The month passed in a blur of dress fittings, flower arrangements, and Sarah's increasingly determined mothering, and before I fully believed it was real, I was standing in the estate's garden wing on the morning of my wedding, watching Freda pin the last curl of my hair into place.
Douglas's health had held steady enough to make the date, though barely. He arrived at the ceremony in his wheelchair, refusing help from anyone but Nathaniel to move the final few steps to his seat, determined to stand, briefly, for the vows themselves.
The ceremony was smaller than the estate's grandeur might have suggested, just family and the handful of staff who'd become something like family themselves over the past year. Jane flew in for it, crying before I'd even finished walking down the aisle, and S
