After several long heartbeats of silence, parts of the church burst into laughter, and the wedding service proceeded to its normal conclusion.
Jacob was still sitting in the front pew when Edmund and Diana returned from signing the register. The rest of the congregation was waiting outside to shower the happy couple in rice, flour petals and good wishes.
“I thought you’d want to know that the Marchioness of Hadlow has been found and is unharmed apart from shock and a few bruises. Lady Birks hid in her carriage house and somehow managed to hijack the old lady on her way here. The coachman found the Marchioness inside the coach bound and gagged in her underclothes. They’ve taken her to her sister’s house to recover.”
Diana breathed out and nodded.
“Thank you, Jacob. Poor woman! But she was luckier than Lady Birks’s other victim. We were all lucky, and you were both very brave today.”
Jacob shrugged off her praise, always uncomfortable with attention being drawn to his good deeds. He quickly changed the subject.
“Despite being put together so quickly, I can say definitively that this has been the wedding of the Season. The wholetonwill be talking about it for years to come.”
“Then it’s probably just as well that we’re going to Scotland for a little while,” Diana commented, a smile dimpling her face.
* * *
“If there’s one thing that everyone, friends and family alike, know about Edmund Turner, Duke of Colborne, it’s his excellent judgement in all things. Including his best man obviously… and his choice of bride.”
“Here, here,” some of the guests called out, clinking glasses, and laughing as Jacob opened his speech at the wedding feast. Following the drama in the church, many of those present had already taken a drink or two more than their usual quota.
Noting that he was banned from relating any stories from their university years (cries of “shame!” echoed from some of the older gentlemen but were quickly hushed by their wives), Jacob instead went back to Edmund’s school days.
Not having been at school with Edmund himself, Jacob brought in Percy to relate some more innocent jokes and scrapes suitable for the family audience, ending with the story of how Edmund had once helped Diana after she sprained her ankle falling from a tree as a girl.
At first, the audience was puzzled, wondering how this last tale fit in with anything, or where the joke might be. But Jacob quickly picked up the thread again.
“So, if Lady Alton, the Duchess of Stratton, or any of our other kind hostesses this season are still wondering where this match was first made and who was responsible, perhaps the award cannot be given to any of you after all. I suspect it began at Fernside, only in friendship and kindness, and was made in the woods of that fine estate.”
Diana and Edmund smiled silently at one another, giving nothing away to their audience.
Without speaking the names of Lady Birks or her son, Jacob talked of the difficult times the Arnold family had recently experienced and how Edmund’s support and friendship had helped to see them through. Diana too had been a rock for her family through thick and thin regardless of her own feelings, taking on more than her share of responsibilities.
“Here, here,” Percy cried with feeling. “Couldn’t have done without Diana or the two of you!”
“After this meal, the Duke and Duchess of Colborne will be departing London for their Scottish estate, Edwick House, up in the Highlands. More usually, of course, we hear stories of young couples running away to Scotland before a wedding takes place…”
Laughter echoed around the grand hall as Jacob raised his eyebrow, some of the older ladies ready to be disapproving of whatever he said next.
“But given two people as responsible and dutiful to their families as Edmund and Diana,” he continued, “I am unsurprised to find them reversing this convention. Join me now in wishing them well as I raise a toast to Edmund and Diana, the Duke and Duchess of Colborne!”
Glasses clinked and cheers for the newlyweds rang out.
Epilogue
After the doctor departed into the snowy February night and the nurse had finished tucking up Diana and her well-wrapped baby in the giant feather bed, mother, father, and child were finally alone together.
Sometimes, it seemed that their months in Scotland were flying by quickly in beautiful walks together around the estate, rowing on the loch and teaching Diana to shoot on a homemade target range Edmund set up in the lower field where the view was clear in all directions and no one could wander within range accidentally.
Before he came to sit beside his little family, Edmund stirred up the fire and adjusted the curtains around the bed again to ensure they would be warm and safe from any ingress of the biting wind outside. Edwick House was a very old stone building, solid but drafty in some of the upper rooms where the wooden window frames were no longer tight. In the summer, he would commission repair works.
Oblivious for the moment to the passage of time, the biting wind, and the maintenance of Edwick House, Diana was gazing at their child with starry eyes and rocking the small form in her arms. When she felt Edmund’s weight sink into the mattress beside her, she looked at her husband with a tired but happy face.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” she asked, and she offered the child into Edmund’s arms for the first time.
He took hold of the swaddled little creature, the baby they had made together, carefully as if she were the most precious thing in the world.
“She is beautiful, Diana. She’s perfect, just like her mother.”