Page 2 of The Banished Bride
It was over rather quickly. Hervey scribbled out another vowel while Belmont, Jarvis and MacAllister each chortled over their winnings.
When it came to his turn, Woodbridge stared at the baron’s toss of double sixes and simply shrugged. “Ain’t many times when losing affords me nearly as much pleasure as winning,” he muttered.
“Can’t say I wouldn’t have preferred a whore to a husband,” frowned Trumbull. “But might as well make some use of the deal. Let’s have the thing over and done with as soon as possible. I daresay in another two years she’ll be your son’s responsibility, not mine anymore.”
Belmont cracked open a fresh bottle and poured another round. “I say, how about a toast to the lucky couple and their prospect of wedded bliss.”
That drew the biggest laugh of all.
The bride,swathed in a confection of white silk that was nearly three sizes too large for her tiny frame, was all but dwarfed by the bull of a man who led her down the aisle. It was well that size and strength were inarguably in his favor, for by the way the slip of a girl was dragging her feet, she looked ready to bolt if given half a chance.
The small church was empty save for the girl’s governess and several of the groom’s family.
The groom himself was nowhere to be seen.
“Dammit all, Woodbridge,” growled Trumbull out of the corner of his mouth as he passed the front pew. “You promised me the fellow would show. If you’ve caused me to go to the trouble?—”
“Ahem.” The rector cleared his throat in mild rebuke at the baron’s choice of language.
“There’s nothing to worry about. He’ll be here,” answered Woodbridge, though his face betrayed a trifle less assurance than his nonchalant tone. His elbow dug into the ribs of the young man at his side. ”Where the devil is keeping them?” he whispered, ignoring the clergyman’s baleful stare. “You said Harry had things well under control when you left them.”
“He did, Father, I swear it. I can’t imagine what?—”
His words were interrupted by creak of the heavy oak door being wrenched open, then falling shut with a resounding bang.
“Sorry for the delay,” said the heir to the Woodbridge title, a young man whose thin, reedy build was in marked contrast to his father’s bulging beefiness. “Dreadfully sorry,” he repeated, trying to straighten the creased folds of his cravat with one hand while the other sought to keep the gentleman who was leaning against his left shoulder upright.
Neither attempt was overly successful. The starched linen refused to fall into any semblance of order, while his companion’s knees folded all too neatly, threatening to send him sprawling on his face smack in the middle of the aisle. Lord Harry Fenimore abandoned his struggles with the recalcitrant Trone d’Amour in favor of using two hands to right his listing sibling.
“Sorry,” he intoned yet again, seemingly at a loss for anything better to say. The sound of their shoes beat an erratic tattoo on the stone floor as the two of them tacked from side to side, narrowly missing coming to grief on more than one of the varnished pews. Finally the eldest Fenimore managed to straighten their steps and navigate a course toward the alter. With an audible sigh of relief, he drew his youngest brother to a dead stop.
By then it was evident to all that the groom was dead drunk.
“What are you waiting for, man? Get on with it!” ordered Trumbull through gritted teeth.
“Er, yes, of course, my lord.” Goaded on by the sharp words, the rector appeared to be in as great a hurry as the baron to be done with the havey cavey affair and sailed through the first part of the ceremony without lifting his eyes from the pages of his prayer book.
“Do you, ah, Elizabeth Jane Aurora take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, ‘til death do you part?”
There was an ominous silence that lasted until Trumbull gave his daughter’s arm a shake and whispered in her ear. The soft sound that then came out may or may not have been a “yes” but as the girl made no attempt to flee, the rector ignored such nuances and raced on.
The same question was asked of the groom. His response was a slurred “Why the hell not?”
That gave the clergyman some pause for thought. “Uh, I shall take that as a yes,” he decided after a moment of hesitation. Then, without further ado, he decided to skip over the rest of the ceremony and simply mumbled, ”I now pronounce you man and wife.”
The book snapped shut
A pen was handed to the bride, who carefully wrote out her signature on the marriage lines in a neat copperplate script. The groom’s fingers, guided in no small part by his brother’s hand, scrawled what looked to be an illegible scribble. The witnesses then stepped forward to affix their names to the document as well, and the ceremony was at an end.
“Well, aren’t you going to kiss your lovely bride, sir?” asked the rector, trying to inject a proper spirit to the odd proceedings while mopping at his brow with a large handkerchief.
Lord James Hadley Alexander Fenimore took one look at the veiled child who was now his lawfully wedded wife, then turned away and was promptly sick in the urn of cut tulips and dahlias.
“Sorry,” intoned his oldest brother.
Trumbull marched his daughter over to where her governess stood, white-lipped with silent anger. “Take her home,” he ordered. “And stop glaring at me as if I were a naughty schoolboy.”
“The birch rod should have been turned on your worthless hide years ago,” she retorted.
