Greygallows by KATHY

hope?'
    'Doubt so honorable a gentleman?'
    I crept back up the stairs before they could see me. The tone of my aunt's voice told me something I had never suspected. She detested Clare as much as she did me. That was a testimonial in his favor; the only emotion I did feel in those days was a sullen distaste for Lady Russell and everything that had to do with her. If Clare would take me away from her and her hateful house and the hideous city...
    So I stood at his side in St. Margaret's, with the organ echoing among the high rafters, and heard the words that made me Lady Clare. When he took my hand, his fingers closed over it gently, as if he were afraid it would crumble in his grasp. The ring had been made to fit my finger, but its blazing cluster of diamonds and opals felt like a lead weight. I wore white satin with an overskirt of Honiton lace, and the coronet of pearls in which my mother had been married. Her jewels, long locked in Mr. Beam's safe, had been delivered into my hands the day before, and Mr. Beam, for once living up to his name, had offered me stately and sincere good wishes.
    Afterward there was a great crush at the house. I stood stiff and proper in my lace and pearls, smiling obediently at the guests. Most of them were friends of Clare's, with a few of my aunt's less raffish acquaintances. As I made my mechanical smiles and stiff bows, I realized I had not a single friend in the crowd. It seemed to me rather sad that a girl should not have one friend present on the most important day of her life.
    From across the room Mr. Beam was watching me. He thought himself my friend, no doubt; but the expression that softened his hard old face was relief and self-satisfaction. Naturally Jonathan was not present. However, I thought I had caught a glimpse of him at the church, half concealed behind one of the pillars.
    Clare took my hand.
    'It is time to change now. We must be out of the city before dark.'
    Obediently I turned to go; but a small cold frisson penetrated the shell of indifference that had protected me so long. My aunt hurried to my side. As we mounted the stairs together, accompanied by the toothy young maiden who, as a distant cousin of Clare's, had served as my attendant, there was laughter from below.
    My trunks were packed and waiting. One stood with its top ajar, waiting for the wedding gown. My aunt and the Honorable Miss Allen took it off and helped me into the soft cashmere gown which was to be my traveling dress.
    Despite my aunt's halfhearted objections, Clare was determined not to spend a single night in London. He was anxious to be home, after so long an absence; he disliked London, as did I, and there was no appropriate place for us to stay in town. The Clare mansion in Belgravia had been unoccupied for some years and was not in fit condition for a lady, so we were to spend our wedding night in a charming inn he knew of, on the road north.
    At Miss Plum's establishment, even the old cat was bundled out of the way at certain times of the year, to reappear, after a judicious interval, with a litter of charming kittens. Of course we girls knew more than Miss Plum thought we did. Amid much giggling and speculation we pieced together certain theories. It was amazing how wildly wrong we were! The majority of us rejected, with horrified shock, a particularly accurate description by one little miss whose father let her play unsupervised in the stableyard, among hounds and horses. Horses and dogs, perhaps; but people—!
    I knew that a woman's wedding night was something to be dreaded, and that 'that part' of marriage had to be borne with spartan fortitude, as part of the price paid for a good establishment. But that was all I did know; and I often wished, despairingly, that my information were more exact. A known fact, however dreadful, is easier to face than the unhindered flight of imagination. My aunt was not the person from whom I would have sought such information; yet if we had been alone that