For London, it was the best November day we could have hoped for. The sheets of cold rain had abated, leaving a high and clear sky. A little anemic and a little cold perhaps, but there was enough warmth on Earth here below to make up for it.
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about hair,” Ivy murmured, stepping back from me. She was already in her light blue attendant’s dress, and across the hall, playing dolls in the library, Aurora and Jane were in their snowy muslins, ready to sprinkle a path down the church aisle with flower petals.
I turned and twisted in my seat to get a better glimpse of my hair. Despite Ivy’s demurral, she’d done a beautiful job, the curls coiling and weaving in and out of a delicate up-do that exposed the lines of my neck and shoulders.
I stood and faced her. “Thank you.”
She gave me one of her inscrutable dark-eyed looks, one of those looks that reminded me of a deer in a forest. “You’re welcome.”
I nodded. We were growing closer, Ivy and me, perhaps a natural consequence of loving two best friends. And, I had to admit, Ivy had been an invaluable resource when we’d returned to England last month, and I’d found myself a new mother to five children. And soon a sixth, I thought to myself. But I didn’t betray this thought outwardly; even Silas didn’t know. I was saving the news as a wedding present. How funny that when he’d first come back to London, he’d asked me to give him a child, and now here we were, about to be married with one burrowed secretly inside my womb. It thrilled me and terrified me all at once, but so did most of the emotional frontiers Silas pulled me over.
Ivy surprised me by pulling me into a hug. Her arms slid around the hollows of my waist, and she pressed herself against me. This was the most physical contact we’d had since that night more than a year ago at Markham Hall, where we’d stripped her naked on the floor of the parlor and introduced her to our version of Blindman’s Bluff.
And then I flushed a little, because Ivy probably didn’t know how frequently she and Julian figured into the fantasies Silas and I whispered to each other as we fucked. I stepped back, a little, my face feeling hot, and she regarded me with interest.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Perfectly fine,” I assured her. “Never better.”
With my hair finished and my gown—a thing of pale gold with a draped silk skirt and a long train—securely buttoned, the cathedral veil was the last thing left. We pinned it to my hair, and then tasked Jane with carrying the back of it as we walked to the carriage, so that it wouldn’t drag on the ground.
True to my word, I had indeed forced Silas into the papist faith. At least, forced in the sense that we paid a French priest a handsome sum of money to baptize Silas without the time and delay of his undergoing a formal catechism. And so it was to a Catholic church we went, exiting the carriage in a cloud of silk and lace and muslin.
The ceremony was nothing more than a blur. I remember seeing Ivy and Julian at the front, Julian’s hand comfortingly on Silas’s shoulder. I remember Jane and Aurora and their petals. I even remember the priest’s sonorous baritone as he recited the ritual Latin that bound Silas and me together.
But mostly I remembered Silas, the stained glass painting his face with jeweled light, his eyes bright with happy tears as he affirmed his vows to me, and the way he bit his lip to keep from crying when I affirmed my vows to him.
I remembered the way his hands felt in mine, warm and solid even through both pairs of our gloves, and the way his lips crashed against mine after he lifted my veil, firm and possessive and also curving into a smile against my mouth, because it was Silas and he was happy and so of course he was smiling.
And then there were the congratulations and the bells and the rice thrown, and then it was just me and Silas in the carriage, rolling back to his townhouse. The children would stay with Ivy and Julian and Bertha here in London while Silas and I went to Brighton for a handful of days for our honeymoon. Even Brighton would be dreary at this time of year, but I didn’t plan on spending much time exploring the scenery.
“Come here, Mary Margaret,” Silas commanded, patting his lap, and I made my way across the carriage to straddle him, piles of silk and tulle bunched around us. His gloved hands found my legs under all the fabric and swept up the length of my stockings. “My wife,” he murmured, his hands wandering higher.
Only a thin layer of linen and the fabric of his trousers separated me from his quickly growing erection. I made a mmm noise in my chest, feeling how thick and how hard he was underneath me, feeling his hands finally grip my ass and lift me up. I pulled at his trousers as he ripped at my drawers, and then I felt the wide crest of his crown as it sought entrance, as I sank down and it slowly, deliciously, split me in two.
“My wife,” he said again, wonderingly this time, as I took him all the way in. I started grinding down against him, silk rustling all around us, his gloved fingers still gripping my ass.
“I have something to tell you,” I said, still working myself against him.
“Anything,” he breathed, his eyes glazed and sex-bright. “Tell me anything.”
“You remember the night of the engagement ball?”
“I only care to remember one part,” he said, a little wary now.
“I’m talking about that part.”
His mouth relaxed, even as he started thrusting up as much as his seated position would allow.
“There is something I’ve taken, since I was a girl. To prevent pregnancy.” I watched his face for any sign of judgment or disapproval, but there was none. Relieved, I went on. “Well, I forgot to take it that morning. And every morning since I went to France.”
His body stilled under mine, though those hands clung on to me even tighter.
“I…I wasn’t certain last month. So I saw a physician last week, and he confirmed it for me. We think the probable conception date was that night.” Another deep breath. “In eight months, we should have a child of our own.”
The biggest smile I’d ever seen split his face, a wide and astonished grin, and then he was kissing me hard, his hands moving and finding my waist and then my hair and then my face, which he cradled in his hands as he broke our kiss.
His eyes searched mine. “Truly?”
