Finders and Keepers (64 page)

‘You threw them on the stairs and screamed to frighten me?' Harry grabbed the newel post to steady himself while he caught his breath.

‘I did.' Her eyes glittered triumphantly.

Micah Holsten drew alongside Harry. ‘I'm sorry, Harry,' he gasped. ‘I would never have entered the house uninvited if Toby hadn't thought you'd need help.'

‘My sister, Edyth. Micah Holsten, saxophonist and member of the Bute Street Blues Band. And Toby was right, Micah. Given my sister's history of breaking her bones, I do need help to cope with her idea of a joke.'

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Holsten.' Assuming from the intense way he was staring at her that he thought her a fool for playing such a childish trick, Edyth stepped back into the shadows. ‘Be a good best man and keep Toby away from the house, Harry.'

‘I'll try. See you in church, sis.' Harry turned to Micah. ‘As you're here, I may as well show you to the kitchen.'

The women and girls who had crowded into Bella's bedroom fell silent when Sali draped the veil over her eldest daughter's head. Sali stepped back and Bella stood for a moment, gazing at her image in the cheval mirror through a mist of Bruges lace. She finally turned and faced her sisters, aunts and cousins.

‘Well?' she questioned nervously. ‘Someone say something, even if it's only, “you look as though you've been dipped in icing sugar, Bella.”'

A lump rose in Edyth's throat. Her sister had chosen a plain, white satin, bias-cut frock that clung flatteringly to her bust and slim waist before flaring out below the hips. But her veil and the silver tiara that held it in place were family heirlooms. Lloyd's Spanish mother had worn them when she'd married his father over half a century before, and although the pattern on the lace was ornate, its simple outline complemented the gown perfectly.

‘Someone? Anyone?' Bella pleaded.

‘You make the most beautiful bride, darling. Toby is a very lucky man.' Sali reached for her handkerchief.

‘Auntie Megan? Auntie Rhian?'

‘I agree with your mother, the most beautiful bride I've ever seen.' Rhian struggled to keep her voice steady. Her wartime wedding to Lloyd's youngest brother Joey had been a small registry office affair, and for the first time in her life she found herself regretting the sensible ‘walking out' suit she'd worn. She'd consoled herself at the time with the thought that it was the marriage not the clothes that mattered. Although she didn't doubt for one moment that Bella would be happy. Toby's besotted devotion to her niece had been a constant source of amusement to the entire extended family for the last four years.

‘I can't wait until I'm old enough to get married,' Susie, the youngest of Sali and Lloyd's daughters sighed theatrically.

‘And me,' fifteen-year-old Beth and seventeen-year-old Maggie cried in unison.

‘One at a time, girls.' Sali attempted to conceal her emotion beneath a veneer of brisk efficiency as she tidied Bella's dressing table, but she deceived no one. ‘It's taken four years for your father to get used to the idea of Harry being a husband and father.' She gave Mary, who was sitting on the bed with Ruth on her lap, one of her·‘special' smiles. ‘It will take him another four to accept that Bella's grown up enough to be a wife.'

‘Don't worry, Mam, you'll always have one spinster daughter.' Edyth picked up the gold basket she'd filled with yellow rosebuds and handed it to Ruth.

‘Hardly for ever when you go to college in two months,' Maggie reminded.

‘Only if I matriculate.' Edyth crossed her fingers superstitiously under cover of her skirt, as she always did when any reference was made to the future that was planned for her. ‘And, if I'm lucky enough to pass all my exams, it will only be for three years. I'll come back here to teach and look after Mam and Dad in their old age.'

‘That's a comforting thought for you and Lloyd, Sali,' laughed Megan, the wife of Lloyd's other brother, Victor.

‘We're not quite in our dotage yet, no matter what you girls think.' Sali tweaked the hem of Bella's dress.

Mari knocked at the door, bustled in with an armful of posies and Bella's bouquet, took one look at the bride and stopped in her tracks. ‘Oh, Miss Bella, you look like an angel that's just stepped out of heaven.'

‘Doesn't she just, Mari?' Sali agreed proudly.

