The Reason a Piano Tuner Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Parish Chapel

The parish chapel stood at the end of the lime avenue, small and grey and smelling of damp hymnbooks.

We were married there at eleven on Friday morning, in front of the whole household.

I wore my blue Sunday dress, which had been mended twice and pressed that morning by a housemaid who cried over the iron.

I carried a sprig of the glasshouse vine, with its small hard grapes.

It was the only green thing that had been kind to me in the rain.

My father walked me up the aisle.

He held his sling against his chest and my arm in his good hand, and he hummed under his breath, a quarter-tone flat.

"Papa," I whispered.

"I know. Hush."

"You're flat."

"I'm nervous. It's allowed."

The six young women sat in the second pew with their mothers behind them.

The girl in lavender had her chin up, and she winked at me.

The steward and the housekeeper sat together at the back, and the housekeeper wept openly into a black handkerchief.

In the front pew, on the right, the Dowager Duchess sat upright.

Her stick lay across her knees and her lace cap stood like a flag.

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