They Gave the Doomed Duke the Wrong Bride novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: The Right Bride

I walked in slowly.

The lamplight moved on the walls, and the names moved with it.

Every man had a line. His name, his company, the place he was born.

"How?" I said.

"The widows gave me their own," Everard said. "The freed men gave me their companies. The wagon master knew every carter. The rest I had." He touched a line by the door. "I had most of them. I said them every night in that shepherd's hut, so I wouldn't lose any."

I found the young rider's brother. Third company. The left flank.

I found the cook's husband, a sergeant at arms.

Near the altar, on the east wall, the plaster was bare. A long white space with no names in it.

"What's that for?"

"The ones nobody's found yet." He stood beside me. "Somebody will come up the road one day and say, my father was at the Pass. Then we'll cut him in."

Under the bare space, on two iron hooks, hung a sword.

Long and plain, with a nick in the guard.

I knew it. I'd said "I will" to it in front of half the court.

"You hung up your sword," I said.

"It had a wife. It didn't deserve her." He put his hand over mine. "Tomorrow she gets the man."

I looked at the four thousand names, and the sword, and him.

I didn't cry. I'd decided not to cry until the wedding.

I cried anyway.

The whole March came.

They packed the chapel to the walls.

When it was full they stood in the yard, and sat on the battlements, and hung out of the tower windows.

The widows had sewn me a gown.

Gray-blue wool, soft as a lamb, cut for me and nobody else. My ankles didn't show.

The cook had been baking for three days.

She'd made a cake as tall as Ned, with honey from Draycott House and the last of the dried apples from Fennick.

"If anyone touches it before the vows," she said, "I'll know."

Ned carried my mother's key.

He'd asked to. I'd tied it on a blue ribbon for him.

He walked up the aisle ahead of me holding it out in both hands.

He'd washed his face without being told.

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