She swallowed.
‘But you’re going to be a Countess! I still can’t believe it! My little girl a Countess! Oh, baby, we’ve come so far together, we really have.’
Brianna Jade nodded vehemently into her mother’s bosom.
‘I’ll be crying my heart out with happiness when I see you walk back down the aisle with Edmund as the Countess of Respers. I’ll be so proud of you!’ Tamra said. ‘Oh shit, I’m about to lose it just thinking about it. Thank God the chapel’s in the house so’s I can run back to my room to touch up my make-up. I’m going to be such a mess!’
Brianna Jade lifted her head, smiling at her mother’s ingenuous admission that she was concerned about her own looks at her daughter’s wedding.
‘What?’ Tamra said, faking indignation. ‘I find you a great husband who just so happens to be an Earl, I do up your stately home so you guys have the most gorgeous place to live, I spend months researching the pros and cons of commercial kitchen sausage stuffers – seriously, there are tons of them! – and all I get is being laughed at because I don’t want to look like a sobbing clown at your wedding?’
‘Oh Mom, you’ll be the most beautiful woman there,’ Brianna Jade said, hugging Tamra even tighter. ‘I love you so much!’
‘I love you too, baby,’ Tamra said. ‘Always and forever. It’s all been for you, you know that? Everything I’ve done and worked for, it’s been to make you happy. And you are, aren’t you? He’s a really good man.’ Her voice softened. ‘Really, such a great guy. I couldn’t wish for a better husband for you.’
‘He is a great guy,’ Brianna Jade agreed so strongly that Tamra didn’t realize that her daughter hadn’t answered the question she’d asked: Brianna Jade hadn’t confirmed that she was happy.
‘I brought you an Ambien,’ Tamra said, finally, reluctantly, detaching herself from her daughter. ‘Here.’
She filled the cut-glass tumbler by the side of the marble sink and handed it to Brianna Jade, pulling a vial of pills from the pocket of her dressing gown and tipping one out.
‘You need your beauty sleep,’ she said fondly. ‘I want you all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow, and I bet you’ve got a million and one things running through your mind right now.’
Brianna Jade swallowed the Ambien, hugely grateful for her mother’s thoughtfulness. Her brain was racing madly, though not with the kind of natural, pre-wedding nerves that her mother was assuming. Tamra kissed her on the forehead and slipped from the room; Brianna Jade, more sure than ever that marrying Edmund was the only way to give her mother the happiness she wanted, finished her bathroom ritual and poured herself a small glass of brandy from the carafe on the console table.
This was the worst time of all, just before going to sleep, whether she was with Edmund or not, because lying there in the dark she couldn’t help thinking about Abel. The brandy helped tip her over the edge into unconsciousness before her thoughts could take hold; she climbed into bed and resolutely, as if it were medicine, drank down the whole glassful. She didn’t actually like brandy, but it was better than sherry, and those seemed to be the two socially allowable options that a Countess was permitted to have in her bedroom.
She was just about to turn out the bedside light, her head swimming from the fortified spirit, when she heard a tap on her door.
‘Brianna? Can I come in for a moment?’
It was Edmund’s voice, and he sounded nervous. He wants to call it off! Brianna Jade thought, her heart pounding, jumping to a far-fetched conclusion she wouldn’t have reached if she hadn’t been woozy with the Ambien and brandy on top of the wine at dinner. He wants to call it off, and it won’t be my fault, so it won’t be me breaking Mom’s heart . . .
‘Yes? Come in!’ she called, a sudden hope rising in her, irrational though it might be. And Edmund’s hangdog appearance raised her hopes still more; he looked deeply awkward.
Lady Margaret had declared it a ridiculously bourgeois idea for either bride or groom to have to go to a hotel, or a friend’s house, when they had their own separate suites at Stanclere Hall and were going to be married beneath their own roof; the wedding planner would coordinate bride and groom’s movements the next morning to avoid them seeing each other before they met in the chapel. So Edmund was in his dressing gown and slippers, about to turn in for the night.
