Chapter 49
Chapter 49:
The wedding dress was made of silk organza, and it moved the way water moves — responding to light, to air, to the smallest shift of the body beneath it. Lara stood on a fitting platform in the bridal studio, surrounded by mirrors that gave her back six versions of herself, each one wearing the same expression of concentrated attention that she wore when she was working and didn’t want to be disturbed.
She was adjusting the skirt. The hemline needed to be three millimeters shorter on the left — she’d noticed it during the previous fitting, and the detail had bothered her the way all asymmetries bothered her: quietly, persistently, until it was fixed. Her fingers worked the fabric, pinning and re-pinning, her head bent, her attention narrowed to the space between the silk and the floor.
Her phone buzzed. Then buzzed again.
“Edmund, can you check that for me p>
She said it without looking up — casually, the way you’d ask someone to pass the salt, with the unselfconscious ease of a woman who had been married for ten days and was already developing the small, automatic intimacies of shared life.
Edmund was standing by the window. He wore a black suit that fit him the way black suits fit men who didn’t think about clothing and yet looked, unfairly and invariably, as though they’d been designed specifically for the fabric: tall, unhurried, with the kind of shoulders that made tailors unnecessary. He’d been watching Lara work — not watching her the way Callum watched, with the calculating attention of a man assessing value, or the way Declan watched, with the restless hunger of a man who wanted to touch — but with a quieter kind of attention. The attention of a man who was content to be in the room.
“Yes,” he said.
He picked up her phone.
Entered the passcode — the initials of her name and her birthdate, which she’d told him on their third day of marriage with the offhand trust of a woman who had nothing to hide — and opened Miriam’s message.
He read it. His expression didn’t change. Or rather: it changed by degrees so small that anyone other than Lara would have missed them.
A fractional narrowing of the eyes.
A slight tightening at the corner of the mouth. The amber going a shade darker, the way honey darkens when you tip the jar away from the light.
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He read the message aloud. His voice was even — controlled — but the control itself was the tell.
“‘Lala, Callum and Declan say they want to attend your wedding. What do you think? Would you let them come p>
He lowered the phone. Looked at Lara in the mirror — not at her directly, but at her reflection, the way you look at a painting to see it from a different angle.
“What do you think?” The faintest edge in his voice. Not anger. Something more interesting than anger: the specific, tender vulnerability of a man who was new to loving someone and had just been reminded that he wasn’t the only one who ever had. “Should they be at our wedding p>
Lara looked up from the hemline. In the mirror, she could see Edmund behind her — his height, his shoulders, the dark suit, the amber eyes that were watching her reflection with an attention that was making her skin warm in a way that had nothing to do with the studio lights.
He stepped forward.
Dismissed the fitting assistant with a smile and a nod — the kind of dismissal that was so polished it didn’t feel like a dismissal at all, just a door gently closing — and took the assistant’s place at the back of the dress. His hands found the fabric of the skirt. Long fingers, precise, unhurried, adjusting the fall of the silk with a care that suggested he understood something about the garment’s architecture, or at least understood that touching it while Lara wore it was an intimacy that the moment permitted.
His figure in the mirror was almost entirely behind hers. Taller by a head.
Broader by the width of both her shoulders. The visual effect was of a man sheltering something — not possessively, not with the caging energy of Callum’s protection or the smothering urgency of Declan’s devotion, but simply. Naturally. The way a wall shelters a garden.
“Edmund… maybe they shouldn’t come p>
Lara’s voice was smaller than she’d intended. She was looking at his expression in the mirror — the serious mouth, the darkened amber — and something about the combination of his nearness and his stillness and the weight of his hands on the silk was making her lose track of the conversation.
Edmund laughed. Low, quiet, a sound that vibrated through his chest and into the space between them. He put one arm around her waist — gently, the way you’d put an arm around something you’d just been given and weren’t quite sure you were allowed to keep — and drew her back against his chest.
“Lala.” His voice was close to her ear. His chin settled on her shoulder, and the weight of it — warm, grounding, real — made something in her ribcage shift. “Trust me. Trust your husband’s ability.
Even if they come, they won’t cause problems at our wedding p>
Lara stared at the mirror. She was supposed to be evaluating the hemline. She was supposed to be thinking about fabric and measurements and the three-millimeter asymmetry that had been bothering her all morning. Instead, she was thinking about the way Edmund’s breath felt against her neck, and the way his arm felt around her waist, and the way his voice — that low, unhurried voice — had said “your husband” with a possessive warmth that was completely different from anything Callum or Declan had ever produced in her.
With Callum and Declan, the physical reactions had been muted.
Familiar. The body’s response to people it had known so long they’d become part of the landscape — loved, but not startling. Not like this. Not this heat climbing her neck, not this acceleration in her chest, not this inability to look at his reflection without wanting to look away.
“Okay…” she heard herself say.
She wasn’t sure what she’d agreed to.
Edmund’s face in the mirror was smiling — a real smile, the kind that reached his eyes and changed the geometry of his whole face — and Lara realized, with a surprise that was halfway to delight, that she had been outmaneuvered. He’d asked a question. He’d gotten the answer he wanted.
And he’d done it by standing close to her and adjusting her dress and letting his voice do things that voices were not supposed to do.
The phone was back in her hands. She didn’t remember it being returned.
Edmund’s fingers were guiding hers — gently, as if teaching a child to write — toward the reply button, and Lara, still flushed, still not entirely in control of her higher cognitive functions, let him.
She typed: “They can come p>
Edmund kissed the top of her head.
A small gesture. Private. The kind of kiss that costs nothing to give and means everything to receive.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
And Lara wasn’t sure if he meant the dress or the answer or her.