Sinning with My Fiancé's Twin Brother novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: The Wedding

The old priest read our banns the next morning at the nine o'clock Mass.

He read them so loud the back pews heard every syllable.

"Laurent Devereux, elder son of the late Devereux of Belle Rive, and Varina Lacombe, of this parish."

Elder.

He leaned on the word.

Laurent sat beside me in the Lacombe pew and looked straight ahead, and his ears went red.

Three Sundays of banns.

That brought us to the last day before Lent.

"Mardi Gras," Aurore said at supper, counting on her fingers. "You'll get married on Mardi Gras."

"I'll step on her," Laurent said.

"You'd better," I said. "It's tradition."

I didn't wear Odile's ivory satin.

The dressmaker came out to the house with her pins in her mouth.

She took my good blue silk out of the cedar chest, the one I'd worn to Mardi Gras the year I was twenty-one.

She let out the bodice half an inch, because I'd been eating Aurore's cooking.

She trimmed the neck with lace from her own wedding dress.

She wouldn't take a cent.

"I got my four hundred dollars back," she said, "and a hundred over. Hold still."

On the ninth of March I stood in blue at Odile's white marble altar rail in St. Martin de Tours.

Aurore stood beside me in her best calico, with her braid pinned up for once.

Laurent stood across from me in his father's coat.

His beard was trimmed.

His hands were steady.

Mine weren't.

The church was full to the doors again, the way it had been the Sunday he said he'd ask me in front of everyone.

The nine women sat together in the third pew.

Old Madame had a new cane.

When the priest asked if anyone knew a reason, the whole church turned round to look at the Belle Rive pew.

It was empty.

The priest waited a long, deliberate moment.

Then he went on.

Laurent said his vows looking at my face, the way he'd looked at it when I pulled his bones straight.

I said mine without a single shake in my voice.

He put a plain gold band on my finger.

No garnet.

No contract.

No clause nine.

When we came out onto the church steps, the steamboat whistle was blowing at the landing below the square.

The whole wedding party turned to look.

A carriage stood at the end of the wharf, and the Belle Rive trunks were going up the gangplank.

Odile walked up after them in black silk.

She didn't look toward the church.

Halfway up the plank, she passed a man coming down.

He wore a plain brown coat, and he carried his own bag.

Armand.

He stopped on the plank and took off his hat to his aunt.

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