Читать книгу Regency Society Collection Part 1 - Sarah Mallory - Страница 45

Aix-en-Provence, France

Six weeks later Eleanor wore a dress of the lightest yellow to be married in, because the colour suited her mood exactly and because Cristo said that whenever he saw her it was as if the sun had come out.

Her groom wore a jacket of dark blue cloth, his waistcoat embroidered with the Wellingham crest.

Florencia wore gold and so did her cousins, the numerous little bridesmaids and pageboys making a line around her. Even the weather cooperated as they stood to one side of the small chapel, a row of cypress trees sheltering them from the light breeze.

Cristo had leased a beautiful country villa with blue shutters and expansive gardens for the Wellingham party and the wedding took place on the third day after they had arrived in the town where Paris had been buried all those years ago.

She could see his headstone from where she stood beside the front steps of the chapel, white marble newly carved with all the love and pride befitting a cherished first born.

Smiling, Eleanor tipped her head in her son’s direction and with Beatrice-Maude on one side of her and Emerald and Lucinda on the other, she thought that she had never felt quite like this.

Young. Free. Alive. In exactly the place that she should be!

The beginning of a life that stretched on into the years before them. She could barely stand still with the promise of it.

‘Well, now,’ Beatrice said, her eyes alight with mischief. ‘All three of the Wellingham brothers are now most satisfactorily married.’

Emerald cleared her throat. ‘But we have one wedding still to go, Lucinda.’

Cristo’s sister was careful in her reply. ‘I have long since given up on finding a man who lives up to all my expectations, Emmie.’

‘Cristo might have said the same, Lucy, but when love comes it takes no mind of what has been or of what is to come. It only focuses on the now.’

As if on cue the men joined them, the pin of gold on the lapel of Cristo’s jacket catching the sun: a gift from the French side of his family when they had stopped in Paris to make peace with the past.

She felt his fingers slide into hers, one tracing the ring on her left hand.

Semper veritas—Always truth—engraved in the fine gold.

Placing her other hand across the flat of her stomach, she knew another truth, and when she caught the turquoise eyes of her sister-in-law upon the gesture, knew that she felt it, too.

A full circle. Like the seasons. A time to be born and a time to die.

Paris. Florencia. And now this child.

With the French sun overhead and her husband and children beside her, Eleanor knew that she, too, had finally come home.