“Ooh,” Gladys said when she had fitted the bonnet carefully over Samantha’s curls and tied the ribbons in a bow to one side of her chin, “you were right and I was wrong, Mrs. McKay. White is your color. Every color is your color. But you look perfect today. The major is going to eat you up, he is, when he sees you. Not that he’d better do it, mind, not when—”
But her monologue was interrupted by a knock on the dressing room door and she went to see who was there.
“Thank you, Gladys,” Samantha said. “That will be all.”
She smiled at John. She had thought everyone had left for the church by now.
“You look very fine,” he said, his eyes moving over her. He was frowning. “I have always thought of you, you know, as your mother’s daughter. I would never think of you as my father’s too. But you were—you are. You look like your mother, of course—well, a bit like her, anyway. I was always thankful about that, for I am like my father. I can see it when I look in a glass. But you do too. Not in obvious ways. Just sometimes in a turn of the head or a fleeting expression—not anything I can put my finger on exactly. But you are his daughter. Not that I ever doubted it. I just ignored it.”
“John.” She stepped forward and extended her right hand. “You have come all this way and I am touched. I know it was hard for you when our father married my mother.”
“You are my sister,” he said. “I had to come and tell you that, Samantha. Not that you did not know it, but … Well, everyone needs family, and I know you have always been denied half of yours and didn’t know about the other half until recently. I am glad you have discovered that half. Bevan seems a decent sort as well as being as rich as Croesus.”
“John,” she said hesitantly, hoping she was not about to introduce a discordant note into their meeting, “why did you keep his letters from me and all of Mr. Rhys’s except the one you sent soon after Papa’s death? Why did I not know about the money my aunt left me or all the gifts my grandfather sent?”
He frowned. “I knew nothing of any gifts or money,” he told her. “I do know that when our father was dying he had me find two bundles of letters and burn them while he watched. He told me your mother had not wanted you to have anything to do with her Welsh relatives, that they had treated her badly and must not be allowed to bother you. He wanted to honor her wishes, especially as you had made such an advantageous marriage. All I ever had was letters asking what you wanted to do about the cottage. Father had said it was just a run-down building, not worth anything. I sent the one letter on to you after answering it myself—I thought perhaps you ought to see it so that you could send an answer of your own if you wanted. You did not write back, and your husband was in a bad way, and I didn’t bother you with the other few letters that came. But they did not mention any money, Samantha—only the cottage. I had no idea it was the house it is.”
“Me neither,” she said, smiling at him. “As it has turned out, John, it is a good thing I knew nothing, but discovered the truth only when it would mean most to me.”
“You are marrying a good man,” he said, “even if he is half a cripple.”
“There is no one less crippled than Ben,” she said. “But thank you, John. I wept, you know, when I knew you were coming.”
“You did?”
“I did.” She smiled and looked beyond his shoulder.
Her grandfather had come to fetch her. He was beaming at her and then smiling genially at John.
“The bridegroom will have heart palpitations if we are late,” he said. “Bridegrooms always do. It is a hazardous thing to be.”
“I know.” John smiled at him and looked so much like their father that Samantha’s heart turned over. “I see enough of them. And I was one myself once.”
He turned back and took a step closer so that he could kiss Samantha’s cheek.
“Be happy,” he said. “Our father loved you very dearly, you know.”
“I do know,” she said softly. “Just as he loved you.”
He hurried away, and Samantha looked at her grandfather.
“Oh, dear God, girl,” he said, “but you look like my Esme. Except that I never saw her in white. It was a color she never wore. You are beautiful. And what an inadequate word that is. Come, let me help you on with your cloak, and we will go rescue the major from death by heart failure, shall we?”
“Oh, by all means, Grandpapa,” she said. “But I must not forget my muff.”
It was her wedding day, she thought, and felt a flutter of almost unbearable excitement in her stomach.
It had been decided at Christmastime that Ben would take three months during which to get married and enjoy a wedding trip and a stay with his fellow members of the Survivors’ Club. After that, as Mr. Bevan’s grandson-in-law rather than simply as his employee, he would gradually take over the running of the mines and ironworks while Bevan himself relaxed into a semi-retirement. The newly wedded couple would live at the cottage, though the invitation to take up their residence at Cartref was an open one. There would be homes in Swansea and the Rhondda Valley too.
All of which was satisfying, even exciting to consider, Ben thought as he sat beside his brother at the front of the church in Fisherman’s Bridge while his family and friends and Samantha’s murmured in soft conversation behind him. But in the meanwhile there was today.