Page 16 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

S he successfully survived until the wedding.

She’d done it, even if she knew it wasn’t the real goal anymore. It was still a victory.

She wore gold. It was a gown she’d had commissioned shortly after coming to Crooked Nook for the first time, some years ago.

She thought of it as her Countess Gown, her coronation robe.

It was not ostentatious, fashioned in soft satin with just a hint of shimmer.

The modiste had told her that the fabric brought out the richness of her skin and hair and eyes, that it served as the setting for the gems of her natural features.

Gold, the modiste had said, was the color of enlightenment.

When Freddy saw her tonight, he would know that she was not the girl he’d once known. She was refined now. Enlightened. Not the naive romantic who’d married him in a mad dash of impulse and desire.

The impulse was still there. The desire certainly was. But Claire was not their slave anymore.

Gold, like a queen’s armor. Gold like a throne room door.

She looked very well in it, but it would not outshine the bride. She wouldn’t dream of doing something so selfish, especially given her history of harming brides she loved very much.

She chose only a lace ribbon for her throat and a pair of pearls at her ears. She wore her hair simply, caught in ringlets at the crown of her head, secured with invisible pins and no embellishment. She dabbed her lips with rose oil and her eyelids with rouge.

It was enough.

Claire herself was enough.

And then she saw to the others.

The men were all wearing the sashes Dom Raul had insisted upon, each in a shining royal blue that reflected his house colors.

Little Oliver’s looked very fine on him, and he puffed up in pride every time he got to wear it.

The color made his eyes glow with otherworldly enhancement, and Claire thought with a pang that one day, her little boy would break many hearts.

Just like his father had.

They had skipped dinner tonight in favor of the banquet that would follow the ceremony. The sun was already setting, sending an orange and pink glow over the grounds on its side of the lawn, with the creeping gleam of silver blue on the other.

Claire herself arrived at the church first, the little parish church on the end of Bourton-on-the-Water, which was the town that abutted Crooked Nook.

Much of the village was already scattered around the cobbled paths around it, eager to see their dowager countess in her finery and the strange, foreign gentleman she was marrying.

“He’s a Spaniard, I think,” one woman said to her husband, who shook his head and replied, “I saw him. He’s a dark one, maybe even a Turk.”

Claire smiled to herself, wondering if yet another seed of legend was being planted in the Cotswolds tonight.

She greeted the people who approached her with the gracious warmth she’d learned from Patricia herself. This day had taken a fair amount of planning, and Claire always enjoyed being in front of the people of her county.

Tommy, who looked as though she had already been in the village for the bulk of the day, was sharing a drink with the vicar and his wife, laughing in her way at something they were saying.

Tommy was likely the village’s favorite Lady Bentley amongst the three of them. It wasn’t just the length of her tenure. She was a woman who preferred the common people to the ton, and made it evident in her every word and hint of demeanor.

Claire would never be like Tommy, or even Patricia, who had been raised a noblewoman. She hoped she could become as well-loved here in Bourton, even so. To these people, Claire was still as new as a baby and as foreign as Dom Raul.

She’d also usurped her husband. She imagined that hadn’t fostered much ingratiation.

So, kindness and warmth. Gratitude. Those were her weapons, and she could deploy them in spades when given the opportunity, and a place like the Cotswolds offered more opportunities than most.

The people knew her face from the harvest festivals and the holiday lights and the maypole and the great picnic the parish put on every summer.

The wedding would finally cement her into local memory, she thought.

The spectacle of it all, the grandeur of the ceremony and the banquet that would follow, would showcase all she had become as their countess.

This year, after the hubbub of the wedding, there was another large event she’d finally get a chance to oversee as the countess. That event, a series of sporting games, was brimming just on the horizon, right after the wedding.

She hadn’t been able to attend when Oliver was still very small and she was still learning her way around her new post, but this was the year.

