Chapter 24: Stay

Percy closed his fingers around the small gold ring.

"Stay," he said.

It cracked on the way out of him.

"Stay with me, Imogen. Please."

"Yes."

He drew a shaking breath.

"That's one," he said. "I promised a hundred."

"You promised to ask a hundred times if I ever wanted to go," Imogen said.

"Yes."

"I don't want to go," Imogen said. "Ask me tomorrow, if you like. But you don't have to keep count."

"I want to."

"Then count."

She slid the plain band onto his finger herself.

It fit, because she had measured him in his sleep.

Edith coughed loudly from her chair.

"If the two of you are quite finished," she said, "I'd like to see you married before I die of old age."

They were married three weeks later, in that same garden, at four in the afternoon.

The old gardener had done the roses, and they had come in white and red along the whole length of the wall.

There were twenty guests, which was all Imogen would allow.

Hattie stood up for her in a green dress and her round glasses, with a ring of daisies in her copper hair.

Dylan stood up for Percy and wept before anyone had said a word.

Edith sat in the front in her wheelchair in her green wool suit, with the silver cane across her knees.

She had told the minister to be brief.

Imogen walked across the lawn alone, because there was nobody to give her away and she had never wanted anyone to.

Percy stood under the arch in a dark suit, and when he saw her his face came apart.

He did not try to hide it from the guests.

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