Your Roots Are Showing (35 page)

The crowds began to disperse now, as people moved on to the reception. Lizzie watched like an anxious mother as Bruno walked away toward the car park, escorted by the schoolteacher and her long-suffering husband. He turned and gave her a little wave and a thumbs-up just before they rounded a corner and disappeared out of sight.

Soon there was nobody left at the church but the wedding party.

The obligatory photo session passed in a blur for Lizzie. With one part of her brain, she followed the photographer’s instructions — hold up your bouquet, hold it down, put your hand on the bride’s shoulder, turn slightly sideways — while the rest of her brain darted about restlessly.

Was Sonja Jenkins lying low, perhaps, too ashamed of herself to show her face? Had she decided not to come at all? What would she be wearing, if she was here? Scarlet, probably. Did James feel any guilt about breaking his promise to Lizzie that he wouldn’t confuse the children by having women stay over in his house? Probably not. He wasn’t balking at breaking his promise to love her till the end of time.

“That’s it! We’re done here, people,” the fat little photographer announced, placing lens caps on lenses and packing away his equipment.

“Psst! Lizzie!”

She almost jumped out of her skin. Somehow or other James had snuck up on her.

“Come around the side here, quick,” he said, indicating the wall of the church with a flick of his head.

Lizzie’s pulse went haywire. What on earth was going on? Was James seizing the moment to apologize to her about Sonja? Oh God — was it possible he had something even more momentous to say?

She gave a quick look around, but nobody was watching them. Almost everyone was clustered around Maria and Laurence, as if they’d been transformed by the last hour and a half’s work into minor celebrities.

“Okay,” she muttered, “you first, I’ll follow in a moment.”

He gave her an odd look, but did as she suggested, striding off purposefully round the side of the building. She waited a couple of heartbeats and then sauntered after him, hoping that her back conveyed the casual look of a person intent on viewing the architecture from another angle. Even though her heart was thumping with excitement, she was still level-headed enough not to want to set any more tongues wagging about the state of play between the Buckleys.

“Right, there you are.” James popped out from behind a bush. “We’d better be quick.”

“Er — quick?” Lizzie’s mind boggled. What on earth did he mean? This didn’t sound like the prelude to an important speech.

“Quick, lift your arm.”

“
What?
”

“Lift your arm, of course! Don’t you
know
that your zip’s split?”

“My zip?” The dignified and reproachful speech Lizzie had been preparing regarding James’s behavior with Sonja went out of her head with a slight ping. She glanced at her left side. Holy mackerel! She was open from armpit to hip bone, flesh-colored strapless bra and lilac panties cheerfully on display.

“Oh, shit,” she said quickly, a painful blush rising as she grabbed at the sides of the dress and tried to hold them together. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“It only happened a moment ago. Come on, let’s see if I can fix it.”

Humiliated to think of the wild hopes she’d entertained just seconds before, she bowed her head and held up her arm. He half knelt at her side, trying to slide the little plastic moving part back down from the top of the zip to the bottom. It was hard work, apparently.

“Can you, sort of, suck in your tummy?” he asked.

She pulled it in as hard as she could, and for once didn’t feel even slightly ticklish as his fingertips bumped against the bare skin of her side. Normally, she’d be doubled up, racked by giggles by now.

He managed to wiggle the fastener back down to the bottom of the zip again, but as he eased it upward, it was clear that he was going to have some trouble squeezing everything back inside. Oh God. She might as well just have worn a sign saying, “Too fat for this gig.”

“It’s a bit on the tight side,” he remarked through clamped teeth. “But — there, I’ve got it. Let’s hope it holds.”

“Thanks,” Lizzie muttered, still red in the face and on the verge of tears.

“Don’t mention it,” James replied. “Come on, we’d better get back. I could murder a double whiskey right now, couldn’t you?”

Determined to salvage a little of her dignity, Lizzie called after him, “By the way, Bruno isn’t really married. It’s — it’s a real date. He’s not, you know, out on loan or anything.”

James looked back at her over his shoulder. “Oh. Excellent,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Chapter Seventeen

S
onja Jenkins wasn’t at the wedding. Lizzie had scanned the room again and again from the bridal table, and the woman simply wasn’t there. James must have come alone after all.

