Marriage Offered, Love Declined novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Courthouse

She marries him at City Hall with his sister as witness, and the kiss the clerk asks for is not the one she planned.

We got married on Friday at nine in the morning, in the marriage bureau at City Hall.

The room smelled like floor cleaner and carnations.

There was a bench, a fake arch, and a clerk with a lanyard who had done this four hundred times that month.

I wore my good navy dress and my red wool coat.

Sebastian wore a charcoal suit and no tie, and he had shaved so carefully that I could see where the razor had stopped.

"You look nice," he said.

"You look like you're about to read me my rights."

"That's the suit."

Cosima was our witness.

She was thirty-one, wore a yellow trench coat and a black bob, and she had cried in the elevator, which she blamed on the elevator.

"Don't look at me," she whispered, and hugged me hard enough to hurt. "I'm a professional. I'm fine."

"You're sobbing."

"It's a fake wedding. I'm allowed to cry at both kinds."

My phone buzzed in my coat pocket.

It was my father, the third time that morning.

I stepped into the hall and answered.

"A courthouse, Livvy?" Joe said, before I could speak. "Your mother had two hundred people at her wedding."

"I know, Dad."

"I'm supposed to hear it from my own daughter on Tuesday night? 'I'm marrying Sebastian Crewe, don't ask'? What do I tell the neighbors?"

"Tell them I'm married."

"To a man I've never met."

"You'll meet him tomorrow. I'll bring him to dinner. I promise."

He was quiet for a long second, and I could hear the television behind him, turned down low.

"Is it the money?" he asked.

My stomach dropped.

"What money?"

"You think I don't know what Brockway wanted? You think I can't count to Friday?"

"Dad."

"Tell me it's not the money, Olivia."

I looked through the narrow window in the door.

Sebastian stood at the front of the room with his hands behind his back.

Cosima was telling the clerk a story with her whole body.

He kept glancing toward the hall.

Not at the door, I realized. At me.

"He's good to me, Dad," I said. "That's the truth. Tomorrow, okay?"

"Saturday. Six o'clock. I'll make the meatloaf."

"He'll love it."

"He'd better."

I hung up and went back in.

The clerk read us the words.

They were short, and they were not about love, and I was grateful for that.

Sebastian said his in a level voice.

I said mine in a voice that came out smaller than I wanted.

He took a plain gold band from his pocket.

He had bought it on Wednesday. Cosima had given him my size.

It slid on my finger and fit exactly, and for some reason that was the thing that made my throat tight.

I put his on him.

His hand turned over under mine, just slightly, and held on.

"By the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," the clerk said, "I now pronounce you married."

Then she looked up from her card and gave us a bored, kind smile.

"You may kiss your bride."

I had planned this part.

I had planned it in the shower, on the bus and over a cold dinner on Wednesday.

A quick press of the mouth, a polite one, the kind you give a great-aunt.

I leaned up.

Sebastian put one hand against my jaw.

He did it carefully, and he gave me every second to do it.

I didn't.

His mouth was warm and sure and not polite at all.

He kissed me slowly, as if he had all morning and intended to use it.

When I made a sound I hadn't known I owned, his hand slid back into my hair.

My fingers closed in the front of his shirt.

I had no memory of putting them there.

Somewhere on my left, Cosima said, "Okay, wow," and the clerk coughed.

When he finally lifted his head, my knees had stopped belonging to me.

His glasses were slightly crooked.

I was breathing.

I leaned in close to his ear, so Cosima wouldn't hear.

"Declined," I whispered.

His breath moved against my temple.

"Noted," he said.

Then, much lower, so only I could hear it:

"You kissed me back."

"I was being thorough."

"Of course you were."

He straightened his glasses.

He offered me his arm, and I took it because the floor seemed to be tilting.

The doors of the marriage bureau opened onto the courtyard, onto cold October sunshine and a hundred pigeons.

I had a husband and a ring.

At 2:00 that afternoon, I had an appointment with Lyle Brockway.

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