Lady Lavinia and Mrs. Ferby, Imogen’s brother and his wife, and numerous other people come for the wedding, had filled the Pulteney Hotel to the rafters.
There had been dinners and parties and soirees at the homes of various aunts and uncles of Percy’s; a betrothal ball for Meredith and Wenzel at Uncle Roderick’s, at which Percy’s engagement had been celebrated too; a ball at the Duke of Worthingham’s, at which there had been a betrothal cake in the center of the supper table; and another ball hosted jointly by Lady Trentham and her cousin, Viscountess Ravensberg, at which Percy found himself being congratulated by a rather large number of Bedwyns, including the formidable Duke of Bewcastle himself. Percy had heard him speak in the House of Lords a time or two, and for no apparent reason stood in awe of the man. Perhaps his intense light silver eyes had something to do with it, or his austere, haughty demeanor. It was something of a surprise to discover that he had a pretty though not ravishingly beautiful wife, whose smile seemed to light her up from the inside out and who seemed not one whit cowed by her husband.
It had all been enough, Percy decided as Watkins dressed him for his wedding all in silver and gray and white, to make him dashed sorry he had been forced to agree to marry the proper way—that had been Imogen’s way of putting it, anyway.
“Oh, Percy,” she had said with a sigh when he had still been making hopeful noises about going off in search of a special license. “I do so wish we could marry that way. But a wedding is not just about the bride and groom, is it? It is about their family and friends too. It is one of those rare celebratory events that punctuate a happy life. Let’s wait and marry in the proper way.”
He had not asked if marrying the other way would be improper. He would have given her the sun if she had asked for it, or the moon, or a proper wedding.
A proper bridegroom went to church—St. George’s on Hanover Square, of course—clad in silver, gray, and white, with yards of lace frothing at neck and cuffs and a diamond the size of a small egg winking in the linen and lace folds at his neck and rings and fobs and the Lord knew what other finery about his person.
And with unsteady knees. And two hands full of thumbs, any two or three of which were bound to drop the wedding ring at the key moment.
Cyril was no help, and Percy wondered if he should have chosen someone else to be his best man.
“What if I should drop the ring?” Cyril asked on the way to church.
Surely one of the functions of a best man—the principal function, in fact—was to calm the nerves of the bridegroom.
“Then you crawl around on the floor until you recover it,” Percy said. “It will not happen.”
“I have never done this before,” Cyril added.
“Neither have I,” Percy told him.
All the pews inside the church would surely have been filled just with family members and close friends. But of course, because this was a proper wedding, everyone who had a remote connection to the ton had been invited, and since the Season was just getting nicely launched and this was the very first fashionable wedding of the year—there would be others, since the Season was also the great marriage mart—everyone and his dog had accepted. Well, not dogs, actually. Hector’s nose was severely out of joint. When he had tried to trot unobtrusively out to the carriage, Percy had put his foot down, not an easy thing to do with an animal that sometimes had difficulty with the master/creature distinction.
The church was packed. There might even be a few people sitting up on the roof. There should be a few rows of chairs up there.
Cyril’s teeth were chattering almost audibly. Percy, seated with him at the front of the church, concentrated upon his ten thumbs and the necessity of converting eight of them back into fingers before they arrived at the ring part of the ceremony. He flexed them and did a mental check of his knees. He could not get married sitting down, could he?
And then it was starting—really starting. The clergyman, gorgeously vested, arrived at the front of the church, the buzz of conversation died to an expectant hush, the congregation got to its feet, and the organ struck up with something impressively proper.
Percy’s knees worked, and he turned to watch his bride approach along the nave, on the arm of her brother.
Lord, dear Lord.
She was all ice blue simplicity and elegance. Not a frill or a flounce or even half a yard of lace in sight. Not a curl or a wavy tendril of hair escaping from her plain straw bonnet trimmed only with a wide ribbon to match her dress. Not a jewel, except for something sparkling in her ears.
She passed elaborate splendor in the pews on both sides of her as she came. They paled into insignificance. She looked like a Nordic goddess or a Viking princess or some such thing.