What on earth did that mean?

Maybe she’d made a huge tactical error, making sure James knew Bruno was single.

Still shaken by the shameful ordeal of the split zip, Lizzie hardly dared glance at James, sitting just a few feet away on the other side of Laurence. But the moment he stood up to make his speech, her armpits began to gush with sweat. Oh no! She’d all but forgotten that it was the best man’s duty to propose a toast to the matron of honor.

James was good at toasts. There wasn’t a trace of awkwardness about him when he asked the assembled company to raise their glasses to “Lizzie, as lovely today as we’ve ever seen her.” If you weren’t in the know, you’d never have guessed he was talking about the wife he’d walked out on.

For some reason, this toast seemed to strike a chord with the wedding guests. There were calls of “Hear, hear,” and “Bravo, Lizzie,” almost as if she’d done something worth applauding. Maybe they were cheering her for losing so much weight. Although she’d put on a tad recently, she’d still shed, overall, the equivalent of a six- or seven-year-old child, pound for pound. Maybe they violently approved of her new hairstyle. Maybe they were simply impressed that she’d had the gall to show her face at all. Whatever the reason, their unexpected kindness made Lizzie’s eyes prickle and her heart swell with an odd combination of mortification and gratitude.

As the speeches went on, she wondered how she’d act when the time came for the matron of honor to dance with the best man. Certainly she didn’t have the courage, or even the inclination, to revert to her original plan to beguile and bewitch him on the dance floor. Sonja might not be here at the wedding, but that didn’t prove for a moment that James had excised her from his personal life. Any number of things could have prevented her from coming — her father could’ve had a heart attack, or she herself could be down with something nasty and disfiguring, like shingles.

As it turned out, Lizzie didn’t have to dance with James at all. Luckily — well, not
luckily
, exactly — the wedding party numbers were a bit out of kilter because Maria’s mother had died of leukemia years ago. With great forethought, Maria had primed her father to ask Lizzie for the first dance. Lizzie was quite happy to take a spin around the floor with Mr. Dennison’s enormous walrus mustache hovering above her shoulder while James did his duty by Laurence’s mother. As a matter of fact, Lizzie felt strangely fond of the old chap, because his few words about Maria had been absolutely spot- on.

“I never thought I’d see this day,” Mr. Dennison had told the upturned faces with disarming honesty. “She’s a grand lass, of course, but not exactly the nesting variety. All I can say is, thank God the Hendershotts taught their son to cook. No, seriously. Here’s to my girl, who grew up so strong and tall and good, without a mother to guide her.”

After that first waltz, the dance floor was quickly swamped with slightly tight wedding guests, and the danger of being forced into some sort of exhibition waltz with James passed harmlessly by.

Wandering away from the dance floor, Lizzie decided she’d better find Bruno and ask him to get her another glass of wine.

He was sitting at his table chatting with some weather-beaten farmer chap as if he’d known him all his life, showing no signs at all of wondering where his partner was. But his face lit up in a heartening way when he saw her.

“Ah, Lizzie! There you are. I was about to come up and claim you for a dance.”

“You weren’t in too much of a hurry, I see. Never mind. My feet are killing me in these shoes. Why don’t we go and get a drink instead?”

Obligingly, he stood up and led the way toward the bar. Spotting a handy sofa against the wall, Lizzie eased herself carefully onto the cushions, mindful of her unreliable zip, while he ordered the drinks.

When he sank down beside her with the two glasses, she pulled a wry face and said, “You know what? It looks as if I needn’t have brought you after all.”

“Ouch,” he said, taking a sip of his red wine. “You’re so good for my ego. What do you mean?”

“Sonja Jenkins doesn’t seem to be here. I think James came alone, after all.”

Bruno set his wine down on a table. “Um, Lizzie, he didn’t come alone.”

Lizzie’s heart clenched. “What — what do you mean?”

“You know when you went to have your dress fitted? Well I took a stroll to the pub. Everybody was there.”

“Everybody?”

“The wedding crowd. Laurence, of course. Good bloke, that Laurence. A whole mob of people from Laurence’s side. James too. Bit bloody awkward, that. And — and James’s partner was there.”

“ So — who is she?”

Bruno looked a bit shifty now. “I’m sure you’ve never met her,” he said. “She’s American.”

