightly —"
"I can assure you, my sweet, we are not entering it lightly. You need a husband. Charlotte needs a father. And I —" he grinned and dramatically clapped a hand to his chest before executing a little bow — "am in a position to help you both. One cannot get any more serious than that, eh?"
"This isn't funny, Lord Gareth."
"It's not so very terrible, either."
"I don't think this is quite what Charles had in mind when he bade me to come to England —"
"Look Juliet, Charles is dead. Whatever he had in mind no longer matters. You and I are alive, and we must seek the best solution to your — and Charlotte's — predicament." He lifted her chin with his finger and smiled down into her troubled eyes. "Now, let's see some joy on that pretty face of yours. I don't want my friends to think you're miserable about marrying me."
Juliet swallowed. A few locks of tawny hair had escaped his queue and now framed his face. He looked divinely handsome, his chin set off by the flawless knot of lace at his throat, and that slow, teasing smile of his warmer than an August sun. Oh, no, Juliet thought, she could never be miserable about marrying him. It wasn't that at all.
It wasn't that they barely knew, let alone loved each other. It wasn't that she had no idea what sort of a husband or father he would make, or that she didn't even know where they'd sleep tonight, or that he had carelessly frittered away so much money — money that could have been spent on food and shelter and other necessities that were far more important than a bribe for a marriage license.
She looked desperately toward the altar where the others already waited, looked even more desperately toward the door, while inside of her everything began screaming in protest, the warning voices — this is wrong, wrong, wrong! — growing louder and louder until she wanted to clap her hands to her ears to block them all out.
God help her, it was because of —
"Ready now, Juliet?"
She closed her eyes as a deep shudder went through her. Dampness broke out all down her spine, and a sudden, sick feeling lodged in the pit of her stomach. "Yes, Lord Ga —"
"Ah!" He raised his forefinger and both brows.
Her shoulders slumped. "I mean, Gareth."
"That's better. Now you're ready, I think." Again that light, teasing grin that brought out his dimple and made his lazy blue eyes sparkle like the sea. "Shall we?"
He walked her up the aisle between the pews, his stride easy, confident, and assured. Their shoes echoed over tombstones laid flat in the floor, and flagstones worn smooth by the passage of years of feet. Charlotte clung tightly to Juliet, staring about her with wide, curious eyes.
Juliet's heart beat louder. Faster. She felt sick.
"If you'll both just stand up here, please," Paine instructed, directing them to a spot just before the altar. "Bride to the left of the groom, please. Who shall give her away?"
"No one," Juliet said.
Paine frowned. "Right, then. Whom do you want as witnesses?"
Gareth crooked a finger at his best friend, standing nearby and watching with cool gray eyes. "Perry? And you, too, Cokeham. After all, coming here was your idea."
Cokeham grinned and, puffing his chest out with importance, swaggered forward.
Paine wasted no time. He turned and lit several candles. They flared to life, solemn points of flickering light that did little to penetrate the church's heavy gloom. Someone coughed. Charlotte let out a complaining whimper, and Juliet, nervously hugging the baby to her, shuddered beneath the warmth of her bridegroom's expensive, silk-lined surtout.
She stole a nervous glance at him, standing there with his weight and hand on one hip, the hand rumpling up one tail of his frock as he traded a joke or two with Perry and laughed with as much abandon as if he were at a county fair instead of his own wedding. He was perfectly at ease, shamelessly handsome. Any other woman would have been happy to be standing in her place.
"Be a good fellow, Perry old man, and be my looking glass!" he quipped, as he tried to arrange the frills of his cravat around the sapphire brooch pinned in its center. "Do I look as well as I should?"
"You look a sight, Gareth," called Audlett, smirking.
"A sight, indeed," added a grinning Chilcot.
Perry, the only one of the lot whose eyes reflected the misgivings that Juliet herself felt, merely gave a thin smile and flicked his fingers over Gareth's cravat. "You could do with a shave," he murmured, dryly.
"No time for that," Paine interrupted, directing Perry to stand on Gareth's right. "Someone please take the infant so we can get on with this."
Wordless
ly, Juliet turned to Sir Hugh, whose smiling face went suddenly blank with horror. He froze as the baby was placed in his arms, not daring to even breathe.
"Right." Paine stood before them. "Are we ready, then?"
Juliet shrugged out of Gareth's coat and placed it on the pew behind her. The chill hit her immediately. She took her place beside her tall and smiling bridegroom. He was romantic, handsome, splendid, a man that any breathing female would be happy and proud to take as her husband....
Anyone but me. Guilt crashed over her, and tears rose in her eyes.
Paine, the Book of Common Prayer in his hands, adjusted his spectacles and cleared his throat. Gareth was positively glowing with excitement, beaming up at the vicar as though this was the moment he'd waited for all of his life.