‘I won’t be long – I know we both need to get a good night’s sleep. I just wanted to get something rather important off my chest,’ he said, closing the door behind him. ‘Something that’s been on my mind. Can I?’
He crossed to the four-poster bed, and Brianna Jade nodded sleepily, indicating he could sit down.
‘This is a bit – well, embarrassing, but I’m going to plough right in,’ Edmund said, reaching out to take her hand. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that amazing night we had last year. It was so . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘Well, out of the ordinary for us. And it switched something on in me. I simply can’t stop thinking about it, how incredible it was. I’ve sort of tried since then to . . . well, to recreate some of the things we did . . .’
He couldn’t meet her eyes.
‘But you haven’t seemed, um, receptive, is probably how I’d put it. And I backed off, because I didn’t want to push. But honestly, having had that amazing time with you once, I genuinely don’t feel that I could be satisfied spending the rest of my life without it. I’ve been mulling it over, and I, um, did think that it might have been the different surroundings – you know, not being in my room or yours – and the fact that it was a party, and we’d both had quite a bit to drink. I know I’d certainly had more than the usual, all the punch and so on, and you were definitely a bit tipsy, in the best way possible. I could taste it when we kissed – the punch, I mean. I assumed you’d popped down and had some – very nice, wasn’t it?’
He cleared his throat again.
‘So I just wanted to reassure you, in case you were embarrassed, not to be. At all. It was phenomenal. Really, as if you were quite a different person. Um, I was thinking that I could possibly have Mrs Hurley make the punch again? What do you think – was that, um, the trigger?’
Brianna Jade was barely taking in what he was saying: waves of drugged sleep were hitting her hard, and her head jerked forward, pulled by gravity. She caught herself and raised it again, but Edmund took the gesture as a ‘yes’, and was instantly emboldened.
‘Great! That’s wonderful!’ he said excitedly. ‘Or on honeymoon – they must have drinks like that in Mauritius – rum-based drinks. God, this is absolutely fantastic! I’ve been so frustrated not knowing what was, um, the key, and this is really – God, I can’t wait till tomorrow night!’
Brianna Jade nodded again, another sleeping-pill-fuelled bob of the head. Edmund picked up her hand and kissed it.
‘This is so wonderful,’ he said, standing up. ‘You’re going to make me the happiest man in the world tomorrow. I just can’t wait!’
Beaming from ear to ear, he left the room as if he were walking on air, a complete contrast to his demeanour on entering. Brianna Jade was already sliding down the pillows, her eyes closing, so knocked out that she passed out then and there, the bedside light still turned on, and only the haziest sense of what her fiancé had just said, and what she’d agreed to, running through her mind.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tuscany, the next day
Although the ceremony was not taking place in the church of the Madonna della Neve d’Agosto, Tarquin and Milly’s guests, walking up the little rise and seeing for the first time the way the grounds had been decorated, gasped and murmured admiration to each other as softly and respectfully as if their feet had been on hallowed ground. Or, perhaps, as if they had been in a museum: Ludo, Gabriella and Leonardo had done such an exquisite job that the oohs and aahs that followed every new discovery were as respectful as if the invitees were at a design exhibition.
Ludo had particularly excelled at integrating Milly’s list of demand
s into his own aesthetic. The Sicilian lemons that filled the birdcages were what stood out, not the over-curlicued cages themselves, and the abundance of lilies of the valley and bluebells that filled the antique teapots disguised the cutesiness of the receptacles. To further undercut any potential for over-prettiness, Ludo had decided not to use tablecloths after all, and the bare rustic oak tables that ran round three sides of the portico were shining with lavender-scented polish, the chairs upholstered in pale blue linen that matched the napkins and the Chinoiserie pattern on the china plates. An array of Riedel glasses glittered at each place setting, light sparkling off them from the rock crystals trembling delicately from the chandeliers above, scattered artfully among the pearls and turquoises for maximum effect.
