A girl in the world barking up the wrong tree, a creature conditioned to employ matrimony

[motherspider.livejournal.com]

*Let it never be said that Esmerelda Rosier does not know how to throw a wedding. With a month to arrange everything, she swept her schedule clean, let the business languish, and began placing orders almost as soon as Evan and his bride-to-be left the estate. Her wandwork is not quite as deft as it once was, but she refuses to see a healer, and she doesn’t need wandwork to tell the florist that the roses were to be red, true red, not this flaccid pink, and to send a Howler to the baker demanding why the red velvet cake tasted like sweetened ashes, and to harangue the seamstress why the bride had not been even scheduled for her third fitting of the white dress Esmerelda had negotiated her into, as clearly the first two fittings had failed to demonstrate to her that everything needed to be taken in at the waist. Whatever the guests of this affair might think or gossip about, they’ll get no bump in Amrita’s abdomen to prove it.

She can hear Evan pacing outside the dressing room, and has to go out to tell him--repeatedly--that he cannot see her before she walks down the aisle and he should go kill the squirrels outside or something, anything to get him out of the way so she can personally finish buttoning the thousand and one buttons that go up the back of the dress. But the last time she lectures him on this, he catches a glimpse of the bride in the mirror over her shoulder anyway and grins.

“You’re beautiful,” he says over Esmerelda’s shoulder.

“Out, it’s bad luck,” the bride orders, and then, and only then, does he obey.

When she finally takes her seat in the very front of the chapel, Esmerelda’s chin is high but she clutches Dearborn’s hand fiercely. The ceremony begins, and it’s finally all out of her hands.

The door to the chapel opens and the light is blinding even though the forecast predicted rain over the reception, and there she is, shimmering like a vision, painted with the charmed designs of her culture on her hands, wearing enough skirts and petticoats and undergarments that Esmerelda had to resist the urge to catalogue them individually in a spreadsheet. Everyone turns to watch the bride proceed but Esmerelda’s gaze sweeps the crowd and then, finally, lands where she knew it would: on Evan.

He is standing there, hands held before him, frozen in the process of being wrung. His knuckles are white. There’s a tiny bit of hair sticking up at the back of his head, the part she always charmed firmly down when he was as boy, and suddenly her vision goes blurry. She looks up and blinks once, twice, pulls out the bright red handkerchief out of her bright red handbag sitting on her bright red skirts. It is acceptable to cry, she supposes, but she doesn’t want to. Not for this, the thing he manipulated her into doing, this ruinous match. But the look on his face--

When Evan was five, she took him to the hall that holds the Rosier family tree. She pointed to herself and Dearborn on the tree, how other families intertwined, and how he, someday, would marry someone who also had a tree like this one and have children, and when he did, the tapestry would grow further up because it had been enchanted very long ago to do so. All this was his, and he belonged to it as much as it belonged to him. He gave the whole thing a wide, encompassing look, finally resting his little palm next to his own name as if to cover a hole, and then turned to her and asked, “Why isn’t she here already?”

And Esmerelda smiled, and told him that she would come along in due course, that he might meet her on his own or they might introduce her to him, but what was most important was the fact that she would become family, and that he should care for her as well as he cared for her or Dearborn. That is what made her worth putting up on the tree.

Looking at him now, watching this woman come up the aisle, there is so much of that boy in him that, for the first time in all of this, Esmerelda is willing to allow that perhaps it will not all end in calamity. Perhaps they will grow old and happy together as she and Dearborn have, and the grandchildren birthed from surrogates will still be grandchildren. Perhaps they will love each other until they both rot.

The ceremony is beautiful, and Amrita is radiant, and they don’t have eyes for anyone but each other, and when they kiss at the very end, it is a brazen, full kiss, and when he finally pulls away, his mouth is smudged with her lipstick. He ducks his head to murmur something into her ear as the audience rises to its feet, and she laughs and runs her thumb over his bottom lip to try to rub off the lipstick, and they leave the church together, arm in arm, so boldly and arrogantly in love that even Walburga can barely muster a scandalized little sigh.*

Comments

[walburgisnacht.livejournal.com]

*The reception afterwards is just lovely, and Esmerelda has done her hasty work superbly. But in doing so she'd evidently made good use of Walburga's hoard of vendors and swatches and samples, and as she looks over the lawns of the Rosier Estate, at the musicians and flowers and immaculately appointed tables, Walburga can't help smiling in a self-satisfied sort of way over her champagne.*

It's lovely, isn't it, Regulus?

Although I'm not sure if I would've picked that exact tone of marble for the dance floor.

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*Regulus has played the happy wedding guest rather well tonight - at least, the wedding gust part of that equation. He has shaken hands and clapped when appropriate, replied - albeit a touch too softly for a crowd - when spoken to. He has also managed to not flee from any uncomfortable encounter yet, even when someone's rather round, rather brown baby had stared at him for ten whole minutes over it's mother's shoulder, never blinking, only drooling, parting the sea of faces to reach his and never let him escape. Still, despite his bravery in the face of so much interaction, he now looks from his mother to the marble as though his opinion on the matter is just what is terrifying and cruel about this world.*

...Do I have marble?

[walburgisnacht.livejournal.com]

Of course you do. The very best.

What a lovely waltz they're playing. Where is Victoria?

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*The combination of Victoria's name and having one's own marble picked out for them brings Regulus' overworked little heart into his throat nearly as much as if Walburga had brought up the subject of her underwear. His handkerchief appears as if from nowhere and he begins to thread it around the fingers of his left hand, as though anticipating some great sneeze of worry.*

I believe she's speaking with an old friend of her grandmother's.

[walburgisnacht.livejournal.com]

That's awfully politic of you, Regulus. And don't fuss.

*But her gaze passes from the handkerchief in her son's fingers back onto the marble dance floor and the couples turning on it, and her face softens--if only marginally.*

Perhaps--perhaps Victoria wouldn't take it amiss if you were to ask her to dance?

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

In front of other people?


Mother I - think the floor is rather crowded. I shouldn't like to make Victoria feel claustrophobic.

[walburgisnacht.livejournal.com]

Yes of course in front of other people. Don't be silly. What do you think you'll be doing at your own?

[spindleform.livejournal.com]

*Being a husband is so large a pill to swallow that the wedding itself has been almost entirely absent from his mind until now. He stares resolutely away from the uncomfortable topic, toward Victoria still engaged in pleasant conversation with the elderly, and catches her smiling.

It's a nice smile for it's honesty, and since it isn't directed toward him he has the chance to study it. It's an opportunity not usually presented without making one appear to be rather something of a creep for staring, and it allows him to realise that, in the moment, she doesn't look nearly as disarming as he often remembers her being.

Yet, as it always seems to do, the persistent paranoia he has held at bay throughout most of the celebrations makes itself known. Victoria's happiness does nothing but call to mind a cold thought that had once slithered into his head, and suddenly all he can think of is Victoria should he have chosen another answer when asked if he would rather never to see her again. The only dementor for miles around is the one in Regulus' memory, but it makes him too nervous to carry on and he ducks his head down toward his chest.*

[walburgisnacht.livejournal.com]

Very well. Although perhaps she could do with a bit of rescuing from that horrid relative.

*Inevitably, Walburga fails utterly to notice the brief moment of understanding that passes over Regulus as he looks at his intended: she sees only a bewildering, depressingly un-romantic son. And of course the bride and groom are pointing their smiles everywhere like they're weapons and mooning around like something out of a picture book--Walburga sighs, taking up her champagne. It all strikes her as rather unfair.*

It did turn out well, I think.

Considering.