The ceremony was in the garden.
Not a rented venue or a coastal cliff setting or a ballroom designed to communicate the scale of the occasion. The garden of the Knight Estate, where the sweet peas were beginning to climb the south wall and the tomatoes were putting out the first blossoms and the climbing rose had grown fourteen inches since I planted it in October and was showing, at its uppermost reaching cane, the first tight bud of something that was going to bloom.
Not today. Not yet. But soon.
Lucian stood at the end of the garden path that Aunt Emilia had lined with white peonies placed with the precise, unhurried elegance she brought to everything that deserved care. He stood with his shoulders straight and his hands loose at his sides and the expression that had been developing