‘And you look just as lovely in that grey silk, Mari.' Edyth was so accustomed to their housekeeper wearing black, it was a revelation to see her in a colour.

‘Hardly “just as lovely”, Miss Edyth.' Mari gave her a suspicious look. ‘What you after?'

‘Nothing,' Edyth protested.

‘No baskets of food or “old” clothes or books to take down to the Unemployed Institute?' Mari fished.

Everyone laughed. Lloyd and Sali were generous when it came to helping those less fortunate than them, but, to her sisters' annoyance, Edyth was liberal to the extreme. She frequently gave away their precious possessions before they had finished with them.

‘Well, ladies,' Mari addressed the room in general, ‘there's an impatient crowd of smartly-dressed gentlemen and a fleet of cars downstairs waiting to take the guests to the church. The chauffeur of the bridesmaids and mother of the bride has asked me to give a twenty-minute warning. And, as the bride's mother's sons are both involved in the wedding, the twins have offered their services as escort until the father of the bride has given the bride away.'

‘Do the twins do everything together?' Edyth asked Megan.

‘Sixteen and no sign of them changing their ways.' She shook her head fondly. ‘Victor is already pitying the poor girl they'll both start courting.'

Mari saw Sali glance wistfully at Bella. Suspecting there wouldn't be much time for mother and daughter to have a quiet moment together after the ceremony, she took charge. ‘Right, bridesmaids, pick up your posies, but keep the tea towels wrapped around the stems until the last minute or they'll leave watermarks on your frocks. Those who haven't yet picked up their buttonholes from the hall, do so. I'll carry that downstairs for you so you can hold up your skirt, pet.' She took Ruth's basket from her, and was so insistent she soon cleared the room of everyone except Sali, Bella and Edyth, who was drying the stems of Bella's bouquet in a towel. ‘Perhaps the chief bridesmaid should stay with the bride in case of accident,' Mari declared as an afterthought.

‘What kind of accident?' Bella asked from behind her veil.

‘Your knickers could fall down, like when you used to snap the elastic to make a funny noise when you were little.'

‘Mari!' Bella cried indignantly.

‘And no sentimental rememberings or you two will make your mother cry.' Mari took a last look at Bella. ‘You do look lovely, Miss Bella, just the way an Evans bride should.' She closed the door quickly, but not quickly enough. Edyth saw a tear in the elderly woman's eye.

‘Mari's right.' Sali continued to stare, mesmerized, at her eldest daughter. ‘You do look just the way an Evans bride should.' Her eyes clouded as she remembered the day she'd been dressed as a bride. Only her bridegroom hadn't made it to the church. Harry's father had been murdered before he could marry her, but it was a story she and Lloyd had kept from the girls. The tragedy had been hers and Harry's – and today of all days was not the time to remember it.

‘You heard Mari: no sentiment and no tears, or we'll spoil our frocks and redden our noses.' Edyth lifted her sister's veil and draped it away from her face. ‘I hid a bottle of sherry and some glasses in your wardrobe earlier. Shall I get them?'

‘How on earth did you manage to do that without Mari, me or your father seeing you?' Sali asked in amazement.

‘Perhaps now's the time to tell you some of Edyth's little dodges.' Bella arranged her dress carefully so as not to crease it before sitting on her dressing-table stool.

‘Not if you want me to keep
your
secrets, sister dear.' Edyth produced the bottle and three glasses, and set them on the dressing table.

‘Please be careful, Edyth, Sherry will leave a horrible stain on satin,' Sali warned when Edyth uncorked the sherry.

‘I haven't had an accident in months,' Edyth protested.

‘That's why I'm worried. Whenever you've been quieter for longer than a week, it usually means you're building up to something big. Like that time you fractured your skull.'

‘I've broken enough bones for one lifetime.' Edyth filled the last glass and handed two to her mother and sister. ‘A toast: to Bella and Toby, and many years of happy married life.'

‘And Edyth,' Bella added. ‘May she be the first to fulfil Dad's dream of seeing a daughter go to college.'

‘If I've passed my matriculation.' Edyth crossed her fingers again before sipping the sherry.

