A Rather Charming Invitation (23 page)

“Had I but known,” Jeremy said, “I’d have waited till you gave it to me, before offering you an ‘out’ from our marriage.”

“Shut up and unwrap it,” I commanded.

He pulled off the dark blue wrapping, and opened the nice box the jeweler had given me.

“See?” I said, bouncing on the sofa like a kid, “I took those images from the tapestry, but it’s really my own design. That’s us, riding away on the horse. And the gold matches this . . .” I put my hand near his, so we could see my engagement ring alongside his gift.

“I love it,” he said softly.

We were very quiet again. He pulled me into his arms, which was such a warm and wonderful place to be, and I wasn’t afraid of us “changing” anymore. In fact, I felt like a boat relinquishing its moorings, ready to leave everything behind, departing from the land for the sea, to seek out something entirely new. It didn’t matter if we weren’t a hundred per cent sure of where we were going, just as long as we were going there together... and he kept kissing me this way . . .

 

 

Afterwards, we drifted into a deep, wonderful sleep, the kind that, when you wake, makes you feel as if there could not possibly be any troubles on the horizon. I think we must have awakened at the same time; and when Jeremy turned his head to look in my eyes, he smiled. Now, a gal could live on
that
kind of smile for a long, long time.

But what I said was, “Mmmm. I’m hungry. Want something to eat?”

“Let’s order out a take-away dinner,” he said lazily. While he went to sort through some menus in the kitchen drawer, I noticed that my wedding organizer was still lying on the table where I’d left it, and I began to clear it off so we could eat. Jeremy was watching. “Want to plot the whole wedding out right here, while we’re waiting for dinner to be delivered?” he asked. “Let’s see that list of yours.”

“Oh, God, let’s not spoil a good moment,” I said.

“Stuff and nonsense,” he said. “Come on, be brave.” And it was amazing, but suddenly everything seemed very clear and do-able. We talked and plotted, and when the food arrived, we ate and drank and talked some more, sitting on cushions on the floor with my notes spread out all around us.

“We could elope,” Jeremy began.

“Don’t start that again,” I said. “This is no time for jokes.”

“I think we should consider all options, no matter how idiotic,” he said.

And, for a time, we actually did contemplate eloping—just take off on the yacht, and come back married. But, as we began to picture it, we started thinking of the few people we’d really, truly like to have with us. This turned out to be a good way to begin, rather than working backwards by paring down other people’s lists. But when I laid out Leonora’s and Margery’s lists, it looked pretty daunting, still.

“It’s way too big. I’m not Princess Grace of Monaco, for God’s sake,” I grumbled. “I always pictured our wedding as small, intimate and cozy.”

“Fine,” Jeremy said. “We’ll set a limit, and tell Margery and Leonora that they can pick four guests.”

I giggled. “You’d better give them a little more leeway than that. Let’s see, if we cap it at seventy-five guests . . . including Leonora and Margery and your mom and mine . . . I guess we could divide seventy-five by four . . .”

“Divide by five,” Jeremy said. “You’re forgetting us!”

“Oh. Right. Well, that makes it easier. Divide seventy-five by five and you get fifteen. Hmm, that’s an odd number, when most people come in pairs . . .”

“Well, this isn’t Noah’s Ark,” Jeremy said. “Look, let’s just tell the four of them that they can invite ten people each. The rest are ours.”

“Okay,” I said. “They can like it or lump it. Or, they can bargain and trade with one another.”

“Good. What’s next?” Jeremy asked.

“Monsieur Lombard’s gals want you to pop into their shop in London, so they can make alterations in time,” I said.

“Okay,” Jeremy said, as if he expected it to be perfectly easy, a simple matter of showing up and wearing clothes. And I suppose it is, for men. Honestly.

I deposited some sketches from Monsieur Lombard into his lap. “What’s this?” he asked.

“Your morning coat,” I said, without looking up.

“My
what
?”

“Your groom’s outfit,” I said briskly. “I believe you’ll find all the other necessary accessories, including shoes, socks, tie, and a lovely burgundy silk handkerchief that matches my bouquet of burgundy roses, in honor of my ancestors from Burgundy.”

