George turned his head to look at his bride again. She was as pale as chalk, and he wondered if she was about to faint. But she was looking steadily and apparently calmly at Eastham.
“I am afraid, sir,” the bishop said, his voice stern, “that I must judge against your protest and continue with these proceedings. Your unsubstantiated accusation has failed to convince me that there is any valid impediment to the nuptials I am here to solemnize.”
“There is none,” George said. He made no attempt to raise his voice, though the silence was such that he did not doubt everyone could hear him. “I was the only witness to my wife’s death, and I was too far away to save her.”
“You are a filthy liar, Stanbrook,” Eastham cried, and he took a few menacing steps forward. But Hugo and Ralph were already out in the nave and bearing down upon him, and Flavian was not far behind. Percy was pushing his way out of a pew on the other side of the aisle.
“Sir.” The bishop’s voice rang through the church with solemn authority. “Your objection to these proceedings has been heard and overruled. You will be seated now and hold your peace, or you will remove yourself from the church.”
Eastham was not given the opportunity to choose. Hugo hooked an arm through one of his while Ralph did the like for the other, and between them they hurried him out backward, though he did not go quietly. Flavian and Percy followed after them. Percy did not reappear.
But George was only half aware of either what was happening or the renewed swell of sound from the pews. His eyes were fixed upon those of his bride, who had turned away from the spectacle to regard him.
“Do you wish to proceed?” he asked, his voice low. “We will postpone our wedding to another time if you prefer.”
Or cancel it if she chose.
“I wish to proceed now.” She did not hesitate, and her eyes remained steady on his. But her warm, radiant smile had gone. His own expression, he feared, was grim.
A heavy silence had fallen on the church, though it did not feel to George like a particularly hostile one. There was not a steady stream of guests making its outraged way to the doors, only the sound of boot heels on stone as his three friends made their way back to their places. But of course, almost everyone in the congregation would have heard that particular rumor long ago. It had caused a sensation in the neighborhood about Penderris Hall in the days and weeks following Miriam’s death, and it was far too salacious a story not to have spread to other parts of the country, most notably London. There would always be those only too eager to cry murder after a violent death to which there had been only one witness, and that the woman’s husband. The rumor had died with time and lack of either motive or evidence. It was doubtful that many people still believed it. Indeed, it was doubtful many people beyond the neighborhood of Penderris itself ever had.
The bishop proceeded with the service, picking up exactly where he had left off, and George tried to recapture his earlier mood and glanced at his bride to see if she had recaptured hers.
It was impossible, of course—and impossible to concentrate fully.
They spoke their vows with unfaltering voices, gazing directly at each other as they did so, and he fitted her wedding ring onto her finger while repeating the words the bishop read to him. Neither his own hand nor hers shook with even the slightest of tremors. Yet her hand was ice cold to his touch. He smiled at her and she smiled back. It took a conscious effort on his part, and doubtless on hers too. There was warmth in her smile but no radiance.
The bishop proclaimed them man and wife, and just like that, almost unnoticed, the moment he had anticipated with such boyish eagerness came and passed and they were married.
Had she known about those rumors surrounding his wife’s death? George found himself wondering. Belatedly he thought that perhaps he ought to have raised the matter with her.
He drew her still ungloved hand through his arm when it came time to withdraw to the vestry for the signing of the register, and covered it with his own when he discovered that it was still cold. He curled his fingers about it to warm it, as though it were only her hand that needed comforting.
“I am so very sorry,” he murmured.
“But it was not your fault,” she said.
“I wanted our wedding to be perfect for you,” he told her.
Her eyes looked fleetingly into his. “It was not your fault,” she said again, “any more than it was mine.”
But she had not assured him that it had been perfect.
They were both smiling when they came out of the vestry a few minutes later, the register having been signed and witnessed, the final seal placed on their marriage. A sea of smiling faces watched them from the pews, just as though nothing had happened to spoil the wedding and to set fashionable drawing rooms abuzz with gossip for days to come.
They walked slowly, nodding from side to side, picking out particular friends and relatives—Agnes with her upper lip caught between her teeth and tears swimming in her eyes; Philippa with her clasped hands held to her mouth; Gwen smiling and nodding beside the flame-haired Chloe; Imogen, her eyes, luminous with tenderness, moving from one to the other of them; Vincent gazing so directly toward them that it was almost impossible to believe that he was blind; Oliver Debbins gazing with frowning concern at his sister, his wife smiling; Ben with . . . tears in his eyes? The other Survivors, George noticed—Hugo, Ralph, Flavian, and, of course, that Survivor-by-marriage, Percy—were conspicuous by their absence, and it did not take a genius to guess where they had gone and what they were up to. Not, at least, when one had been involved in five other Survivor weddings during the past two years, one of them only a little over a month ago.