“Lady Hadlow…”
“The Dowager Marchioness of Hadlow.”
“Old Hadlow’s widow…”
The figure in puce raised her head and lifted her veil. It was not the Marchioness of Hadlow.
“Diana Arnold is promised in marriage to my son, and no other man shall ever have her!” Lady Birks shrieked, raising a knife that had been hidden in her skirts.
There was a moment of uproar as the congregation screamed and scrabbled away from the madwoman with the knife. Edmund put Diana behind him.
“No, Mother!” Kitty shouted, rushing down the aisle and standing in front of her mother before she could reach the couple at the altar. “Don’t do this. Please don’t do this!”
Lady Birks cackled. “If you get in my way, Kitty, I’ll slit your throat first and—.”
Before she could finish her threat, the church doors burst open, and two Bow Street officers ran inside, brandishing pistols which they aimed at Lady Birks’s head.
“Stop or we’ll shoot!” they shouted as the congregation ducked down for cover in the pews, many now too terrified to even scream.
“This is a house of God!” Reverend Mayford called out desperately. “Your weapons are all sacrilege here.”
By now, Edmund had drawn his own small pistol and trained it on Lady Birks with an unwavering hand. From the front pew, Unity did the same thing to the surprise of other members of the Turner and Arnold families around her. Diana felt the same surprise but also a good deal of admiration for the woman who had raised Edmund so well.
“There are four guns now pointing at your head, Lady Birks,” Edmund warned. “If you come one step closer to Diana, I will be forced to shoot you. For everyone’s sake, go quietly with the good gentlemen who have come to collect you.”
“You have no right to steal what belongs to my Andrew,” Henrietta hissed. “You think you can do whatever you want, Colborne, but she’s not yours to take.”
“You have no right to talk about me like that!” Diana exclaimed, looking at her aunt from behind Edmund, unable to keep quiet any longer. “This is the nineteenth century, and the only people who have any say in my life are my parents until my twenty-first birthday and the husband I choose for myself. I don’t belong to Andrew or you. I never have and I never will.”
Raging at Diana’s words, Lady Birks raised her knife, and Kitty cried out once more as she saw fingers tightening on the triggers.
“Oh God, no! They’re going to kill her… Mother!”
With all the congregation’s attention on the spectacle of Lady Birks, the couple at the altar and the four guns, no one had noticed Jacob quietly emptying out a large wooden bin of soft pew cushions in the corner of the church and unobtrusively stepping back into the front row of seats close to Lady Birks.
At Kitty’s cry, Jacob jumped swiftly on the bench and dropped the wooden bin neatly down over Lady Birks’s head, knocking her to the ground stunned and freeing the knife from her grasp. He then immediately rolled the barrel up the aisle until he reached the two Bow Street officers, Lady Birks’s feet spinning and kicking at one side.
“All yours,” he said shortly. “Take her away and lock her up. You should also look for the Marchioness of Hadlow whose clothes and invitation appear to have been stolen by this woman. She may have come to grief.”
“You, you, you…” Lady Birks sputtered impotently at Jacob as she was extracted from the barrel and chained by the officers, now hatless and missing a shoe. Everyone else in the church was completely silent, unable to quite believe any of the scenes they had just witnessed.
“Before you go, I just want to tell you,” Lord Wycliff said with dignity as the Bow Street officers prepared to take her away, “your dog Fluffles is a bloody awful animal and you deserved one another.”
A collective sigh of relief, a loud wave of chattering, a few scattered snorts of laughter and rounds of applause rang through the church as Jacob returned to his place in the front row. He helped Kitty up from where she was sobbing on the ground and delivered her into Esther’s kind arms before he sat down again.
“Well played, Jake,” Edmund said, putting the safety catch back on his pistol and returning it to his pocket. Diana took hold of his hand again, and they turned back towards the red-faced and sweating priest.
“Given the disruption, I think it would be best if we—”
“Complete the wedding service immediately,” Diana sweetly said, cutting across Reverend Mayford’s suggestion before it could be voiced. “Yes, we agree.”
Reverend Mayford looked rapidly around the church where most of the congregation had found their seats again and waited expectantly for something else to happen.
“That woman wanted to prevent this wedding for her own evil ends and was willing to bring violence into your church to accomplish that. Don’t let her win,” Edmund urged.
Gulping down a deep breath, the priest mopped his brow and then nodded.
“If anyone here,” he began weakly, his voice gaining volume and resonance as he continued, “knows of any impediment, why this man and this woman may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, confess it now…”