Page 68 of The Proposition
“Despite all your insisting, I knew this day would come.”
Clemency wanted to roll her eyes at her sister but could not. After all Honora knew her best.
“What gave me away?” she asked, staying very still while her sister waited beside her outside the church door. Soon they would go in. She heard the restless shuffling and whispering of those inside the tall, dusty stone structure. There was no doubt quite a bit of story-swapping and confusion, given the last-minute change of grooms.
“You always had your nose in a book, and books are full of dreams,” Honora replied. Smiling gently, she reached up and fixed a flower that had come loose in Clemency’s hair.“Love is a dream, fleeting and precious, best in the moment, and mourned when it is gone.”
“And your dream of love?” Clemency turned, her own impending happiness momentarily forgotten. Clutching Honora’s hand, she waited until her dear older sister looked into her eyes. “Mrs. Chilvers…”
Honora tried to tug her hand away.
“It is all right, Nora. I know how it is between you. How it truly is.”
“What must you think of me?” Honora whispered.
“Only the best, as I always have and always will. Whatever money must be spent to free her of her husband’s debts it will be yours.”
“And Mr. Ferrand would help us this way?”
“I know he will understand,” Clemency assured her.
A far-off smile spread across her sister’s face. “Then she can give up those regrettable pursuits and find a better use for her talents. I want to trust her. I want to forgive her. Do you?”
Clemency nodded. “Time will show her true character. And she will have money now, so if indeed she is your true love’s desire, then we are both becoming rich women.”
Honora scrunched up her nose, pressing two fingers hard to her forehead. “That is not funny, dearest.”
“It is a little funny.”
“Only because all has ended this way,” Honora reminded her. “I still feel the edges of a shadow about us.”
“That will pass,” Clemency promised. “All has not ended. Your life, whether it be with Mrs. Chilvers or another woman—”
“Sister—”
“Or another woman, will be a safe and happy one. I will not rest until you have all that you deserve, for you were always the sweetest of us. William is a fool, I am a tyrant, but you are all softness and light.”
Honora embraced her, and she felt warm tears against her cheek. Both of their tears.
“Softness and light,” Nora repeated, sighing. She stood back and held Clemency at arm’s length, admiring her in her wedding finery. “That is what I wish for you. This love you have with Mr. Ferrand, it began in darkness. But here…” She glanced up and closed her eyes, a rainbow of light cascading down from a stained-glass window bathing her in a divine richness of colors. “Here you are, coming together in the sunshine.”
“Then let us go in.”
The doors opened and her mother was already weeping, of course. Audric waited for her at the end of a flower-strewn path. She had never seen him look so shy, his hand tucked in front of his waist, his posture confident yet his eyes boyishly darting.
I am sure enough for the both of us.
Honora departed, scurrying up the aisle to be with their family. Tansy clapped her hands like a child under the bemused gaze of Lady Veitch and her constantly flurrying fan. Even Mr. Fry shed a dignified tear into his handkerchief.
Clemency let Audric’s green eyes be her guide. She walked herself toward them, not to give herself away, but to accept all he was willing to give.
27
It had never occurred to Clemency that a wedding could be such a breathless thing. Indeed, from the moment she slid into her crisp, new gown and tucked flowers into the ribbons woven through her hair until they trotted away from the church in the carriage hastily brought down by Ralston, she could scarcely remember taking a single full breath. It was with that same reedy, light-headed, and gauzy brain that she climbed the steps of Beswick, entered the great house, and found herself alone again with Audric Ferrand. Her husband.
Her husband.
Though they had stood together unchaperoned many times, Clemency now plunged headlong into terra incognita, aware all of a sudden, in a way she had never been before, of Audric’s body. She stood in the cavernous and generously frescoed bedroom, awaiting a maid she did not have, at a moment when she did not want one. Yet she had no earthly idea what to do with her hands. The dogs, Talos and Argus, slumbered by the foot of the bed. The house creaked and settled. The fire crackled.