Joey Evans liked to boast that he was the least sentimental man in the family, but Edyth saw her uncle reach for his handkerchief when Lloyd escorted Bella up the aisle to the accompaniment of their mother's favourite Bach concerto. She continued to walk slowly behind her father and sister while keeping a watchful eye on the three small children in front of her. Pageboys Glyn and Luke held Bella's veil stiffly at arm's length and Ruth marched proudly between them, more miniature soldier on parade than flower-girl.

Relieved when they reached the altar without any of the small children tripping up, or getting in the way of the bridesmaids, Edyth looked up to see Toby standing smiling, his arm outstretched to Bella.

She had never been jealous of Bella's dark exotic beauty, but she did find herself envying the look of love and longing etched in Toby's eyes. Not Toby himself just the way he looked at her sister. And she found herself wishing that a man would look at her that way.

The Reverend Price faced Bella and Toby and the congregation. ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today …'

To Edyth's annoyance, a mist blurred her vision. She had sat dry-eyed, emotions intact, throughout the rehearsal. Why couldn't she continue to do so now? When Bella handed over her bouquet she buried her nose in the roses, inhaled their scent and wondered if she were dreaming. Could Bella really be getting married and leaving home?

She hadn't felt this way when Harry had married Mary. She adored her big brother, but he was six years older than her and had spent so much time away at school, and later university, that she had never been as close to him as she was to her sisters. And, as she and Bella were the eldest, their relationship had been a special one.

She imagined Bella's bedroom, empty not just for a few hours but, like Harry's, permanently, apart from the odd holiday, and probably not even then as Toby was having a house built for them around the corner from her parents. She would no longer be able to creep in late at night, sit on her sister's bed and devour the picnics they'd sneaked from the pantry while discussing life, art, books and the future.

She and Bella had gone almost everywhere together, both before and after they had grown out of short frocks. School, music lessons, ballet classes, parties, concerts, dances and the theatre, and they had traded insults that everyone outside of the immediate family considered vicious. She hadn't once told Bella that she loved her, or how much she meant to her, or even that she was going to miss her …

‘I do.' Toby's response rang, loud and clear, to the church rafters.

Bella's ‘I do' was softer, more subdued.

The Reverend Price looked expectantly at Harry, who fumbled in his pockets in search of the ring long enough to alarm the groom and send whispers of amusement rippling through the congregation.

Edyth turned in annoyance at a sharp poke in her back. Maggie pointed to the floor. Glyn, Luke and Ruth were sitting in a circle, legs wide apart, feet touching, rolling the basket of rosebuds to one another. She stooped down to take it from them and found herself staring into a pair of unfamiliar, deep-brown eyes.

She picked up the basket. The owner of the brown eyes gathered the rosebuds and handed them to her. When he straightened, she saw that he was wearing a cassock, surplice and dog collar. He smiled at her before moving discreetly behind the Reverend Price.

Disconcerted, the warning glare she sent in the direction of the errant pageboys and flower-girl wasn't as stern as she'd intended. She'd heard that the Reverend Price had a new curate. If that was him, he was without a doubt the most attractive man she'd ever seen.

The Reverend Price boomed, ‘Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.'

The service ended, the choir began to sing ‘Love Divine'. Bella and Toby laughed from sheer relief. The congregation started to whisper and Edyth caught snatches of conversation.

‘Such a moving ceremony …'

‘A beautiful bride …'

Edyth crouched down, helped the pageboys and Ruth to their feet, brushed their clothes with the back of her hand and turned to follow Bella, Toby and her parents into the vestry. The Reverend Price's curate stood back to allow the bridal procession to precede him and, to her astonishment, gave her a broad and distinctly non-clerical wink.

Her mouth went dry and her knees weakened. For the first time in her life, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that, despite her aversion to all the Charlie Moores she'd encountered, and her assertion that she would remain a spinster, given the right man, just like Bella, she would happily forgo her ambition to attend college in exchange for marriage and – when she looked down at Ruth – children.

The
Brothers & Lovers
Series

by

CATRIN COLLIER