Chapter
Twenty
Preparations
What
was I thinking? Lost in love, I did not question the scruples of a man who had
already organised the honeymoon.
The wedding was organised so quickly the
servants openly gossiped about my supposed pregnancy; I was not pregnant,
obviously. But as neither of us had any family to organise and I had few
friends I wished to invite, there seemed no reason to wait. We both wanted to move forward with our
future. I longed to go to Europe; it had always been my dream to see other
places. To see them first with my husband and new step-daughter would make them
even more special.
There were to be only a few guests back at
the finest country hotel for the reception. Sophie insisted on ordering and
helping to choose our wedding and bridesmaid dresses which arrived in huge
boxes shipped from Paris, again at exorbitant cost; Nathanial assured us that money
was no object. Nate and I chose our wedding rings; I selected a large ruby and
diamond ring. Mrs Fairfax and Leah, and especially Sophie, gasped when they saw
it. Perhaps I would not have chosen such a large ruby or so many diamonds if
the other options I had to choose from had been any smaller! I loved the fact
that Nathanial did not want to place any limits on either beauty or excesses, although
I was mindful material wealth was not the basis of my love for Nathanial
Rochester. He was a man unlike any other; I loved him so much it scared me.
I
chose a plain but simple gown to offset the ring and my elaborate, upswept
braided hair. A village hairdresser had practised various designs on me and we
came up with one that was both fashionable and traditional.
Sophie’s hair and dress was a more
elaborate version of my own. Her gown was also tied with pale blue ribbons and cream
lace. Sophie looked a dream and told me I did too. At least, I looked as much
like one of those women in the photographs of bridal magazines as I ever would.
Mrs Fairfax put her hand over her mouth
when she saw me during my final fitting as I stood on a chair in the middle of
my sitting room.
‘Oh Anne, I am speechless. You look a
picture. You look… beautiful.’
It was nice to hear, although I knew I’d
take a lot of convincing.
I wound the veil over my head and Sophie trailed
around the edges on the floor as Leah took many photographs for us to keep,
some with our jeans sticking out from under the edges of our dresses. I
proposed to frame these informal photographs and give them to Nathanial as a
wedding present – after we were married. I did not want him to see my wedding
dress in advance; no future bride plans to let her fiancée see the dress before
the wedding.
‘You are my something blue,’ I told Sophie
as I touched her nose and straightened her sky coloured ribbons as she giggled.
But I wasn’t taking any chances. Merida gave me a cobalt garter, to tie above
my knee and Mrs Fairfax gave me a silk handkerchief (“something old”, passed
down through the generations) which was also “something borrowed”. The “new”
was my dress.
I compared my gown with the many outfits
I’d been given to wear in foster care; clothes, passed down from so many
others. I felt re-assembled, whole and made new again, from my toes upwards as
I tried on all of the fashionable designs I’d bought to wear on my honeymoon.
Sophie chose some of them. Six-year-olds have pretty good taste, or at least, this six year old did.
‘I want you to buy everything new for our
honeymoon, darling,’ Nate said over breakfast. The room was quiet except for
our eating and speaking.
All of the houseguests, including the
band, had left to go on tour. Nicola had been the first to go. She’d exited,
draped over a new boyfriend and seemingly without a backward glance, just as
Nate said she would.
An unfamiliar hush had swept over Thornton
Hall. ‘You needn’t ever want for anything again,’ Nate assured me as we
finished our breakfast.
In the days leading up to the wedding, Mrs
Fairfax seemed extra cautious in her communications with me.
‘Anne, just be careful. I’m only warning
you because I’ve never seen him act quite so suddenly in matters of the heart.
He’s been single, as far as I know, since he got back to London from America, the
first time, a while ago now.’ We were seated outside picking some berries as Edwina
continued, ‘I mean, look at him, Anne. ‘It must have been by choice. I suppose
it was true that he and Nicola meant nothing to one another… that he just
flirted with her to make you jealous but a man who is quick to discard a woman…
well, you don’t seem very streetwise in that way. I urge you to be careful Anne.’
I tried to hide my distaste for her words.
After all, it could not be easy for her to believe a man like him would love a
girl like me. It would take some getting used to the fact that I would now help
to make decisions in the house.
‘You’re not pregnant are you, Anne?’
‘No,’ I said, frustrated at everyone’s
insinuating glances, from the grocer in the village to Leah’s in the kitchen.
‘Honestly, it is impossible! For the umpteenth time, we’ve never even slept
together. Is it so hard to believe that he would choose me, that he would want
to marry… me?’
‘No, Anne, of course not. You are a sweet but
very young girl with remarkable intelligence and you have been an exceptional
governess to Sophie, but you should consider keeping it the way it has been,
Anne, until you are married. Then you can be sure of him. I’ve known him since
he was small and now I think… he’s the sort of man who prefers the chase to the
actual domesticity of wedded bliss, if you know what I mean.’
I didn’t, not really.
She looked at me like she knew something about
Rochester I did not but was afraid to tell me. And of course, I was afraid to
ask, wary of anything that could ruin my happiness.
I
wandered through the downstairs sitting room that afternoon after I’d taken
Sophie riding. I ran my hands over his old photograph albums. I knew little
about his time in the United States but I’d seen some pictures of a road trip
he and Christopher had taken along Route 66 and also some snaps of the streets
and sidewalks of New Orleans where I knew he’d spent many months working on a
film that never got released. I did think it was weird that he wanted to wait
for us to be together but the marriage
was only a few days away and I agreed with him that we should use this time to
get to know each other in ways that some people didn’t. We would be friends as
well as lovers, a perfect match.
