THE GRUDGING CONSORT

eight

The day of the wedding began with a furious downpour. Owen donned his new suit in the grim half-dark, with rivers of wind-blown water lashing against the window and rattling in the tree just outside. The coat, cut long and loose in an echo of the robes worn by Mirreith’s priestesses, was perhaps the finest garment he’d ever owned, made of silk in a rich blue with hints of green, like the deep ocean, or like Owen’s eyes. Owen had liked the fact that it would catch the hue of Tom’s, too. Drake’s eyes were dark brown, almost black. He shook his head, hoping to clear it, and only succeeded in making his slight headache a degree worse. The folds of his cream silk cravat wouldn’t sit right; perhaps the damp in the air was at fault, or perhaps Owen’s clumsy hands. Every glimpse he caught of his face in the mirror as he tried fruitlessly to adjust it made him wince. Pale cheeks, shadowed eyes, and bloodless lips: not the joyous countenance one might expect from a young bridegroom preparing for a life of happiness with the one he loved. Drake was not the one he loved. That was the simple truth, and it seemed his face was determined to show it to the world. Not that he could truly claim to love Tom, either. Owen had no pretensions to the sort of high-minded idealism shown by storybook knights, nor even to showing the single-minded, bullheaded, blind passion espoused by men like the hero of Withering Sights. He couldn’t really love where he could no longer like his beloved, and Tom, despite his fair face and fair words, had proven himself to be quite horridly unlikeable. On the other hand, Owen was still very much in love with someone who hadn’t really existed, and also deep in mourning for the loss of the beautiful future he had expected. Twelve days was not nearly enough to change that. And Arthur Drake had not done much to try to change it, either. He had been distant: polite, but hardly warm. He visited Owen and his parents, bore Mrs. Honeyfield’s diatribes against his brother and guarded, vaguely hostile attitude toward himself without complaint, and did what Owen had expected Tom would have done from the beginning, which was draw up the marriage settlements with Mr. Honeyfield, rather than a solicitor a hundred miles away. But there was no romance, nor even an attempt at friendship. If he’d had any other choice, Owen might have backed out of the engagement, despite how soon the wedding was supposed to be. But if he walked away from Drake in order to have a chance at marrying for love, he was fairly certain the damage done to his reputation would destroy that chance in any case. In the end, apathy won. It was easier to simply go along with the preparations, though he felt more hollow with the passing of each day. He was almost surprised his mirror showed him any reflection at all; his body, he thought, should have faded away to nothing, to match the nothingness of his spirit. A brisk knock on the door startled Owen out of his contemplation of his rumpled cravat. At his quiet answer, the door opened to admit his mother, pink-cheeked and flustered, wrapped in a dressing gown over her petticoats. She never put on her good gowns until the last moment, since she claimed that every time she did so earlier, some household crisis involving flour, or feathers, or buckets of water would always arise. “My dear, you’re not even dressed!” she said, with no apparent consciousness of the irony. Owen turned and waved a hand at his cravat. “I’m a little stuck, as you see. I don’t know why it won’t just — do what it ought to do.” Horribly, he found himself on the verge of tears. The sight of his mother bustling into his room to harry him into dressing for the last time was too much. His trunk was packed and stood in the corner of the chamber he’d called his own since he was moved from the little trundle bed in his parents’ room; his last morning in his own house with his mother would be spent fighting a stupid piece of fabric, bathed in gray gloom and with the sound of hammering rain over it all. The room looked as empty and forlorn as Owen felt. “Come now,” she said. “We’ll put it to rights.” Her tone said she meant more than just his cravat, and Owen turned his head away to hide his expression. She stroked a hand down his cheek, gave him a gentle pat, and set to work on his cravat. “There. See? All sorted out.” Owen turned back to the mirror. His face was still the same disaster as before, with the addition of a bit of redness in his eyes, but from the neck down he was the picture of a well-turned-out gentleman on his way to be married. His mother’s face hovered in the mirror too, just over his shoulder, the sadness in her eyes belied by the smile she always saved just for him. “Do you think—” Owen stopped, the words I ought to marry him caught on the tip of his tongue. He couldn’t ask her that. Not when she and his father had both expressed their reservations at some length, only to be met by Owen’s stubborn insistence that he knew what he was about. Their rage at Tom knew no bounds. Owen’s father had waxed quite eloquent on that front. To Owen’s shock, his mother had contributed even more in the line of invective, using several words he had not imagined she would know. But when they had worn themselves down, perhaps realizing their abuse of Tom gave Owen more pain than comfort, they had focused their energies on dissuading him from marrying Tom’s replacement. Arthur Drake could not be trusted; he was surely cut from the same cloth as his brother. He would change his mind after the wedding and ask Mirreith’s priestesses for a divorce, which he could easily obtain; the gods offered and retracted blessings as they chose, but they rarely prevented their worshippers from making their own decisions, for good or ill. Then everyone would think the worst of Owen, and his life really would be ruined. Drake would use Owen until he tired of him — and Owen wished he could forget hearing those words in his father’s voice, good goddess — and then take a mistress, or expose him to the mockery of his friends, or treat him cruelly, or worse. The argument had raged for days, and Owen knew they had only given up, rather than giving in. They had only done that because Owen was finally pushed beyond his ability to bear. Generally preferring a lack of conflict over having his own way, he rarely put his foot down about anything. This time, he told them in no uncertain terms that he would leave their house at once and lodge at an inn in Trewebury until the wedding if they mentioned the subject again, and that he would instruct the priestesses to bar them from the