Page 102 of Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
“Yeah right! You’re lit up like a Christmas tree.”
Nory gave it up. “Oh, all right. Yes, I am dizzy and bananas and smitten and all other words that mean I have fallen for Isaac.” She laughed.
Ameerah reached over and squeezed Nory’s cheeks. “I love you, Nory Noel.”
“I love you too.”
“Yes, good, you both clearly got laid last night, but that’squite enough sentimentality for now. This is a wedding, not a lovefest,” Pippa said, lifting the lid off the heat tray and ripping a slice of bacon in half with her teeth.
“Pip, I don’t mean to question your authority, but if any occasion should be a lovefest, ought it not to be a wedding?” asked Nory.
“Not on my watch,” she snapped back. Her eyes were glinting fire; this was Pippa’s happy place. She was primed for charging into battle. “Bridezilla needs feeding, she’s getting hangry, and I’ve got to go and make sure the orangery roof isn’t leaking on my velour seat pads.”
“Is it raining?” asked Ameerah.
“No, thank fuck. It snowed again in the night, and there’s a crack in one of the glass ceiling panels. I got somebody to patch it yesterday. Go feed Jenna before she murders the manicurist.”
As they got up to leave the dining room, the sound of heavy feet on the stairs drew them out into the hall. Charles, Guy, Jeremy, and Dev—who had been adopted as an honorary groomsman—were in the process of being banished from the house, still in their pj’s. They carried their suits in large garment bags, and all of them, barring Dev, had the kind of hair that suggested they’d slept heavily after a hard night’s drinking. Dev waved and smiled kind of goofily at Ameerah as they passed. He blew her a kiss, which, to Nory’s astonishment, Ameerah made a show of catching.
The men were bundled into Andy’s car, ready to be driven to one of the old coach houses, which had been turned into holiday lets. A full English breakfast was being laid out for them, and when they were wedding ready, they would be deposited in the Mead and Medlar until it was time for the wedding.
“How come men always get the easy jobs?” asked Ameerah, shivering against the chill of the early morning whisking into the entrance hall.
The courtyard glittered with a thick crystalline layer of ice, which had formed over last night’s snow, a salt path melted through the middle. The sky was still dark but cloudless, and it didn’t look like there would be any more snow today.
“Male privilege,” Nory replied as the butler pushed the door closed.
“It’s not fair. All they have to do is dress, eat, and go to the pub. While we’ve got to tame the bridal beast.”
“Yeah, but imagine if we left Charles, Guy, and Jez in charge of organizing the wedding.”
“I wouldn’t trust them with organizing my sock drawer, let alone a wedding.” Ameerah scoffed.
“Then you’ve answered your own question. They get the easy jobs because we don’t trust them with anything else. It’s a perpetuating cycle—we don’t give them responsibility because we assume they can’t handle it, and therefore they never learn to do the things we moan about them not being able to do.”
“It’s a bit early for that kind of radical feminism, isn’t it?”
“I had three coffees with breakfast.”
“Pace yourself, Noel, it’s gonna be a long day!”
“Hello, not-remotely-blushing bride,” Ameerah said as they entered the bridal suite. Nory was carrying a plate laden with Jenna’s favorite breakfast foods.
“Today is the day. Happy wedding day!” trilled Nory, who was feeling much more festive after two bacon rolls and a pain au chocolat.
Jenna gave them a look that said she was not feeling the joys right at that moment. Her skin was blotchy, and she kept looking back at the nail technician, who was making an inordinate amount of noise putting away the tools of her trade.
“Pip says you need to eat,” said Ameerah, thrusting a bacon and sausage roll at Jenna.
“Nails!” was Jenna’s response. She held up her hands, revealing a perfect French polish.
“Here, give it to me,” said Nory, taking the roll from Ameerah and holding it in front of Jenna’s face. Jenna leaned forward on her furry dressing-table stool and took a bite out of the roll, as though it was absolutely normal for her to be fed like a Roman empress.
“How are you feeling?” Ameerah asked.
“Ask me again when I’ve eaten,” Jenna replied around a mouthful of sausage.
Nory took a tissue from the box on the dressing table and dabbed at a ketchup blob at the side of Jenna’s mouth.
