Page 22 of Bred By the Duke

“Cassia cannot make her mind up about the buttonholes for love nor money,” she says without looking up.

I shut the door.

“Don't,” she says, without looking up. “I have twenty minutes of contingency and I've already spent nine of it on Peregrine.”

“You're beautiful.”

Her hands stop on the tray.

“That's what I came in to say.” I cross the room. Up close the silk has a shift to it, one color in the window light and another when she moves. Her shoulders are bare and there's a mark just below her collarbone that I put there that she has clearly decided to ignore.

She looks up at me, and it goes right through the middle of me, the way it always seems to with her.

“Say it again,” she says.

“You're beautiful.”

She puts her hand on the front of my shirt and lifts to her tiptoes to kiss me. She tastes of coffee and of the sugar off whatever Gloria made her eat at five in the morning. I get one hand at the back of her neck under the pinned-up weight of her hair and the other at her waist, and I kiss her slowly, because the entire week has been fast and this moment is mine.

“Careful,” she says against my mouth. “I've been assembled.”

“I'll put you back.”

“You will not.” She's laughing. She kisses me once more anyway, quick and hard, and then she flattens her palm and gently pushes me back.

The door opens with enough force to hit the bookcase.

“I have chosen,” Cassia announces.

She is in her dress. I’ve not seen her in it until now, and it takes the ground out from under me for a second, because in that second, she’s a beautiful bride and my baby sister all at once.

She looks at the two of us, standing a foot apart, my hand still at Rochelle's waist and Rochelle's mouth unmistakably kissed.

“Oh, please,” she says. “You're not subtle. Neither of you have ever been subtle.”

Rochelle straightens the tray. “Which one?”

“The one with the little dark red thing and the greenery. The middle one. Ro, it's perfect, they're all perfect, I want the middle one.”

“The middle one it is.”

Cassia takes a buttonhole off the tray and throws it at me. I catch it against my chest, a dahlia head the color of old wine with a sprig of something behind it and a pin taped along the stem.

“Put it on,” she says. “It's time.”

***

The chairs are set out beneath the marquee in ten rows of sixteen with an aisle down the middle. and the marquee has soft voile draped into curtains on three sides, and closed on the side we enter from, and the registrar is waiting at the front with his folder. The quartet are playing a song from an old Romeo and Juliet film that sounds hauntingly beautiful. A hundred and sixty people stand up.

Cassia's hand on my arm is shaking hard enough that I put my own hand over it.

“He should be doing this,” she says, her eyes welling.

“He is. You just have to let yourself feel him. He is so proud of you, Cass, and so am I.”

She takes a deep breathe. “Thanks big bro.”

“Any time, little sis.” I turn to face ahead just as the curtains are pulled apart.