IRIS WOKE UP to thunder on the morning of her wedding, and by the time her maid arrived with breakfast, London was awash with rain.

She walked to her window and peered out, letting her forehead rest against the cool glass. Her wedding was in three hours. Maybe the weather would clear by then. There was an odd little patch of blue off in the distant sky. It looked lonely. Out of place.

But hopeful.

It didn’t really matter, she supposed. She wasn’t going to get wet. The ceremony was to be held by special license in her family’s drawing room. Her journey to marriage consisted of two corridors and a flight of stairs.

She did hope that the roads would not be washed-out. She and Sir Richard were due to depart for Yorkshire that very afternoon. And while Iris was understandably nervous about leaving her home and all that was familiar to her, she’d heard enough of wedding nights to know that she did not wish to spend hers under her parents’ roof.

Sir Richard did not maintain a home in London, she had discovered, and his rented apartments were not suitable for a new bride. He wanted to take her home, to Maycliffe Park, where she would meet his sisters.

A nervous laugh bubbled through her throat. Sisters. It figured he’d have sisters. If there was one thing in her life that had never been lacking, it was sisters.

A knock on her door jolted her from her thoughts, and after Iris bid her enter, her mother came into the room.

“Did you sleep well?” Mrs. Smythe-Smith asked.

“Not really.”

“I would be surprised if you had. It does not matter how well she knows her groom. A bride is always apprehensive.”

Iris rather thought that it did matter how well a bride knew her groom. Certainly she’d be less nervous—or at least nervous in a different way—if she’d known her intended for more than a fortnight.

But she did not say this to her mother, because she and her mother did not talk about such things. They spoke of minutiae and the events of the day, of music and sometimes of books, and most of all, of her sisters and cousins and all their babies. But they did not speak of feelings. That was not their way.

And yet Iris knew she was loved. Her mother might not be the sort to say the words or visit her room with a cup of tea and a smile, but she loved her children with all the fierceness in her heart. Iris had never doubted that, not for a moment.

Mrs. Smythe-Smith sat on the end of Iris’s bed and motioned for her to come over. “I do wish you had a lady’s maid for your journey,” she said. “It’s not at all how it should be.”