Read Chapter 39: The Wedding

The morning broke clear and cold, the first true light Evelyn had seen since arriving at Blackwood. Rain had fallen through the night, drumming against the windowpanes of her room, but by the time she rose, the sky had washed itself clean, pale blue and endless above the moor.

She wore no white. The dress was deep cream, borrowed from the village seamstress and altered in a single feverish evening, its collar high and its sleeves modest. In her hand she carried a sprig of heather Annabel had picked at dawn, still wet with dew.

The chapel stood at the edge of the village, its stone walls older than the Blackwood name itself. Evelyn walked the short path from the carriage alone, as was proper, though propriety felt like a thin garment this morning. She could see them waiting—Annabel at the door, her face bright with a joy Evelyn had never seen on a servant's countenance, and behind her, the children, the Blackwell wards, scrubbed and restless in their Sunday best.

"You look like a queen," Annabel whispered as Evelyn reached the threshold. "A poor queen, perhaps, but a queen nonetheless."

"Thank you," Evelyn said, and squeezed her hand. Annabel had wept when they told her, had thrown her arms around Evelyn's neck and then, to Evelyn's astonishment, had done the same to Lord Blackwood. She had asked no questions about what it meant for her inheritance, only said that she would stand witness if they would have her.

They would have her.

The chapel was small and smelled of candlewax and old hymnbooks. Lord Blackwood stood at the altar in a dark coat, his hair damp from his own walk from the house. He did not smile when she entered, but his eyes held hers with an intensity that made the years of servitude, the days of hiding, fall away like a shed garment.

The vicar spoke the words. Evelyn heard them as if through water—the vows, the promises, the ancient liturgy of binding. She answered clearly, her voice steady in the cold air, and when he slid the ring onto her finger, she felt the weight of it settle against her skin like something that had always belonged there.

Lord Blackwood—her husband, now, though the word felt strange and new—leaned close as the vicar pronounced them wed. "You are shaking," he murmured.

"I am not."

"Then I am, for both of us."

He kissed her, brief and proper, and the children cheered from the front pew. Annabel dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief that had once belonged to Miss Reeves.

Outside, the sun had fully broken through. The moor gleamed green and gold, washed clean.

The wedding breakfast was held in the village hall, not at Blackwood, at Evelyn's insistence. She had spent too long within those walls as a hireling to begin her marriage as a mistress within them before the village had seen her wed. The hall was draped with white cloth and heather, and the tables groaned with bread and cheese and cold meats contributed by every family in the parish.

Evelyn moved among them, accepting congratulations, learning names she had never known despite months in their midst. Annabel stayed close, steering her toward the older women who mattered, away from the young men who still looked at her with the frank appraisal she remembered from her own village days.

In the midst of it, a servant from the house appeared at the door—not one of the usual footmen, but a girl Evelyn recognized from the kitchens, pale and uncertain. She held a letter sealed with black wax.

"For you, my lady," the girl said, and the term made Evelyn's throat tighten. "It came by express from Bath."

Evelyn took it. She did not need to open it to know the hand. The seal was Lady Beatrice's own, the sharp crest of the Ashworth family pressed into the wax.

"Read it," Annabel said, appearing at her elbow. "Whatever she has to say, you should know it."

Evelyn broke the seal. The paper was thick and expensive, the ink heavy and dark.

*Evelyn Hartley—if that is even your name—you have married a fool and a bankrupt. The Blackwood name is ash, and you have made yourself its keeper. You think you have won. You have only prolonged the inevitable. My family will see that testament destroyed, and you will learn what it means to cross the name of Ashworth. My solicitor has already filed the first objections. You will hear from us before the month is out.*

*—B. Ashworth, late of Blackwood*

The words were bitter and wild, the hand less controlled than Evelyn remembered from the letters they had found in the desk. Lady Beatrice wrote as a woman whose mind was fraying at the edges, her fury barely contained beneath the veneer of her breeding.

Evelyn folded the letter and slipped it into her pocket.

"What does she say?" Annabel asked.

"That she is angry. That she is afraid. That she is far away, and we are here."

"She hates you," Annabel said, not unkindly. "She would have destroyed you if she could."

"She tried." Evelyn looked out over the hall, at the children laughing by the fire, at Lord Blackwood speaking with the vicar, his head bent in serious conversation. "And she failed."

The feast wore on into the afternoon. Evelyn ate, though she could not later recall the taste of anything. She laughed at the children's antics, at young Thomas attempting to steal a second slice of cake, at the village elder who insisted on telling the story of Lord Blackwood's own christening, three decades past.

When at last the sun began to sink toward the western hills, Evelyn stepped outside for air. The moor stretched before her, purple and gold in the dying light, and she felt the weight of the day settle over her shoulders like a blessing.

Lord Blackwood found her there, his coat over his arm, his cravat loosened. "You are hiding from your own wedding feast."

"I am hiding from no one." She turned to face him, and the ring on her finger caught the light. "I am simply acquiring the moment before it passes."

"It will not pass." He took her hand, his thumb brushing over the ring. "I have spent my life losing things—my father, my fortune, my name. I will not lose this."

"You will not," she said, and the certainty in her voice surprised even her.

Behind them, the chapel bell began to toll, slow and clear across the village. Evelyn looked up at the sky, at the last clouds dispersing into silver wisps, and she thought of the ledger, sealed and locked in its hiding place. She thought of Miss Reeves, who had written so carefully of everything she had suffered, everything she had lost. She thought of Margaret, whose name remained a wound in the earth.

Tomorrow they would ride for Kent. Tomorrow they would face Lionel Ashworth and the fight for the testament. Tomorrow the battle would begin.

But tonight, the sky was clear, and the bell was ringing, and she was no longer a governess. She was Lady Blackwood, and she was not afraid.