“American?”

“Yeah, from some place called Santa something in — let’s see, Florida?”

Lizzie’s hand tightened on her wine glass and her skin popped up in gooseflesh.

“
Show
me,” she said, and downed her wine in one.

Bruno sighed and heaved himself to his feet. “Come on, then.” As they wove their way among the tables, Lizzie ignored a few yells of her name, her mind focused on one thing only. When they passed an empty table, she picked up a glass of white wine and took a slug. She had a feeling she was going to need medicinal alcohol.

“There,” Bruno said suddenly, jerking his head toward a table on their left.

Several people were seated at the table and, as they watched, James strolled up and took a seat next to one of the women. Lizzie had noticed this woman earlier, when she’d been looking for Sonja Jenkins. You couldn’t miss her, really.

“Not
her
,” Lizzie whispered.

She had red hair. Real red hair, not the dyed variety. In most people, this was a misfortune. If somebody had come up to Lizzie and said, “James is going out with a redhead,” Lizzie would’ve been relieved. Even a little incredulous. Chuh, she’d have thought, couldn’t he do any better than that?

But this woman wore her hair like a crowning glory. It was thick and sleek, positively rippling with good health, good styling, and expensive serums. And it wasn’t that carroty red that gets kids bullied at school. It was a strange, wine-dark color, full of burnished coppery lowlights, like a very old Cabernet Sauvignon held up to candlelight.

And this woman didn’t have the redhead skin tone. Lizzie doubted whether either freckle or blush had ever blemished the luminous perfection of her exquisitely delicate whipped-cream complexion.

She wore black, and she was easily the most beautiful woman Lizzie had ever laid eyes on, outside of a movie screen.

As the woman leaned over James to talk to his neighbor, Lizzie saw that her dress was backless enough to show more than a hint of bottom cleavage. Bottom cleavage, in this case, didn’t look like an embarrasing faux pas. It looked like the height of sophistication, the very pinnacle of classy North American chic, designed to make all the women in Gloucestershire feel hopelessly dowdy and provincial.

Settling back into her chair after making some point, the woman swept her eyes lazily around the room. Just for a moment, her confident, unconcerned gaze caught and held Lizzie’s. Lizzie froze like a deer in the headlamps. The stranger allowed herself a barely perceptible smile and a swift lift of her perfect brows. Then she deliberately turned toward James and placed her hand on the inside of his thigh, quite high up. With her lips less than a quarter of an inch from his ear, she whispered something — and he laughed. As he turned to whisper back, Lizzie could see the light in his eyes. Then the woman lifted her hand to the back of his head and casually ran her long nails through his hair. Then she leaned in and gave him a fleeting kiss.

It wasn’t a smooch. It wasn’t even close. James didn’t go in for public displays of affection. But she’d never seen a gesture that looked more intimate.

“Come on, Lizzie, let’s get out of here,” Bruno said gruffly. “You’ve seen her now. No point loitering.”

Lizzie let him take her by the arm and lead her out of the room. As the swinging doors closed behind them, the insistent beat of the music was abruptly muffled. Bruno kept on walking, towing Lizzie along, until he found a couple of fireside chairs in a little nook of the hotel’s reception area.

Lizzie was shivering, although the evening was still quite warm.

“Should I get my jacket for you?” Bruno said.

“No,” Lizzie said quickly. “Don’t. Don’t leave me. I’ll be fine. I’m not really that cold.”

He took one of her arms and began to rub it briskly. “Would you like a cup of tea? I’m sure I could order one.”

“No. Nothing. I don’t want anything. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

“Tell you — what?”

“Come on, Bruno. You’re not a
complete
idiot. Why didn’t anyone say James was going to be here with — with
that
.” Lizzie threw a hand into the air in a despairing gesture. “And to think that I thought he was bringing ordinary little Sonja
Jenkins
.”

“But Lizzie, did you see her teeth?” Bruno asked.

Lizzie frowned, slightly puzzled. “Well, not really,” she admitted, allowing him to go on rubbing her arms.

“Perfect,” he said. “An absolutely perfect set of teeth, if ever I saw one. Which I have to say, I never did before. So white, they’d blind you if she ever gave a proper smile.”