“So it is, so it is,” said her friend Mr. Jack, genially. “Now what’s going to make that ’un nervous ain’t the wedding, it’s the night!”

“You’re a card, Jack,” Mall said rather sourly. She preferred to think of the earl—such a handsome brute he was!—as having no problems in that area.

“Well, where’s the bride, then? Maybe she’s piked,” Jack said helpfully.

“Loped off? She never,” Mall replied in disgust. “Who’d leave a bloke like him, an earl an’ all, and even if he’s got a floppy poppy, what’s she care anyway?”

Jack frowned. It offended his sense of propriety to think of a woman who didn’t care about such things.

“Now, Mall,” he started heavily—but just then a shiver ran through the crowd, a chattering wave of voices, as if a flock of starlings suddenly landed on a pasture fence. The bride had arrived.

Charlotte sat absolutely still inside her father’s carriage. She felt giddy; she couldn’t stop smiling to herself. Her mother, on the other hand, had already started to cry, sitting on the opposite seat. But Charlotte didn’t make much of this. Her mother had wept straight through both of her sisters’ weddings. Adelaide gave a loud sob.

“Mama,” Charlotte protested, half laughing. “We’re here. We’re at the church.”

Marcel pinched his wife’s arm lovingly. “Now, you remember what we talked about, Addie,” he said in a low voice. “You can cry all night if you want to, but no crying now.”

Adelaide drew herself together, shuddering a bit. Marcel thought it imperative that she not weep in case it was interpreted as dislike of the match. But who could dislike this match, she thought. Dear Alexander and Charlotte: They were so much in love.

First the duchess emerged from the ducal carriage, looking properly regal. She walked into the church on the arm of her maternal cousin, the Marquess of Dorchester. Then from a following carriage came one of the bride’s sisters and her husband, the Marquess of Blass. And finally the Duke of Calverstill himself stepped down from his carriage and stood by the door.

When Charlotte appeared in the door of the carriage and was tenderly assisted to the street by a footman, there was a moment of pure silence, an odd thing in the midst of London’s noisy, crowded streets. Then the crowd spontaneously howled its approval.