Red carpet had been laid up to the portico and along the lawn, just as Milly had wanted, a wide strip leading from the apartment entrance, tucked behind the church, past the dance floor to the gazebo. Hung with muslin curtains trimmed with pale blue ribbon, its wrought-iron struts had been freshly painted white, gleaming in the spring sunshine, and little iron chairs with blue cushions were lined up on either side on wide red carpets for the guests to sit on while watching the ceremony. On its far side, tables were laid out in the shape of an L, ready for the antipasto buffet to be brought out after the vows had been said; currently they were stacked with prosecco bottles gleaming in huge ice buckets and a mass of gleaming glass Riedel prosecco flutes.
The Style Bride team which Jodie had assigned to this wedding had been here for hours already, capturing all the details: journalistic coverage of weddings, more than anything else, required an almost OCD level of attention to even the tiniest minutiae of the decor. Brides-to-be all over the world would be avidly consuming every single piece of information that they could about this celebrity wedding, deciding which frill or furbelow they could afford to copy directly, which they could scale down or which they could find as a knock-off cheaper version. The arrangements of the flowers, looking so simply done but actually hugely studied, the way a few lemons spilled so seemingly carelessly from the open doors of the birdcages onto the glossy wood of the tables, the stunning, handmade chandeliers – images of all of these would be torn out of the magazine, printed off the internet, taken to a wedding planner or propped up in front of a bride as she grimly wrestled wild flowers into an old teapot bought from a boot sale, determined to recreate some of the more evocative design elements of Milly and Tarquin’s wedding.
The photographer and video crew were positioned in the portico initially, capturing the arrival of the guests, the delight on their faces as they took in the exquisitely transformed grounds; but once everyone had arrived, the cameras began to circulate, capturing spontaneous-looking moments which the guests, very well aware of the constant press attention, knew perfectly well how to stage. They clustered around the gazebo, posed charmingly, chatting on the swing, threw back their heads and laughed, prosecco flutes in their hands, acting the parts of perfect, beautifully dressed wedding guests they had been cast by Milly to play.
Only Eva hung back, avoiding the lenses. She wasn’t under any obligation to go outside yet. As chief bridesmaid, it was bad enough that she had to precede Milly down the red carpet, walking towards Tarquin as if she were his bride, seeing him smile at her for a brief moment before his eyes shifted focus, went dreamy and soft as they gazed at the ethereal vision that was Milly, approaching him as lightly as a feather blowing behind Eva’s taller and lankier frame.
Eva had seen Tarquin that morning when he had been breaking dry spaghetti into as many pieces as possible, a tradition that was supposed to ensure a long marriage: each broken piece symbolized another year together. He had been looking ridiculously handsome in his white shirt and periwinkle-blue waistcoat, the wide lavender silk floppy tie that was due to be arranged into a loose bow hanging dashingly around his neck, his golden curls a halo framing his angelic face; she thought he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. But Milly, she had to admit, was almost as lovely in her off-white lace dress, whose broderie anglaise layers were intended to lift lightly in the breeze. Jewelled butterfly pins in semi-precious bluebird and cornflower quartzite, rock crystals and mother-of-pearl, designed by Eva for Milly and Me, were set into Milly’s hair, piled up in a mass of curls on the crown of her head, and a cluster of pretty little butterfly brooches were scattered over the bodice of the dress as if the bright winged creatures had settled for a moment on the bride.
Eva had talked Milly into the butterfly concept and persuaded her that the semi-precious stones from their own brand would work much better than the diamonds Milly secretly wanted. And Eva had been absolutely right. Milly twirled in front of the full-length mirror, hair and make-up done, testing out that she had enough hairspray, that the hairpins were securely fastened, but also glorying in her fairy-tale prettiness. Copies would be made of Milly’s dress by bridal designers; her hairstyle would be much imitated, and hopefully the butterfly pins and brooches would fly out of the display cases of the retailers who stocked Milly and Me, thousands of brides all over the world trying to imitate Milly’s look, that of a nymph who was going to marry Prince Charming.
