Page 117 of The Muse of Maiden Lane

Ahmad offered Stella his arm. “Shall we?”

Stella felt a sudden resurgence of anxiety. “Is Mr. Hayes already at the alter?” she asked, taking Ahmad’s arm.

What if Teddy hadn’t come? What if he’d changed his mind? What if—

“He’s there,” Ahmad said, leading Stella from the vestry. “He’s waiting for you.”

And he was, of course. He was seated in his wheeled chair at the top of the aisle, looking unbearably handsome in his morning coat and gray-striped trousers.

Stella’s gaze fixed on him the entirety of the way up the aisle, never mind their friends seated to the left and the right. There was no one but Teddy, filling her vision and filling her heart.

And suddenly, she knew. She just knew.

The realization struck her, less like a thunderbolt and more like a minor earthquake of the soul. It rolled through her, the culmination of something that had been building since the moment they’d met.

Half in love, she’d thought. That was all. Not wholly in love. But she’d been wrong. The full strength of the emotion had crept up on her as silent as a thief, stealing itself around her soul. She recognized it now beyond all doubt.

I love him.

Teddy hadn’t cared about marrying in a church. He’d been more interested in speed than ceremony. But once a vicar’s sister, he supposed, always a vicar’s sister. And Teddy didn’t intend to start things off on the wrong foot with his future wife merely because he found the trappings of a fashionable wedding tedious.

And they had been tedious, not to mention damnably inconvenient for his work.

Marrying in a church meant first finding a clergyman that could accommodate them. Tom had again worked his magic in the form of a small chapel in Fleet Street, not far from his law offices. Teddy and Stella had promptly booked the date, and even engaged the church’s organist to play Mendelssohn for a fee.

After that, Teddy had suffered through multiple days without his model as the wedding preparations got under way. Rather than dutifully posing for his painting, Stella had been off for wedding dress fittings and shopping excursions, buying various things she would need before moving in with him in Maiden Lane.

Delivery men had been bringing furnishings, linens, and other domestic necessities for the last week, regularly breaking Teddy’s concentration.

By the time the morning of his wedding day arrived, announced by an unseasonably heavy downpour of summer rain, he was fully ready to get the dratted thing over with. The sooner he and Stella were married, the sooner he could resume painting her.

But he hadn’t reckoned for how he’d feel as he sat at the top of the aisle in the tiny stone chapel, with its single modest stained-glass window, surrounded by friends, and awaiting the arrival of his bride.

When she at last appeared on Ahmad’s arm, clad in delicate white muslin and veiled in diaphanous embroidered net, Teddy could only stare at her, struck dumb by how beautiful she was and by the fact—the suddenly visceral, appreciable, soul-fracturing fact—that she was shortly going to be his.

All his.

The aged little white-haired clergyman who stood in front of them didn’t waste any time. Rain beat against the high windows, nearly drowning out his creaky intonation as he began reading from the Book of Common Prayer.

Teddy gazed solemnly into Stella’s eyes, and she into his.

He’d never thought to marry. Not since losing the use of his legs. He hadn’t imagined trusting anyone. Loving anyone. Life to him, when he’d at last resumed it, had taken on another focus. Art had been the whole of his world.

But no longer.

“I will,” Stella said, a faint tremor in her voice.

“I will,” Teddy said, putting the ring on her finger. It was a fine band of gold, purchased from a jeweler in Bond Street. It didn’t do what he felt for her justice. No mere piece of jewelry could.

Another few words from the reverend, and it was done.

Stella pushed back her veil herself. Teddy would have done so, but she was too tall in comparison to his chair, with no means of leveling them unless she stooped down in her dress. For a taut moment, it had appeared as though she might.

But no.

He was vaguely relieved. There would be time enough to kiss her, without engaging in spectacle. Instead, he took her hand. “Well, Mrs. Hayes?”

She didn’t reply, only looked at him, the most inexplicable emotion in her silver-blue eyes. She hung on to his hand, rather like a lifeline.