“Good Lord,” Jeremy said incredulously, parting the tissue-paper overlays on the sketches for color options. “What, no underdrawers?”

“Keep looking,” I said.

“Penny,” Jeremy said sternly, “I will keep all this under advisement, but you’ll have to let me take it from here. I’ll pick out what I’m comfortable with, and you can have final approval to make sure we don’t clash, but I won’t dress up like some poppet.”

“Okay, since I don’t even know what a poppet is,” I said meekly.

“Let’s please move on. What next?” he asked, shuffling through my papers.

“You already said you could get your mum to help with musicians. Can you handle the music?” I asked. “I’d like classical for the ceremony, and anything you want for the reception.”

“Sure,” he said. “What else?”

“The venue should be next, because that could affect the total number of guests,” I said. “We have to decide which country to have the wedding in. Frankly, I know this is ungrateful of me, but I don’t really want to be married in that château. It doesn’t feel like you and me. Neither does some brunch at an English country inn that means nothing to us. But it will be hard to get a booking anywhere now. Every place I talk to keeps insisting they can’t even do this year, let alone September.”

“Pick the country first,” Jeremy suggested.

“I could do either England or France, I love them both. Just so long as the place where we say, ‘I do’ feels like a place where we both belong,” I explained.

Jeremy stood up and reached in his pocket for a coin. “Okay,” he said briskly. “Heads, we have the wedding in France. Tails, England.” He pitched the coin into the air. It went straight up, then came down with a purposeful landing,
Ping!
Right on one of the cars of the toy
train bleu
.

“There you have it!” Jeremy declared. “It’s heads for France.” And then, as I gazed down at the little toy train, I had a perfect
Eureka!
moment. I jumped up and started waltzing Jeremy around the room.

“What gives?” he demanded.

“Thanks to you,” I cried, “I have just solved everything!”

M
y brilliant idea was this: Since we had to deal with the press’ interest in our wedding anyway, why not make the “public” part of the day be a benefit occasion for my charity group? Inspired by Venetia’s 1930s wedding, I thought we might charter a couple of private railroad cars, decorate them like elegant vintage ones, and give our English and American guests a luxurious reward for coming to France for the wedding. Hopefully this would offset the inconvenience of travel.

“The press and the English guests can start out at St. Pancras station in London,” I explained to Jeremy. “They’ll switch in Paris, to board our spiffed-up wedding cars, along with our French and American guests; then everybody takes off, down the
train bleu
path to the Riviera, where they pick up Honorine’s family at the Cannes station. Our guests will be wined and dined all the way, maybe with some vintage music from that time period; and we’d better throw in some Beatles for our parents.

“Anyway, the final destination will be the villa in Antibes, where we can be married in a more private ceremony, before the tapestry. The villa feels just right for the exchange of vows and the reception; it’s like Great-Aunt Penelope will watch over us there. Then, we go off on the yacht for a secluded honeymoon. The guests go back home by train, and
voilà
! It’s done.”

I brandished my pen. Jeremy grinned. “You are sounding more French by the minute,” he said approvingly. “Could it be that you’re turning into one of those chic Gallic females?”

“Ooh, I like the sound of that!” I said, beaming.

Jeremy raised a few practical concerns, but overall he liked the idea. “But,” he questioned, “how does that help your charity?”

“Well,” I said, bursting with enthusiasm, “instead of buying us presents, the guests can simply fill out a box on the invitation’s RSVP card, to either make a donation to the charity—which will get them a ‘train ticket’ to the wedding—or, for those guests who still prefer to buy ‘things’ instead of making a donation, I’ll provide a registry of decorative items we’ll want for furnishing the railcars: old-fashioned lamps, and dining-car dishware, cutlery, monogrammed napkins, stuff like that. In place of a bridal registry, see? After the wedding, the entire collection of these ‘gifts’ can be donated to my Women4Water charity, so that they can use it again for future fund-raising parties, dinners and galas; or they could even auction ’em off if they want.

“And since the press wants to cover the wedding anyway, at least all the publicity will benefit the charity. It will be one big celebration, and at the end of it, you and I will sail away on
Penelope’s Dream
and leave the world behind.”

