It wasn’t a dress he’d seen before. The Dread Master must have arranged for her to have it, likely on account of her having run from Finsbury entirely empty-handed. Their mysterious head had also provided Barnabus with clothes to replace the bloodstained ones he’d arrived in.
“This is also the dress I’ll be ‘buried’ in.” Gemma indicated it with a flourish of her hands, one of which held the bouquet of flowers. “I think I like today’s use of it better.”
“I wish this could be a grand wedding with friends and celebrations.”
Gemma crossed to his side. She set her hand gently on his cheek. “I don’t need all that, Baz. This wedding’s about you and me. That’s what matters.”
He wrapped his hand around hers, shifting it to his lips and kissing it softly. “A shame we have to put up with Fletcher being here.”
“I’d be happy to leave,” he said dryly. “But there’s this demanding doctor who’s asking me to pretend I’m clergy in order to oversee averysmall wedding.”
Gemma didn’t pull her hand away as she turned to look at Fletcher. “I’m sorry we’ll miss you and Elizabeth getting churched.”
“I was hoping to have married her by now, but the Mastiff would likely turn it into a bloodbath.” Fletcher pushed out an audible breath. “But a quiet ceremony would undermine her reputation, and she’d lose her school.”
“It’s painful being pulled away from the person you love,” Gemma said.
Barnabus held her hand even tighter. “We’ll not have to be ever again.”
Pulling a paper from his frock coat pocket, Fletcher said, “Shall we?”
They arranged themselves much the way they would’ve been if being married truly in an official ceremony. Barnabus and Gemma stood side by side; she held her flowers in one hand and his hand in the other. That was, perhaps, not fully proper for a wedding, but he certainly wasn’t going to complain.
“I wrote down my own version of a right-tight wedding ceremony.” Fletcher eyed them both with a smirk. “I think you’ll find it an improvement.”
“Oh, blimey,” Barnabus whispered.
Gemma only grinned.
“Barnabus Milligan, are you marrying Gemma on account of you’re wanting to and think it a bang-up idea?”
“I am.”
“Do you love her, or are you dense as a log?”
On a whisper, Barnabus said, “The officiant doesn’t usually insult the groom.”
Fletcher shrugged. “You’re obligated to answer the question, Doc.”
“I do love her.” He looked to Gemma. “I do love you. With all my heart.”
“Are you choosing to spend all your life with her and marry her no matter the messiness that got you two churched the first time? Honestlychoosingit?”
“Honestly, happily, willingly choosing it,” he said.
“That’ll do, ’suppose.” Fletcher flipped his paper over, more questions written on the back. “Gemma Milligan, do you believe him, no matter that believing people ain’t an easy thing for people who’ve lived their lives on the streets of this heartless city?”
“I do believe him,” she said.
The ceremony could’ve ended there, and it would’ve beenenough for Barnabus. Gemma knew he loved her and wanted to be married to her and was choosing this life with her. That had been lacking for so long, a heavy cloud hanging over their lives.
“And are you marrying him because you want to, no matter that he’s sometimes a dull cove and writes penny dreadfuls that don’t have a single monster and ain’t about street urchins like the stories written by real authors?” Fletcher wrote about monsters and street urchins, something Gemma’s laugh indicated she was well aware of.
“Again,” Barnabus whispered, “you don’t have to insult the groom.”
“I’m marrying him because I want to,” Gemma said. “And if the rest of what you’re meaning to say ain’t nice to him, I’ll belt you.”
Fletcher made a show of reading through the rest of his notes for the ceremony and dismissing it all as unusable.