"Dearly beloved. We are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony; which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency ... and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly..."
Unadvisedly... . Lightly. Juliet gulped and squeezed her eyes shut as the timeless words washed over her.
"It was ordained for the procreation of children ... it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication ... it was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.... Therefore if any man can show any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else hereafter forever hold his peace."
Nobody moved.
The church rose still and silent all around them while outside, carriages passed on the cobbled street.
Paine shot a nervous glance once, twice at the door, as though expecting the Duke of Blackheath to come storming in to put a stop to the absurdity.
He didn't, of course. And Juliet stood on feet she could no longer feel, listening to words she could no longer hear, existing in a body she no longer inhabited. She was merely an observer watching a terrible drama unfold. She felt no joy in what she was doing. And — oh God help her — here came the tears, collecting in the back of her aching throat, in her burning sinuses and way up in her nose...
"Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, humor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?"
"I will," the man beside her proclaimed loudly.
And then the vicar was turning his attention to her, frowning above his spectacles as he saw her face, as gray as the tombstones in the floor behind her.
"Wilt though have this man to thy wedded husband.... Wilt thou obey him and serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health ... so long as ye both shall live?"
She bit her lip to stall the tears, blinked back the stinging, salty mist, and through it saw that Gareth's grin had frozen in place, his eyes darkening with sudden alarm as he stared down at her.
She looked down at her feet. "I will," she whispered.
She glanced up at him then and saw that she had wounded him. That he did not understand. His fair de Montforte brows were drawn tight in confusion as the minister placed his right hand over hers, the excitement fading from his eyes as he felt the ice-cold clamminess of her skin and the tremors that shook her hand.
"Repeat after me," Paine instructed. "I, Gareth, take thee Juliet to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth."
She heard him repeat the words but something was missing now, and she felt sick with shame as she realized she'd killed the thing in his heart that had been singing, the music that had now fallen silent and still. Paine repositioned their hands, and she dully repeated the words in like manner.
"The ring, please."
She watched as Gareth bent his head and worked the heavy gold signet from his finger. She already knew what it would look like, that heavy chunk of gold emblazoned with the de Montforte arms and engraved with the family motto: Valour, Virtue, and Victory. She knew exactly what it would look like because she already wore the exact ... same ... ring —
God help her, she'd forgotten to remove it!
Too late. Gareth took her hand — and went dead-still as he realized somebody else's ring was already there where his was supposed to go. Somebody else's that looked exactly like his, right down to the shape, the motto, the de Montforte crest that stared back at him with mocking cruelty.
Charles's.
The others saw it too; she heard Perry's quick inhalation of breath, Chilcot's surprised curse, and the low murmur that coursed through the rest of the little group. Gareth looked up, his face stricken, unsure of what to do; but there was nothing he could do that wouldn't embarrass her, and so he slid his own ring partway down her finger and began to say the words that would unite them forever:
"With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
A horrible silence hung over everything. Juliet wanted to die. She suspected her bridegroom wanted to, as well. Instead, with a little desperate smile, he leaned down and murmured, "For me to put this in place, you must first take the other off, my dear."
She blinked back the sudden tears, and with a jerky nod she offered her hand because she knew she could never find the heart to take Charles's ring off herself. As Gareth's fingers closed over hers, she lifted her gaze to look at him — I'm sorry; so, so sorry — knowing there were no words that could ever make up for what she had just done to him. But his eyes were downcast, his expression strained, and in that moment, Juliet knew he had finally grasped the truth of the situation.
That she was still in love with Charles.
Wordlessly, he pulled his dead brother's ring from her finger. His hand tightened around it, and for one long, awful moment Juliet thought he was going to hurl the thing across the room to send it clink, clink, clinking beyond the far pews. But no. Instead, he bent his head and in a gesture so humble, so selflessly noble that it brought a single tear pooling in her eye, he quietly slid Charles's ring onto her right forefinger — and put his own on her left ring finger, where it belonged.
The tear slid down Juliet's cheek.
Her husband looked at her then, cupped a hand to her face to shield that single tear from the others, and in his eyes she read his heart: I know I'm not Charles, but I'll do the best I can, Juliet. I promise.
She squeezed his hand in acknowledgement, totally undone by his intuition, his selflessness, his generosity: And I, too, will do the best that I can. After all, we're in this together now.
She barely heard Paine directing them both to kneel, felt only the strength of her new husband's hand beneath hers as those final, binding words poured over their bowed heads.
"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder ... For as much as Gareth and Juliet have consented together in holy wedlock ... and have given and pledged their troth either to other ... I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
Gareth lowered his head to hers, thumbed away that single tear, and kissed her gently on the lips.
It was done.