Tallie's Knight by Anne Gracíe Page B

too involved in her fantasy to notice. She turned
her head to take a quick glance at the pews behind her, searching for Brooks,
Mrs. Wilmot and the children.
    “Thalia!” Lord d’Arenville’s
hand jerked her back to face the altar.
    Tallie blinked at it
for a moment. She felt dizzy, bereft, disorientated. She looked helplessly up
at Lord d’Arenville. He stared back, his brow furrowed, his cold grey eyes
intense. One hand held hers. His other arm slid around her and tightened around
her waist.
    For a moment it
seemed to Tallie that he could see into her very soul.
    She quivered under
the hard gaze and closed her eyes —the intrusion was too painful. For a moment
or two she was aware of nothing but the cold chill of the church and the
pressure of his arm supporting her.
    His arm felt warm,
but the grey eyes watching her looked angry. In the distance she could hear the
vicar mumbling something. She closed her eyes harder, wishing with all her
heart she could invoke her fantasy back to deal with this. She heard the vicar
mumbling again. Lord d’Arenville gave her a little squeeze and Tallie opened
her eyes.
    “Do you, Thalia
Louise Robinson take this man…?” intoned the vicar forcefully, his manner
conveying to Tallie that he was repeating the question, and not for the first
time.
    Embarrassed, Tallie
mumbled, “I do,” and hurriedly repeated after him the words about loving,
honouring and obeying Lord d’Arenville. She shivered.
    She was bound for
life to Magnus Philip Audley St. Clair, Seventh Earl of d’Arenville. A surge of
deepest misery washed over her. Her wedding was so very different from what she
had hoped for, dreamed of. And she didn’t mean all that nonsense about rejected
suitors and important guests and beautiful gowns —that silliness had nothing to
do with her true dreams.
    All she truly wanted
was to be loved.
    The other had been
mere play-acting, an attempt to distract herself, to get through the day with
some semblance of good spirits in order not to disappoint her friends. But
there hadn’t been much point. Dully, she felt her glove being tugged off.
    “With this ring I
thee wed, with my body I thee worship…” His voice was deep, harsh.
    The ring was cold as
it slid onto her finger.
    She was married.
    Tallie glanced up at
her husband. He was staring down at her small hand, still resting in his large
one. She followed his gaze and saw the faint brown stains on her fingers from
the dye she had used on her gloves and lace. And at the end of each grubby hand
was a chewed and ugly fingernail. That was what her new husband was staring at
—her dirty hands and horrible bitten nails.
    He put back her veil
and kissed her, a hard, brief pressure on her mouth, then straightened, having
done his duty. A lump rose in her throat and she bit her lip to stop it
trembling. Such a cold, hollow sham of a wedding.
    It was her own fault,
she knew. She had stupidly allowed herself to dream of how it would be, and so
of course she was disappointed. She invariably was. Life was always a
disappointment when compared with her dreams. So the dreaming would have to
stop. But, oh, she’d never felt so miserable or alone in her life. Tallie felt
a tear roll down her cheek, then another. She surreptitiously wiped them away.
She straightened, preparing herself for the walk back down the aisle. She looked
at the sparse, silent congregation and cast a quick glance up at the grim face
of her new husband.
    A straggle of the
poorer villagers were watching from the very back of the church —come,
possibly, with the expectation of largesse from the rich and happy groom.
Tallie sighed. The villagers were, like everyone else, doomed to disappointment
in her wedding, for the veriest blind man could see that her groom was not
happy. There would be no largesse.
    Magnus was indeed not
happy. He was furious. Had been from the moment his cousin Laetitia, swooning
artistically, had claimed she could not move another step that