Frederica stared at her father, her jaw slackened.
No. Affection from him was never something I had hoped for.
Yet it was the way her father spelled it out so plainly. How confident he was that she was worth nothing that made her feel so utterly depleted and hopeless. She saw truly for the first time how much she was like dog muck beneath her own father’s shoes.
Her chin turned down of its own accord as she fussed with her bouquet, looking for something else to do.
He will forever be ashamed of me.
From within the church, organ music began. Ernest outstretched an arm toward her. When she didn’t take it right away, he cleared his throat, and she dutifully took it though she barely touched him with her fingers. She had a feeling he was glad of that, for he clearly wanted so little to do with her.
The church doors opened, and they stepped inside.
The first place Frederica looked was at the congregation. Desperate for a comforting face, for a true friend, she sought out Charlotte and Dorothy. The two of them were in the second row back behind her mother, both of them smiling at her encouragingly.
Charlotte even raised her hand to offer a tiny wave, and Dorothy had a gleam in her eye that made Frederica wonder if she was holding back tears.
Frederica smiled back at them as best as she could though it did not last. She couldn’t help looking at her mother in the front row. Maragaret didn’t even look at her. She was too busy talking in hushed tones to the friend she had dragged to sit beside her. They waved their hands at the beautiful flowers and must have talked quite readily about how beautiful the wedding was for an affair that was so small.
Frederica ached for her mother to look at her as she walked down the aisle to the church music, but she never did. Not once.
If only Honora was here.
She longed for her aunt, for another comforting face in that crowd, but she knew if she had asked her father to invite Honora, he would have realized at once where she had been this last year. Honora would have had even more condemnation thrown at her head but never an invitation to the wedding.
Still desperately seeking another comforting face, Frederica looked at the only place that was left to look. She faced the altar, where her husband-to-be stood waiting for her.
Lord Padleigh was not facing the priest, nor was he looking at Dorothy’s husband, Stephen, who took the place of best man. He was actually looking straight back at Frederica.
She nearly tripped in surprise. Only her hand on her father’s arm stopped her from going over. She heard him tut disparagingly, and she promptly loosened her grip on him at once.
As they reached the altar, Frederica couldn’t stop looking at Lord Padleigh. There was something intense in that gaze. It was a far cry from the formal look he had given her when he had told her he intended to marry her in front of her parents. It was more in-keeping with the look he had given her when they had hidden in the music room to talk.
Ernest offered her hand to Lord Padleigh.
“Good luck, My Lord,” Ernest muttered under the cover of the music.
Frederica found herself lowering her chin again. She was not sure she had ever felt so small in her life. For her father to wish her betrothed luck, he must think so ill of her indeed.
Lord Padleigh’s hand closed over Frederica’s hand and pulled her towards him. She stood beside him, expecting him to loosen his hand swiftly, so they were no longer touching, but he didn’t. She turned her chin downward to look at that grasp.
Calmly, without fuss, he held onto her hand gently between them. There was something comforting in that grasp.
She dared to look him in the eye again and found the very thing staring back at her that she had been looking for in that church. He offered the smallest of smiles. It was a comfort.
She sighed, doing her best to return it as much as she could.
“Are you ready?” he whispered, just as the organ music came to a halt.
She nodded, almost imperceptibly, then he turned the two of them to face the priest who approached from the back of the altar.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God to join together this man and this woman…”
Each sentence blurred into another. For Frederica, she could barely distinguish one word from the next. All she could really think of was her parents’ judgmental stare, her fear that Lord Wetherington would appear through the church doors at any moment demanding the ceremony be cancelled, and Lord Padleigh’s soft grasp of her hand.
When it came time to utter her vows, she snuck glances at the church doors, breathing a sigh of relief when they did not open. They signed the register, with Dorothy and Stephen acting as witnesses to their signatures, then they returned to the altar.
“I now pronounce you, husband and wife.” The priest smiled broadly and stepped back.