She’d be spending a couple of weeks in Chipping Camden for it. It would be an excuse to remove herself and Oliver from Crooked Nook, a blessing if Freddy hadn’t yet departed. Surely their absence would activate his boredom and he’d go back to London then, without any victims in his purview.

Surely.

She stood by the doors as they were thrown open and climbed onto the little pulpit box near the mailbox to announce that the guests could come inside. The scent of night-blooming flowers and orange blossoms tumbled out of the nave, drawing in the villagers to their long-awaited spectacle.

“Oh, my lady!” said the miller’s wife. “Oh, you look very fine!”

“Where is the young master?” asked her husband, hovering by the door as people filed around him. “Where is little Oliver?”

“He wished to travel with the rest of the men,” Claire said with a twist of her lips. “I suppose he is one of them, after all.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” said the wife. “When my sons stopped clinging to my hand, I had a full day of crying, each and every time.”

“She did,” confirmed the miller, kissing her cheek, “but they all come back to their mothers again, in the end. I still do, don’t I, Agnes?”

“Ugh,” said the miller’s wife with a frown. “We’ll see you inside, my lady.”

As they walked away, Claire saw them whisper to each other, saw them smile like a pair who had always been in love. She saw them clasp hands.

She did not sigh.

She followed them all into the church and made sure the presentation was correct, that the aisle was shining, that the flowers were thriving.

She looked at the family pew she would be sitting upon and decided that it was just a bench, just a bit of wood, and she could sit there alone just now or later with Freddy and it would make very little difference.

It was only a pew.

She glanced up at a sudden burst of sound near the door, a sure sign that the men had arrived. Were they reacting to the movement of the wedding? To little Oliver looking so very handsome in his sash? Surely it wasn’t …

“It’s the earl!” the miller’s wife exclaimed, gripping her husband’s arm. “It’s young Freddy! Oh, my love, let’s go greet him. I’ve missed him so.”

The miller glanced over his shoulder at Claire with a curious raise of his brows. He followed his wife, whispering something to her. His lips moved around a word that looked suspiciously like reconciled .

This time she did sigh.

The men entered in a line with Dom Raul at the head and Freddy just behind him, holding Oliver’s hand.

“Ah, my Lady Bentley,” said Dom Raul upon reaching her. “You must wish me good fortune.”

“You do not need good fortune,” Claire replied with a smile as he kissed her hand. “You will soon have something even better.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “My Patricia.”

The pews filled quickly after that, with Freddy and Oliver staying near the doors to greet arrivals with wide smiles and a lot of palm pressing.

The bride would come last, of course. The player she had chosen to attend the pianoforte had already begun to play from the platform in the sanctuary, filling the space with delicate notes that ushered in the remainder of the twilight and delivered them past the dusk.

A deacon arrived to start lighting the candles that lined the aisle, casting vibrant, dancing shadows on the blue runner that had been laid down for Patricia’s arrival.

Claire wondered if she could have had a wedding like this, if she’d made different choices.

This was something akin to what she’d imagined as a girl.

It had all the magic and beauty of her fantasies, all the power and hope wrapped into something the world could see and feel.

Her heart stirred, anticipating how beautiful Patricia would look as she floated down this aisleway, and she smiled gently as her little boy glanced over at her, meeting her eyes from across the church, and waved.

She held her hand up in return.

Oliver grinned and reached up to alert Freddy, tugging at his sleeve with so much force that even from across the room, Claire could see the cufflink pop off. She didn’t hear the rip, but she knew there had been one from the way everyone froze, including her baby.

He immediately started to turn red, his little body twisting with his hands coming up to push into his mouth. He projected the panic the way only a child can, like a buzzing aura of explosive grief and emotion.

Claire moved immediately, stepping toward them with alarm.

Freddy had only seen the sweetness of Oliver, had only enjoyed him at his most charming. This could rupture everything, and Oliver would feel it. He would know it was because he had made a mistake.

Freddy himself, as though he was anticipating her rescue, looked across the room at her for a single, lightning-fast moment, and shook his head. He shook his head! As though to stop her. And despite every bone in her body screaming at her to go save her child, she did stop.

