Page 122 of Immortal Rose

I was so touched I could scarcely speak. “I would be honored. Thank you.”

Mrs. Silver’s smile was a gift, too. “I will leave you to get ready, then.”

I had only a few moments to myself before Felicity’s return was preceded by a burst of cloying, sugary lavender. I recognized the perfume from the other dresses in the wardrobe by the modiste, but the periwinkle silk gown must have been dunked into a vat of it. The scent was sweet enough to send a ripple of nausea through my stomach.

“Will this do?” she asked.

Lovely felt like a pale word to describe such an enchanting garment. The gown was a thing spun of dawn light and sweet wishes, as beautiful as the first iteration had been.

“Yes” was all I could manage to say.

“Thankfully the perfume’s faded,” Felicity said. “I can hardly smell it.”

My smile tensed. If only I could have said the same.

I changed into a clean chemise and was relaced into my stays. Like a woman drowning, I took a final deep breath, bracing as Felicity helped ease the dress over my head. The silk pooled against my skin like cool water, soothing and stifling all at once. The lavender perfume was faint, but its syrupy sweetness made my skin itch everywhere the fabric touched. The heat of my body only seemed to intensify the scent.

After Felicity re-pinned my hair and helped apply a little rouge to my lips and cheeks, she retrieved the small posy Mrs. Silver had left on the bed. She twirled the white rosebud, bluebells, and forget-me-nots between her fingers. “From his lordship, of course.”

My smile fell, but I couldn’t deny that the flowers offered a reprieve from the perfumed silk. It was a pleasant day, but you never would have known by the scratchy heat that spread over my skin, coating my body like wool in the summer sun.

Nerves. That was all it was. I’d had a spell of anxiety like this before and had broken out in a rash of hives that took days to heal. It would be my miserable luck to cap off an already devastating day looking like I had the plague.

“There we are.” Felicity pinned the posy to my chest and said softly, “For what it’s worth, you look beautiful.”

There was some strength I could draw from that, I supposed.

Felicity retrieved a pair of silk slippers from the wardrobe as I donned Mrs. Silver’s earrings and a pair of gloves.

Then there was nothing left to do but go downstairs.

It was a journey of a thousand hours and yet no time at all. Each brush of my dress against my skin only inflamed the panicked heat rising beneath it. The warming silk released more of that repulsive candied lavender scent.

By the time we passed the covered portrait of Lord Foxcourt, even my corset felt like it was trapping in heat. If it hadn’t been for the sudden appearance of Fleming in the hall below, I might have asked Felicity to help me loosen it. But the sight of Fleming, clutching four vases bursting with flowers cut fresh from the garden as he scurried toward the morning room, silenced me.

Seeing us, he slowed only for a moment, flustering beneath his powdered wig as he declared, “You shall not be married without flowers.”

I spared one last glance in a hall mirror to ensure I hadn’t turned the color of a poppy. Felicity squeezed my arm, inclining her head toward the front door with a final silent offer. I shook my head. The course was set.

Though only two witnesses were required, the entire household had gathered, lining up in such a way that it created an aisle toward the two figures at the center of the room. Even Brigadier was present, daisies slipped into the new blue bows on her ears.

Despite the modiste’s revolting perfume, the beaming faces around us, and the ostentatious crimson robes of the priest at his side, once my eyes found Foxcourt, I couldn’t tear them away. He let out a sharp breath as his gaze met mine, and I wondered then if he had expected me to run. That gaze was like a lead; I was powerless to pull away.

Mrs. Silver had been right, of course; he was unbearably handsome in his flawless dark suit and shined boots. His face was clean-shaven, and the dark waves of his hair had been mastered by a bit of pomade. There was a little flutter in my chest at the violets he’d slipped through the button of his lapel.

Despite having had no sleep the night before, he looked entirely, wholly present. The tensed expression on his face eased, just for a moment. His gloveless hands were clasped so tightly around each other, they’d turned bone white.

The late-afternoon sun had polished every surface of the room with a golden sheen, and he was its radiant center.

Come along, then, his gray eyes said, gentling.

My pulse steadied, and while the heat lingered in my blood, I felt that strange calmness overtake me again. I forgot my discomfort, the twisting of my stomach. I forgot the faces around us, letting them blur into light as I walked toward him.

Fleming had placed two of the arrangements on either side of the men and one on the table behind them, forming an altar. Something about it reminded me of the ancient fairy ceremonies, when lovers would be married beneath a bower of Venia’s sacred roses.

The priest’s horseshoe-shaped biretta bobbed as he bounced on his heels, pressing the open holy book to his chest. He looked barely old enough to enter seminary, let alone be serving as a fully ordained priest.

“Such a gorgeous day it is to be wed in the sight of our divine Lord!” the priest declared. “May I be the first to—”