He is Prince Charming, Eva thought half an hour later as, to the accompaniment of Elden on theorbo and Tristram on bass, playing an arrangement of ‘Blue Seahorses’, she stepped out onto the red carpet and led the other two bridesmaids down the path towards the man with whom she herself was in love. At least she knew that her pale blue dress suited her perfectly; she had picked it out, of course, and the Twenties-style drop-waist flattered her narrow hips, made her long waist less noticeable. Tangles of lavender beads, caught together with the same butterflies that Milly was wearing, were draped around her neck; Eva had the height to carry them off, and in her dark hair, pulled back into a side bun, a couple more butterflies were affixed.
Appreciative gasps greeted Eva’s appearance as all the guests, now marshalled into the seats on either side of the gazebo, turned to watch the bridal procession arrive. The bouquet of delicate wild flowers she carried was tied with a narrow silk ribbon wrapped with a circle of rock crystal and bluebell quartzite beads, strands of which dangled down decoratively, another touch that future brides would be sure to copy.
I’ve put the effort into this ceremony that I should have used for my own wedding, Eva thought sadly. Glancing over to the back of the gazebo, where Father Liam stood next to the mayor of Greve-in-Chianti, she met the priest’s eyes for a moment and knew that he was very aware of what she was thinking. I’ll do what he told me. That was such good advice. From now on, I have to put myself first.
Eva had been trying not to look at Tarquin but, of course, it was unavoidable. As one of the two witnesses, she had to sit down almost directly opposite him, in a chair parallel to Lance’s, who was Tarquin’s best man. Lance cast Eva a swift glance in which admiration was mingled with the gloomy disappointment that she had politely turned down his advances again the night before. The other two bridesmaids fanned out to each side, their pretty pale blue dresses and blue and white bouquets forming a little frame in which the advancing Milly posed beautifully, glancing down modestly for the cameras, then smiling shyly yet eagerly at her groom.
Tarquin’s face glowed in the gentle warmth of the late-May sun as he took in his bride, his eyes as blue as the sky behind him, the loose bow of his tie lifting just fractionally in the soft breeze. He held out his hands to Milly, who, passing her bouquet to one of the little bridesmaids, gave a pretty burbling laugh and, holding out her own hands, ran the last steps to his side, moving easily in the blue suede, ribbon-trimmed ballerina flats that made her look like a charming little doll.
Ludo, watching from the portico, where he was waiting to cue Elden and Tristram for the post-ceremony music, covered his mouth with his hand to avoid a tiny, involuntary, retching sound. God, she’s really pushing it, he thought. That run was terribly Princess Diaries.
But the audience – or the guests – sighed, charmed by
Milly’s seemingly impulsive little rush. The mayor came forward to conduct the legally binding part of the ceremony, smiling paternally at the bride and groom, gesturing to them to sit as he read out the required Italian legal statutes; programmes rustled as the guests all opened theirs and followed along with the printed English translation inside. His voice was sonorous and he smiled from bride to groom, clearly thoroughly enjoying conducting this celebrity wedding.
Eva was mercifully unable to see Tarquin’s expression most of the time, but occasionally he would glance at Milly and the joy on his face, even in that fleeting profile glimpse, was almost too much for Eva to bear. She ducked her head and stared down at her bouquet, dreading having to get up and read the poem that Milly had selected as her chief bridesmaid’s contribution.
She was so lost in misery that she only realized that the legal side of the proceedings had been concluded and the blessing was beginning because Milly had pushed back her chair and was standing up. Father Liam had replaced the mayor at the wrought-iron lectern, and he was looking very seriously at Milly, gesturing for her to turn to Tarquin and recite her vows.
Milly tossed back her head, relishing that the spotlight, as it were, was entirely directed on her. Flashing a brilliant smile at Father Liam, she fixed her round blue eyes earnestly on Tarquin, raised the sheet of paper on which her vows had been printed, and began.
‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,’ she quoted from Shakespeare, her trained actress’s voice appropriately soft, but carrying like a clear silver bell. She tilted her head to the side, smiling at Tarquin. ‘And that’s us, darling. True minds. We must be the two luckiest people in the world to have found each other. It feels like a miracle to me, and I know it does to you too! And here we are in these amazing surroundings, where a miracle happened all those centuries ago, the miracle of the snow in August, and we’re living in our own miracle. Having found each other.’
Bad Brides Page 40