She waited.

She watched.

Freddy knelt, holding the boy’s hands, and said something to him as the tears started to pour down Oliver’s bright red face, as the motions of panic moved his feet to stomp and his breathing to hiccup.

They looked around on the floor together for the cufflink, which had bounced away into the ether at the gesture. Oliver tried to tug himself away, tried to collapse onto the floor to crawl around for it, still gasping for air, still crying and sniffling and making a grand mess of himself.

Freddy let him look, creeping forward on his own knees to peer around, but it was already so dark. It was already so dark, and the candlelight in the aisle was casting too many shadows for the search to be anything at all but hopeless.

Freddy took out his own handkerchief to dab at Oliver’s face, to wipe his messy nose, even! Claire balked at that. She balked that Freddy would do something that would repulse most other men.

And then Freddy took off his other cufflink and grinned at his son. He threw it like he was rolling his dice, into the dark shadows under the pews, and held his hands up as though his suit was much improved now, without the links.

Oliver stared. He looked just as baffled as Claire felt, but the staring had stilled him. It had stopped the onslaught of a panicked tantrum. His face was still red and tear-streaked, but the sequence had been interrupted.

He looked around on the ground as though the cufflinks might roll back out and attack him. He couldn’t quite believe what had just occurred.

And around them, people were still filing in, still filling the church as though nothing at all extraordinary was happening at their feet.

When Freddy stood back up, he left his handkerchief in Oliver’s little hand and offered his own for the other to hold. He walked down the candlelit aisle and looked directly at Claire, like he was the bride and she the groom, waiting to receive a lifetime of love.

She wanted to move, to dive into a pew, to avoid this perverse reversal, but she couldn’t.

She didn’t remember bringing a hand up to cover her mouth, but as soon as she realized she had, she dropped it.

She walked backward because she could not turn, and when they reached her, she could not look away from him.

She couldn’t tear herself from his eyes.

“He is all right,” Freddy assured her softly. “He’s a good boy.”

She looked down at his hands, at his loose cuffs dangling over his knuckles like a frilly night rail, and she had to swallow down her own hiccup, her own cache of tears. She looked back at Freddy with something that tied confusion to gratitude, and said, “He is. He is a very good boy.”

They sat together on that pew. The powerless pew she had looked at before.

Oliver sat between them, clutching the handkerchief like it was a life raft, deep at sea.

His breath continued to stutter, but he did not dissolve into tears again.

He did not seem to worry at all. He looked at his own feet and he held the cloth token and he eventually steadied himself, much like Claire herself did when she felt overwhelmed.

She wondered, touching his head, if he told himself to breathe. If he counted the seconds. If he asked his heart to slow. She wondered if she was enough a part of this little miracle of a child that he did those things, just like she did.

She looked up at Freddy one more time, just as the wedding march began to play, and mouthed to him, “thank you.”

He shook his head, giving her that little half-smile again, the one that was real, and then he stood and turned to await the reveal of his mother, the bride, at the doors.

She glowed, Claire realized. The night sky behind her with the lights of the carriage in the distance, combined with the candlelit aisle, created the most incredible visual effect.

Her gown, a rich sea green with delicate blue beads, glimmered as she walked, changing like a mirage with each new source of light, each new glow of a candle’s embrace.

She was just as enraptured as everyone else. She could not look away.

Patricia’s hair shone like thread of gold, her skin gleamed like ivory, and her smile broke a thousand hearts.

And when she reached her husband at the end of her journey, when the toes of her slippers met the line of the altar, they all suddenly remembered to breathe again. They all slowly fell back into their seats, dazed at what they had just witnessed.

Even through the vows, through the mixing of English and Portuguese, through the expressions of love and devotion, Claire remained stunned. She remained rapt.

And when she cheered at the end, when they sealed their bond with a kiss, when she applauded and cried out in favor of the promise of true love, she meant it.

She really, truly meant it.