Eight days until the big day
By Friday afternoon, I’d managed to stay pregnant while enduring eleven different appointments and meetings related to the wedding. Some were more enjoyable than others. The worst had been a series of grueling, boring meetings with the wedding planner around the order of events, the key players involved, where any given person would be at any given moment on the wedding day. For example, I’d apparently be arriving by carriage at Westminster Abbey at precisely 12:57 p.m., tiny bridesmaids (or what I, as an American, would call flower girls) in tow. This was exactly two minutes prior to when Caroline would arrive with her father by antique limousine.
In fact, this point, concerning transportation, turned out to be one of the topics of a rather tense conversation that took place at Hannah’s studio during the second-to-last dress fitting.
Hannah, thankfully, was well past pinning and had moved on to tweaking and embellishing. The stylist, sent by Caroline’s team, had me walk around the room in about six different pairs of shoes, all the exact same shade of cream as the dress. Some pointy, some round. Some flat, some stilettos. The miracle was that it had taken two previous meetings to whittle the selection from twenty to six. Surprisingly, it was Frank who provided the voice of reason.
“Might I suggest, miss, shoes without the heel?” he said with protective authority. “I think Her Grace would be more comfortable.” I looked at him and melted a little. I wasn’t sure how old Frank was behind his beard. He could be thirty-five or fifty-five, but that had been one of the sweetest, most paternal signs of affection I’d seen. I smiled at him warmly, hoping I could convey how much it meant that he was looking out for me.
The stylist put the stiletto down and nodded to herself, resigned, and left out the box with the ballet flats. I mouthed the words thank you to Frank.
Next was a makeup consultation—an efficient team of three who spent thirty minutes applying makeup, took about a thousand photos, and then proceeded to wash my face and repeat the process three more times. Apparently there was a concern about how the makeup would photograph in different lights.
“What about jewelry?” I asked at one point, and the wedding planner, again dressed completely in black and with a clipboard permanently attached to her hand, piped up from the chair she’d been sitting in the entire afternoon.
“That will be taken care of Sunday,” she said in a clipped tone.
“Sunday?”
“I believe, Your Grace, that you have three hours booked off for Buckingham Palace on Saturday?”
“I do…” I was failing to realize what this had to do with jewelry.
“The palace will be providing your jewelry, and it will be determined then. Earrings, I believe, perhaps some other adornments.” Okay then. The woman never even looked at me as she checked things off her list.
Then we were back to the discussion about transportation. The black-clad wedding planner was rattling through the itinerary and spoke quickly through the description of me riding to the abbey in a two-hundred-year-old carriage with the bridesmaids. She was about to move on to the issues regarding Caroline’s train, when she was interrupted.
“No.” I looked up at the sound of a male voice to see Dylan walking into the room. I wondered what he was doing there until I looked at the clock and saw it was nearly eight p.m. “I’ve come to take you home, baby.” He said it so softly, I wasn’t sure others could hear, but his intentions were clear. He was holding my hand and elbow, helping me step down from the pedestal where Hannah’s apprentice had been pinning the hem now that shoes had been decided on.
“Your Grace,” said the woman in black, “it is tradition for the bridesmaids, of which Lydia is technically one, to arrive before the bride in the coach.”
“No,” he said with utter finality. “She will ride with me. We’re happy to use a car of your choosing, but she will be with me.”
“Dylan, I’m sure it will be fine. I mean—”
“Lydia, those carriages are not comfortable. They’re bumpy, have no shocks, and you’ll be jostling around in there. It’s fine for a five-year-old, but there is no way in hell I’m allowing my wife who is nine months pregnant to ride in a nineteenth-century death trap.” The truth was, when he put it that way, I didn’t want to ride in one. “What’s Caroline arriving in?” he asked the wedding planner, clearly suspecting the answer.
“A 1968 Daimler limousine, sir.”
“Fantastic. We’ll ride with her.”
“But, sir—”
Dylan just gave the poor woman one of his go-on-I-dare-you looks. I had to swallow my laugh—there really was something funny about watching people fall under his spell.
“Yes, sir,” she said, scribbling on her paper.
Dylan just nodded, as though that little inconvenience had been dealt with, and he looked down at me with adoration, like he’d resisted taking care of me all day, and now it was his turn.
“Hi,” I said, reaching up to kiss him. “Thanks for that.”
“Of course, damsel.” He kissed my nose as the other people in the room began packing up. He looked around at the remnants of a long day—scraps of fabric, shoeboxes, lists on clipboards, empty coffee cups and takeaway containers. “You’ve been busy, baby.”
“Can you take me home?” I leaned my head into his chest, finally allowing myself to be tired.
* * *
It was after midnight before I was turning off my bedside lamp. Eleanor had woken up with a bad dream, and I’d had to cuddle her back to sleep. I looked at the clock and realized I was officially thirty-nine weeks pregnant with our last child. This was it, the last week I’d have one of our children growing inside me. I’d been so busy the past two weeks, operating at light speed, that I was missing it.
I lay next to my husband—that gorgeous, generous, controlling, bossy man I loved. He spread out on our bed, facedown, naked beneath the duvet. His lean back muscles—clear in the moonlight—reminded me of his strength. His shiny, dark hair was just beginning to fall over his ears. His face was by my hip, his arm looped around one of my legs, and his breathing even and steady. I threaded my fingers through his hair and stroked softly. With my other hand I smoothed the skin over my belly.
Dylan moaned slightly and gripped me tighter. And I marveled. A piece of this man was inside me, had become our daughter, who would make our family complete.
I should have been exhausted, but instead, for just a few minutes, I felt positively awake, exuberant, and vigorously alive.