After Suffering From 33 Accidents Planned by My Fiancee, I Finally Left novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Miracle Bride

She cancels the wedding on camera at a press breakfast, Crispin turns it into a kneeling plea, and Honoria whispers that they can do a thirty-fourth.

"Don't play it," Clement said the next morning, outside the ballroom doors of the Marchbanks Grand.

I had slept four hours in his spare room, in a jumper of his that came to my knees.

I had woken to a hundred missed calls and Honoria's press release trending on three sites.

"Why not?" I asked.

"One recording, eleven days after a head injury, from a woman on morphine. They'll say it was edited."

"They'll say that anyway."

"Then give them thirty-three reasons to stop saying it."

I looked at him.

He held the door and didn't look back.

The ballroom was full.

Honoria had called it a Breakfast of Gratitude for my recovery, and sixty people had come to be grateful.

There were journalists, society women, two television crews and the board of a children's charity I had sat on for four years.

My father stood by a pillar in his best suit.

He saw me come in on my stick, with the plaster over my left eye, and he looked at the carpet.

Crispin was on the little stage with a microphone.

"And when I thought I'd lost her," he was saying, and his voice broke exactly where it should, "I understood that nothing else matters.

"Not the delays, not the dates.

"Just her."

The room made a soft sound.

Daphne stood at his shoulder in pale pink, dabbing her eyes with a napkin.

She saw me first.

"Thea," she said, and her whole face opened with joy.

Everyone turned.

There was applause, and I walked straight through it up the aisle between the tables.

Crispin held out his arm.

I took the microphone out of his other hand instead.

"Good morning," I said.

My voice came out steadier than I felt.

"I'm Thea Marchbanks, and I'm glad you came, because I'll only say this once.

"There is no wedding.

"I won't be at the church on Saturday or on any other day.

"I'm breaking my engagement to Crispin Ladbrook, today, in front of all of you."

For a moment the room was perfectly silent.

Then a flash went off.

Crispin looked at me with real tenderness, and it was worse than anger would have been.

"Darling," he said, softly, into his own microphone, which I had left on the stand.

"The doctors warned us this might happen."

A murmur went round the tables.

"I'm not confused," I said.

"Of course you aren't." He came down the step and knelt, slowly, on the ballroom carpet in front of sixty people.

He took my free hand.

"Thea, I'll wait. I've waited six years and thirty-three dates.

"I'll wait until you remember who you are."

A woman at the front table pressed a hand to her chest.

A journalist from a newspaper I read every Sunday said, "Miss Marchbanks, is it true you suffered a brain injury?"

"I have a head injury, yes."

"And you're sure about your decision?"

"I am."

"Do you have anything to say about the allegation your fiancé has been planning your accidents?"

I turned.

That hadn't come from me.

I had said nothing like that, and nobody in this room had heard the recording except the people who had stood around my hospital bed.

The journalist had his phone out, and he looked at Daphne, not at me.

"That's what Miss Orme told me you'd say," he explained. "She said the injury has given you a delusion that he wants to hurt you."

"Daphne," I said.

She had both hands over her mouth.

"I'm so sorry, Thea," she whispered, and the tears ran. "I only wanted them to understand. You were saying such frightening things in your sleep."

Not one person in the room doubted her.

I could see it in how they looked at me, kindly and from far away.

Crispin stood up, brushed his knee, and kissed my forehead.

Daphne put her arms around me and hugged me, in front of every camera, with her cheek against mine.

Honoria came up on my other side.

She was smiling at the room.

She wrapped one thin arm around my waist, and she squeezed it, and her lips went close to my ear.

"Thirty-three, darling," she said quietly. "We can do thirty-four."

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