“I want nothing more than to make you happy. Your smile is the only reward I require in life. I can’t explain how you unknotted the scars, how you found the last slim remaining pathway to my heart. I don’t need to understand it. I only need to know, do you still feel the same way? Is it too late? Can you still love me?”
She was dimly aware of the crowd holding a collective breath.
“I never stopped loving you, Dex.”
Audible sighs from their audience. A smattering of applause.
“Then Analise, before this gathered congregation of friends and family, will you do me the honor of becoming my bride?”
“We’re already married, Dex,” she responded with a tremulous laugh.
“Then will you do me the honor of allowing me to re-create our wedding in a manner more befitting a clever, imaginative, inquisitive, passionate whirlwind of a redheaded hellion?”
“That might be the longest rambling sentence I’ve ever heard you speak.”
“There’s more where that came from. Though this floor is damnably hard.”
“Yes. Oh Dex, yes.” Tears filled her eyes. He’d done all of this for her.
“Well, then.” Dex leapt to his feet. “Let’s let that good news tide us all over for a bit while Cloris and Agnes dress you!”
Through a veil of happy tears, she saw the two maids approaching and let them sweep her quickly into the house. She started toward the stairs.
“No, Your Grace! We don’t have time,” said Cloris, pulling her toward the drawing room.
“Yes, Your Grace! We mustn’t keep them waiting,” said Agnes, agreeably.
Ana followed them in, and saw, lying on the divan, the dress to put an end to all other dresses—lashes of delicate lace at the hem, intricately embroidered roses dotting the mesh overlay, a delicate underdress of fine champagne-colored silk. It was the Clovercote costume, pulled from the pages and brought to glorious life. She clapped her hands at the sight of it.
“No time for a rose petal bath,” said Cloris.
“No time to tame those curls,” Agnes said.
“But he likes her untamed, now, doesn’t he?” They winked at each other.
Ana allowed them to quickly undress and redress her in the finery.
The whole thing felt like a dream.The best kind of dream you can possibly have, thought Ana, as she glided back to the chapel, a dream she never had to wake from.
Tessie met her at the door and placed a wreath of blushing roses on her head. She was crying softly, with a beatific grin.
“When did all of this happen?” Ana whispered quickly to her friend.
“His Grace sent us very clear instructions, from the rose petals to the dress. You should see the cake!”
And see the cake she did, once the dream of a wedding was over, and the dream of a party commenced. Once she’d been clasped to the bosom of old friends and new and made to feel as welcome as any orphan had ever felt in any setting, ever. Hernew family, her new life. Her new husband, sending her looks of adoration that took her breath away.
The cake was, itself, equally breathtaking. She’d never seen a cake like it, although she’d described its every tier in her novel. Frosted within an inch of its sure-to-be-short life, stuffed full of frangipane, studded with sugared fruits of all kinds, and reaching to the heavens.
And on the tiny tier at the top, a miniature candy princess, standing side by side with a miniature candy dragon, its tail wound protectively around the princess’s sugar skirts.
“I took a liberty,” Dex said apologetically, as she stared in wonder at the cake. “It isn’t authentic to Lady Claridge’s intent—I hope you don’t mind?”
“Mind?” his newly remarried bride laughed into his ear, grabbing him in a ferocious hug. “It’s brilliant! Such an imagination, my love. Clovercote meets Vyranthrall. I couldn’t be happier.”
He laughed with her, and they served the perfect cake to everyone assembled.
Later, when the guests had been shown to their rooms, slightly inebriated and picking candied fruit out of their teeth, Dex and Ana were finally alone.