Page 59 of The Duke Who Saved Christmas
That was weirdly appropriate.
“Indeed,” I replied. “Now I have to break the news to her and try to figure out a replacement. There’s no way she’s going to be in any emotional state to fix it.”
He nodded slowly. “There’s only way to tell her, pet. Rip it right off like a plaster.”
“I know you’re right, but it doesn’t feel like the best thing to do. She’s going to be heartbroken.”
“And it’s not your fault. You aren’t responsible for it. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I know, I just…” I trailed off when movement in the doorway caught my eye.
Hazel was standing there, cradling Beatrix Trotter. Her eyes shone with tears, and my stomach plummeted right through my legs and through the kitchen tiles to the centre of the Earth.
“It’s gone, isn’t it?” she asked softly.
“I’m so sorry, Hazel,” I replied quietly. “I just spoke to Eliza. The van is completely burnt out. It was a fireball after it was hit.”
She swallowed, scratching Beatrix behind her little multicoloured ear. “Is the driver okay?”
“He’s in hospital, but he should be completely fine in time,” I assured her.
“Okay. Good. That’s the most important thing.” She looked down at Beatrix, but the dipping of her chin didn’t hide the fact a tear dripped onto her cheek.
I went to move towards her, but Gramps put down his mug and moved before I could. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in, and she put Beatrix on the floor before she fell against him and let it all out.
The most gut-wrenching sob erupted from my little sister, and my heart cracked firmly in two.
This was the one thing I couldn’t fix.
I couldn’t order another one with next day delivery like I’d done for a bride last year whose shoes were missing in action. I couldn’t knock on hair salon doors with an open chequebook to replace one who went down with pneumonia a week before the wedding. I couldn’t source another bridesmaid dress after one of a groom’s jealous stepsisters had ruined a dress.
There was no last-minute sourcing of a new mother of the groom dress because her original was white. There was no pulling the right colour of nail polish out of my bag of tricks. There was no grabbing a hair curler to make sure everyone was out of the door on time.
This…
This was an unsolvable problem. Not even I could find a way to condense three months of custom work into two weeks to replace her veil. It was the very definition of irreplaceable, and there wasn’t a thing I could about it.
And it was for the one wedding I cared about more than anything.
My sister’s.
The most important wedding in my life thus far.
I hugged my mug of tea to my chest and peered over at her. Gramps was still holding her, swaying side to side as he stroked her hair and murmured placations in her ear. To anyone else, this would be the most dramatic thing in the world, but the veil was meant to honour the joining of our families and was so important to her.
I couldn’t fix this, but I had to.
I had to find a way to make this right, and I didn’t have a lot of time in which to do so.
Buthowwould I? How could I? Was it even possible to fix it?
I didn’t know.
All I knew what was if there was a way, I would figure it out.
I had to.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN – SYLVIE
