“My love.” He sobered. “How strange it will seem to be married before so many people, after our first wedding was such an intimate affair.”
“How strange to be married after we’ve already been…so married…”
He caught her stray hand before she became too naughty with it. “I believe your mama has an army of women waiting to primp and pamper you this morning, and I need to bathe and shave and put on my fancy new clothes so I’ll look fine enough to stand beside you at that altar. Not an easy endeavor. I fear you’ll outshine me no matter what I do.”
He kissed her on the forehead and rose to enter his adjoining chamber, leaving her to glow in her heart, and to miss him. Her mother arrived soon after, bringing a breakfast tray adorned with bridal flowers. She had no time to linger over the fresh fruit, cakes, and wedding buns as servants began to appear bearing a bath, more flowers, and her pale pink wedding gown of embroidered Catania silk.
“Oh, Mama,” she said, astonished. It was the first time she’d seen it. It was fine and flowing, with a full, lace-embellished skirt and train. “I can’t believe how lovely it is.” She frowned, tracing the round neckline. “Perhaps I don’t deserve something so lovely.”
“Now, we won’t talk like that. This is your special day, and brides deserve everything.”
“Even wayward ones?”
“Wayward? Darling, you’re home. It’s time to move past all that happened and look toward the future.”
Rosalind tried to emulate her mother as she prepared for her royal wedding, tried to be calm, beautiful, and serene. When the maidservants were done with her clothes and hair, they settled Felicity’s veil upon her head, attached to a diamond encrusted tiara on loan from Tuscany’s royal vaults. It was quite a bit grander than the veil she’d borrowed from the elder Maria Regina. When she looked in the mirror, she hardly recognized herself.
“Oh, Rosalind.” Her mother seemed close to tears. “Forgive us for insisting on another wedding, but you deserved to be married this way. How beautiful you look. Wait until Marlow sees.”
He will not care, she wanted to say. He’s seen me look like a drowned rat and still loved me. She stared at the sparkling diamonds in the mirror as her mother sent the servants away. “He will make me a good husband, Mama,” she said when they were alone. “I don’t want you and Papa to worry. I promise he’ll take care of me and make me happy.”
“That is not your promise to make, but one we shall hold him to nonetheless. Never you fear.”
“There’s nothing to fear. I know him better than—better than all of you.” She held her tongue as her mother draped a tasteful diamond necklace around her neck and fastened the clasp. “You judged him wrongly,” she went on. “I don’t wish to argue, only to reassure you. Marlow’s not wild or mad, or any of the awful things people accuse him of. He’s very steadfast and very kind.”
Her mother regarded her in the mirror through depthless blue-gray eyes, so like her own. “I know he won’t hurt you, dearest. It’s obvious how much he loves you. I suppose we were wrong to deny the two of you, though you might have married someone of higher status. I thought you and Brittingham… Well, he will get over the loss.”
Her mother moved away, her voice going brisk. “Now then, my dear. I suppose you need no instruction on the wedding night?”
Rosalind didn’t need to look at her reflection to know she was blushing crimson. “I don’t.”
“That little smile tells me things are well enough in that quarter, and I’m glad for it. Let’s never speak of it again.”
They both laughed, and it felt good to be at ease with her mother again. Her father smiled too when she was presented to him at the door of the palace’s cathedral. He walked her down the aisle to gorgeous organ music with a choral accompaniment and gave her to Marlow without any outward signs of disapproval.
“For God’s sake,” Marlow whispered as he took her hand at the altar. “Look at you.”
They repeated their vows a second time before the royal court of Tuscany, and while it was a joyful wedding, with dancing and refreshments afterward, there was some underpinning of anxiety too. After this wedding, they must all return to England and face the ton. Carlo and Felicity’s courtiers were deliriously happy to celebrate any family nuptials, but London’s parlors would be filled instead with gossip of a runaway bride and an elopement. Brittingham’s friends might try to make their lives difficult.
That night, Marlow quieted her worries with kisses. They enjoyed a second honeymoon, exploring one another’s bodies in a luxurious, high-ceilinged chamber on a bed of silken sheets.
“I have long been married to you in my heart,” he said afterward, holding her against him. “Even when I left you for India, you were the only one in my heart. I’ll never leave you again.”
“You’ll never need to leave again.” She held him close, drifting to sleep on the scent of his muscled body, his white-blond hair. She must not fret about the future. If they loved one another, nothing else mattered. She would not be afraid of the ton, not with Marlow at her side.