Chapter 10: The Rehearsal

I spent the night in my old room at Holland Park with a chair wedged under the door handle.

At nine the next morning I stood at the altar of a church in Chelsea in a plain grey dress and watched forty people take their places in the pews.

Honoria had hired a florist, a string quartet and a man with a clipboard.

My father sat in the front row with his hands clasped, avoiding my eyes.

Daphne stood to my left in pale blue, glowing, as the maid of honour should.

Crispin stood to my right.

"Smile, darling," he murmured, without moving his lips. "People are watching."

I smiled.

Behind the last pew, by the heavy oak doors, a tall man in a dark coat had taken up position against the wall.

Clement had come.

He didn't look at me, and I didn't look at him, and my whole body knew exactly where he stood.

I kept thinking of the railing and his mouth at my collarbone.

I made myself stop.

"Now, the bride stands here," the vicar said, and moved me half a step to the left, "and the groom here, and we'll practise the vows."

Above the altar, high in the vaulting, a long black bar of lights hung from two cables.

Honoria's photographer had asked for them, so the wedding could be filmed from above.

A man in a catering jacket stood on the organ loft's narrow gallery next to one of the cables, doing nothing.

He had no tray, no plates and no reason to be there.