Jeremy grinned, “You know,” he said, “I think this idea is just crazy enough to be worth a shot.”

“Let’s go try it out on Honorine,” I said, hearing her footsteps as she came in. “If it flies with her, we might have a chance at getting it past Leonora.”

We trotted over to Honorine’s reception room, and told her the whole story. She had been out shopping with her friend, but now she put down her packages and listened raptly, with a very serious and proper attitude, her face never betraying her thoughts until we reached the end.

Then she announced philosophically, “
C’est idéal
. It will be fun, and how many weddings can you say that about?”

“Hooray!” I cried. “This wedding finally has an engine!”

 

 

In the next couple of days, the plan really picked up steam. Honorine eagerly announced that, through family connections, she was able to get in touch with a bigwig at the French rail company, who enthusiastically saw an opportunity to publicize the advantages of rail travel over air travel. My charity gals were ecstatic, and offered to help coordinate the “gift” registry for me.

So I telephoned Venetia for the details of the luxury items of those old railroad cars. She was flattered to be one of my consultants, and she gave Honorine lots of instructions to pass on to Erik and Tim, who were delighted with the concept. You might say that everyone got “on board” . . . except Grandmother Margery. Her comments brought it all to a screeching halt.

“Surely you are joking,” she said, not really comprehending the idea, and not particularly wanting to. “Ask
my
friends to take a train journey to France? Why on earth should they do that?”

“You have to understand,” Jeremy told me after that deflating phone conversation, “she’s accustomed to having her orders obeyed by one and all. It’s what she lives for.”

But even this couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm. Figuring that finesse and psychology were called for here, I said cunningly, “Why not invite her to visit us at the villa in Antibes, to see for herself that it’s a totally appropriate venue for her guests? We’ll tell her we won’t make a move without her input. That way she can still feel like she has the final word.”

“And if she says no?” Jeremy inquired. “What’s our Plan B?”

“We tie her up and gag her, chuck her in the luggage compartment, and force her to come,” I said.

“Ah,” Jeremy replied. “I knew you’d think of everything.”

“We’ll cross that viaduct when we get there,” I said stoically.

He returned to the phone, called her back and relayed this new suggestion. At first I couldn’t tell what she was saying on her end of the conversation, because Jeremy did some long listening. But finally he said, “Right. I’ll call you back.” He hung up, then announced, “She bought it.”

Apparently the idea of being fussed over and allowed to conduct an “inspection” was just too appealing to Grandmother Margery to refuse. So, for once I had played my cards right. Honorine, who knew a thing or two about protocol, suggested that we prepare the villa for this inspection by sprucing up the place, including the garden, which we’d have to do for the wedding anyway.

“Let’s get it done now,” Honorine said pragmatically. “We could even hang the tapestry in the villa for her to see. I’ll tell my mother it’s like a dress rehearsal.”

Leonora was actually very happy to receive this news, because when she hadn’t heard back from me, she’d assumed that we’d decided to forsake France for an English wedding. She said that she and Philippe and David would be happy to be on hand at the villa, to help us greet and smooth the way for Margery, and they could supervise the proper hanging of the tapestry. Aunt Sheila’s beau arranged to transport the lovely clock he’d given us to the villa, so it could be set up in the drawing room to chime like wedding bells after we took our vows.

But of all the hurdles we’d jumped, I counted this one the biggest: even Great-Aunt Dorothy complied, agreeing to let Rollo use her antique champagne glasses for the reception. “I told her that if she didn’t contribute,
we
would look the fools, and the press would say our side of the family were the poor relations,” Rollo explained. “Blackmail, plain and simple, my dear girl.”

So all systems were go. “Okay, troops!” Erik said. “Let’s high-tail it to the villa, and dress this set!”

 

 

And a major production it was. Celeste, the housekeeper, likened it to an invasion of an army. But Erik and Tim soon made fast friends with her, and she pulled in some of her relatives to do garden work, more cleaning, minor carpentry, even sewing. We all swarmed around like busy bees, and soon there was a rather festive atmosphere, since, no matter how much work there was to do, we could always plunk ourselves in the pool at the end of a dusty workday.