The Stand-In Bride Refusal novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Refusal
Willa is forced into her runaway stepsister's wedding dress, bargains for her mother's deed, then refuses at the altar; the groom says her name.
The dress zipped up over my hips on the first try.
That was how I knew my stepmother had planned this.
She had taken my measurements in March and told me it was for a uniform.
Now I stood in the bride's room at St. Clement's, in a gown made for my stepsister.
The zipper went all the way to the top.
"Hold still," Constance said.
She pinned a veil into my hair with fingers.
"Delilah left at noon," she said. "Her phone is off. Her car is gone."
"Then call the groom and cancel," I said.
"Three hundred guests are in those pews."
"That is not my problem."
Constance's hand stopped.
"Rowan Verran owns half the hotels in this city," she said.
"His grandmother is in the front row."
"If the bride is missing, this family is finished."
"This family?"
I turned around so she had to look at my face.
"I have cleaned your house for six years, Constance. I have never been part of this family."
She smiled, and that was worse.
"You are twenty-five years old. You have no job and no money. You live in my guest room because I allow it."
"I live in my father's house."
"Your father left that house to me."
She opened her bag and took out a blue folder.
I knew it before she held it up.
It was the deed to my mother's little brick house on Webster Street.
My mother had died in it when I was eight.
Constance had kept the paper in a locked drawer ever since.
"Walk down that aisle, say the words, and sit through dinner," she said. "Tomorrow I will see about the paperwork."
"You will see about it."
"I will see about it."
I looked at the folder, and then I looked at the door.
Through the crack I could see an old woman in a plum dress, alone in the front pew.
Both her hands rested on a cane.
That was the groom's grandmother.
I opened the door and walked straight out to her.
Constance hissed my name behind me.
I did not stop.
"Mrs. Verran," I said. "My name is Willa Larkin. I am the bride's stepsister."
The old woman looked up.
Her eyes were sharp and pale and not surprised at all.
"Larkin," she said. "Margaret's girl."
My throat closed up.
Nobody had said my mother's name to me in years.
"I will stand in for Delilah," I said, loud enough for the first three rows.
"But my stepmother is going to put my mother's deed in my hand first."
"Here, in front of you."
Constance had followed me.
Heads turned all down the aisle.
She went white under her powder.
"Willa, this is not the place."
"You picked the place," I said. "It's a church."
Mrs. Verran lifted her cane an inch off the floor.
"Constance," she said. "Give the girl her paper."
Constance gave it to me.
Her hand shook as she did it, and I took the folder and held it against the lace over my heart.
The organ started.
My stepmother pushed me toward the doors.
I walked.
Three hundred faces turned.
Somebody whispered, "That is not the bride."
Somebody else laughed.
At the far end, under the white roses, stood the groom.
I had seen Rowan Verran exactly four times, always from behind a tray.
He was tall and broad in a black tuxedo, and he had a thin scar through his left eyebrow.
He was not looking at the doors in surprise.
He was looking at me like he had been waiting.
I reached the altar.
The officiant opened his book and said, "Dearly beloved," and I heard nothing after that but my own pulse.
Then he said, "Do you, Delilah Larkin, take this man."
The whole church waited.
I thought of the six years of dishes.
I thought of the locked drawer and the blue folder.
I thought of my sister's name coming out of a stranger's mouth, with my face under the veil.
"No," I said.
The organ stopped halfway through a chord.
"I'm sorry?" the officiant said.
"I'm not Delilah," I said, and my voice rang off the stone.
"I'm not a stand-in either."
"I will not marry anyone under somebody else's name."
Gasps ran down the pews.
Constance made a sound behind me.
I pulled the veil off my head and let it fall.
"I'm leaving," I said to the groom. "I'm sorry about your wedding."
I turned to go.
His hand closed around mine.
It was warm, and it did not hurt, and I could not pull away.
"Don't go," Rowan said quietly.
Then he said the thing that stopped my heart.
"Marry me as yourself, Willa."
He had said Willa.
Nobody had told him my name.
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