I Saw the Ending Before My Wedding novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Wedding of Terms

The wedding is held in the council hall with nobody smiling; Thea tells her to ask about the housekeeper, and Ilse finds her face cut out of a photo on her new pillow.

We were married on Saturday in the council hall, forty minutes after the vault clerk unlocked the doors.

Nobody smiled.

The elders sat in a row with their hands folded.

Two of Matthias's men stood at the back in black coats, and Brigitte Reinholt sat at the front with her pearls and her tea.

She had come to watch me lose.

I wore a gray dress from a shop near the council hall, because my wedding dress was still hanging in a room I would never see again.

Before the ceremony I asked the eldest for ten minutes with Thea.

He sent a council man with me down to the hall cellar, and the man waited at the top of the stairs.

Thea sat on a folding chair under a bare bulb.

Someone had given her a blanket and her own gray maid's dress back.

She looked up when I came in, and I saw that she had not slept.

"You look like her," she said. "I mean you look like you."

"Why did you do it?"

"He said I'd be somebody."

Her voice was flat, and she did not cry.

"You were somebody, Thea. You were in my house for six months. You carried my tea."

"That's what I mean."

She picked at the edge of the blanket.

"Lukas never touched me before this spring," she said. "I thought it was love. I thought he'd keep me."

"He wouldn't have."

"I know that now."

I waited, because she looked like she wanted to say more.

She looked at the stairs, then at the council man's shoes at the top of them.

"Ask your father about the housekeeper," Thea said, very low.

"What about her?"

"Just ask him. Please. Before she gets to him first."

The man at the top of the stairs said my name, and the ten minutes were up.

I did not ask what she meant. I told myself I would, and I climbed the stairs.

Upstairs, the eldest read the treaty clause in his dry, careful voice.

Matthias stood beside me with his hands at his sides.

When it came time for the ring, he turned and held out his palm.

I put my hand in it.

His fingers were warm and dry, with a rough ridge across the knuckles, and he held my hand as though it could break.

The ring was a plain gold band.

He had not asked my size. It fit.

"That's the first thing you've guessed right," I said, very quietly.

"I didn't guess," Matthias said.

He did not say how he knew.

The eldest declared us married.

There was no kiss, because the terms said no hands unless the families were watching, and the families were watching, and he looked at me and waited.

I shook my head.

He nodded and stepped back.

Somebody at the front cleared their throat, and Brigitte put down her cup.

"Such a lovely arrangement," she said.

"It is," Matthias said, "and you're welcome to leave first."

She smiled and did not leave.

The Kell house stood at the end of a dock road, five stories of dark brick with iron shutters.

Matthias's driver took my one bag from the trunk without being asked, and a gray-haired woman in an apron opened the front door and looked me over.

"Mrs. Kell," she said, in a tone that gave me no title at all.

"Ilse," I said.

"The room's at the top of the stairs," she said. "Mr. Kell had the lock put in himself."

I climbed to the third floor with the bag in my hand and Matthias three steps behind me.

At the door he stopped and held out his hand, palm up.

For a second I thought he wanted the key back.

It was only the room key, for him to hand to me.

"It's yours," he said. "I'm on the other side of the house."

"Thank you."

"Good night, Ilse."

It was four in the afternoon.

He went down the stairs, and I stood and listened until I could not hear his shoes.

The room had a narrow bed, a window onto the harbor and a lamp with a green shade.

I set my bag on the chair.

Then I saw the pillow.

A photograph lay on it, face up.

It was the engagement portrait, the one Lukas's mother had ordered and framed for the church.

Ilse Brandauer, in a white collar, smiling for the camera.

Someone had cut my face out with a small, neat blade.

The hole was exactly the size of a woman's face.

I turned the photograph over.

On the back, in a hand I knew, was one line.

Welcome home, my dear.

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