ceremony. No. He could not show his doubts now. The silence had gone on too long. Owen swallowed the lump in his throat and blurted out, “Do you think the rain will stop?” His mother wrapped her arms around his waist and gave him a squeeze. “The sun always comes out eventually, my love. Now come downstairs and have a bite to eat and let your father have a look at you.” Owen tried to smile at her in the mirror. It wasn’t his very best effort. Tomorrow at this time he would be at Alton Hall, having breakfast with Drake — breakfast taken after a night spent — oh goddess, he couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t. Instead, he would try to savor the bittersweetness of his last morning at home, even if his stomach churned and his every nerve felt like it had been rubbed with sandpaper. “Let’s go down, then,” he said, and turned to face the rest of the day. Arthur waited for Owen on the windswept clifftop, gazing out over miles of sparkling sea studded with choppy white waves. It had still been raining when he left home, riding in the carriage in deference to his polished boots. He also thought it might be more gallant to have some shelter from the weather to offer to his new husband once the ceremony ended. It was more traditional to walk to the goddess’s shrine, but Arthur hoped she would make allowances, under the circumstances. In any case, he would be walking the last half mile, up the hill from where the road passed nearest to the stone altar that overlooked the ocean at the very top. The grass on the hill would be slippery, but at least it would limit the mud he’d accumulate. Just as the carriage pulled to a stop, the rain stopped too; one moment it drummed down on the carriage roof, and the next there was silence. The creak of the carriage springs sounded loud in the stillness as Arthur stepped out into the first shaft of sunlight and drew in a deep, cleansing breath, the salt of the ocean mingling with the freshness of the rain. He climbed the hill alone, leaving his servants behind with the coach. With every step the clouds drifted away. There were the goddess’s priestesses in their odd flaring robes, waiting by the altar and the oddly shaped standing stones that guarded it; and there was the dazzling sea, with gulls wheeling above and just a few dusky rainclouds still scattering. The priestesses greeted him with a quiet murmur, he bowed, and then there was nothing to do but stand there and hope that Owen didn’t change his mind. That still seemed a real possibility. Arthur knew the elder Honeyfields were skeptical at best regarding this hasty marriage, and he could hardly blame them. After one Drake’s callous betrayal of their beloved only son, how could they be expected to trust another? They had bent their efforts toward persuading Owen at least to wait. Arthur had, with great difficulty, refrained from trying to counteract their influence. Owen had to make up his own mind, in the end, and interfering in his relationship with his parents would be the act of an overbearing cad. That one remark of his that Owen had never contradicted nagged at him, though; it was like a pebble in his boot, a tiny thing that nevertheless gave him no peace. Perhaps it’s not what your heart desires. Arthur had no claim on Owen’s heart. He hadn’t asked for it, and he knew he would likely never possess it. It shouldn’t matter. Arthur had never thought to marry for love. A slight rustling of robes alerted him to movement among the priestesses. Arthur turned, and there, coming over the rise, was Owen. He hadn’t realized quite how much his tension had built, wondering if his bridegroom would come, until it rushed out of him and left him almost dizzy with relief. Owen’s hair shone in the sun like spun gold, and with his lithe figure swathed all in blue and cream he looked like one of the goddess’s tempting sea spirits sent to lure men to their fates beneath the waves. Arthur stepped forward, smiling; that smile died away when he drew near enough to see Owen’s pallor, and the smudges of purple beneath his eyes. Longing swept over him, sudden and fierce. Longing to take Owen in his arms and kiss away his unhappiness; longing to be the one Owen would want to do so. He had spent only a little time with his betrothed in the twelve days of their engagement, but every moment of it had increased his desire — and more than that, his genuine liking for the man he would marry. Owen had an essential sweetness about him that drew Arthur almost despite himself. He had no such quality, and had always thought a gentle soul must necessarily be a weak one. The way Owen had borne up under the shock of Tom’s abandonment, thought through and then accepted Arthur’s offer, and steadfastly resisted his parents’ persuasion had shown Arthur that this was not at all the case, and that a sweet-tempered, obliging nature did not imply any lack of a spine. Owen came closer, flanked on either side by his parents, who were dressed in their wedding best but wearing expressions better suited to a wake. Arthur went forward to meet them before the altar. He keenly felt the absence of any family of his own. His mother couldn’t leave Arthur’s younger sister, who was about to be brought to bed with her first child any day now. Arthur missed her, but her absence wasn’t the bone-deep ache that Tom’s was. Tom would have been by his side, making inappropriate jokes under his breath and glad-handing the in-laws, if Arthur had married under any other circumstances. It struck him that he was not the only one bitterly regretting Tom’s absence. The sting of that was enough to overwhelm his uncharacteristic lapse into tenderness. They met before the goddess’s great granite altar slab, where the priestesses had laid out a stone chalice of wine, a gull feather weighted down with a piece of driftwood, and the ribbon with which his and Owen’s wrists would be bound. “Mrs. Honeyfield,” he said, bowing low. “Mr. Honeyfield.” He exchanged a guarded nod with the older man. Arthur finally allowed himself to look at his intended. Owen kept his eyes fixed on the ground, and Arthur wished passionately for a moment alone with him to ask if this was really what he wanted. It would soon be too late. Divorce was easy enough; the gods, through their mortal priests, were lenient when it came to dissolving unions that proved unhappy. But that didn’t mean society would be so understanding, particularly when the wedding was itself meant to cover a scandal. Owen gave no sign. Arthur held out his hand, and Owen, with only a fractional hesitation, laid his in it. They stepped to the altar and the priestesses began their chant.