A year ago, on a sunny September day, Cate had squeezed into her cream-coloured silk and lace wedding dress. It had been too tight, and her maid had wordlessly, swiftly, sewn extenders on the tabs. Now, that same dress gaped on Cate's shrinking figure as she sat in the cart on her way to church under a slatey November sky, with Luke a swathed, sleeping bundle in her arms. Miss Skinner sat with her, wrinkling her nose every time the scent of vegetable scraps wafted up from the floor of the cart.

"Sir William might have sent a coach," Miss Skinner said. "Riding in a cart! Like cabbages!"

The cart thumped over a rut in the road and prevented Cate from replying.

Nothing, however, could stop Miss Skinner from speaking, and she continued:

"I would have walked, you know. It would have suited me better than this. I am quite stout. I can walk a mile or three, even holding the infant. But you can hardly arrive at your own wedding with mud on your hems. What was Sir William thinking?"

Miss Skinner waited a few moments, in case Cate had some response to offer. Cate did not, and so Miss Skinner went on, loudly, over the creaking and bumping of the cart:

"Not that I mean to criticize him, of course, but a woman — Lady Balley — would have thought of the weather and your hems. He must have forgotten to consult her." Miss Skinner looked up. "I do hope we shall not get rained on. The sky is very black."

"I think the weather will hold until we reach the church," Cate said.

"I'm afraid I have not your eternal optimism, Miss Balley." Miss Skinner's mouth twisted into the thin slant that substituted for a smile and she looked pointedly at Luke. "Though if I am to be accused of pessimism, at least it has protected me from the dangers of false hope."

A sick knot of anger curled in Cate's belly. "I made no such accusation, Miss Skinner."

"Have I offended? You sound offended, Miss Balley. Calm yourself. I don't mean to suggest that your father has intended any neglect. Indeed, you should be grateful for the efforts he has made for your restitution. I am quite sure he persuaded Captain Demery to renew his offer. Captain Demery could not have come to it of his own accord. The hurt you did him was far too great."

"Captain Demery was quite clear on his motivations," Cate said. "I do not believe my father had anything to do with it."

Miss Skinner wrinkled her nose. Sometimes — rarely — she could be stunned into silence by a direct contradiction. It never lasted long, however. After a few moments, she started up again.

"If your father has forgotten a coach and your mother was not consulted, Captain Demery might have remembered and made the offer. He saw how poorly we were living when he visited. No, we should have had two carriages to choose from for this journey, and we have only a cart or our own two feet. If I were not certain it is merely oversight, I would feel it quite the insult on your behalf. Think of the people who will see you alight from the cart!"

They were approaching the church now, and the road was empty.

"Then I am lucky that there is no one to see," Cate said. "And look, it has not rained, not at all."

"No? I am sure I felt a drop just now."

If Cate had felt one, she would not have admitted it, but she was sure that Miss Skinner was inventing it. Miss Skinner was in high spirits today, and when she was in high spirits she could be cruel.

The manservant pulled up the horse, and the cart stopped in front of the church. Miss Skinner clambered down first, then Cate handed Luke to Miss Skinner and got down herself. There was a little business to be taken care of in thanking the manservant for driving them, bidding him farewell, and pressing upon him a pen knife for him and a bottle of perfume for his wife. She had wanted to give them something for looking after her for the past year and had scoured her belongings for some suitable trinkets. Money would have been better, but Sir William had settled all her bills directly so that she would never have any.

By the time that was done, Miss Skinner was disappearing into the church vestibule. Cate had to trot after her, holding her skirts up out of the mud, and arrived a little breathless through the church doors. She had not been here since Luke's christening in February. She had not felt welcome, despite the vicar's insistence on Christian charity. Or perhaps because of. Cate did not feel as though she needed charity. Not the moral kind, anyway. And certainly Luke did not. He had not chosen his father to be a liar or his mother to be a fool.

In the front pew sat two figures, recognizable even from behind. Her mother, round and wide, wore a broad-brimmed bonnet dripping with paper flowers, while her father, equally wide but taller and all corners, loomed next to her in black. Cate shivered, and it had nothing to do with the chill of the church. Beyond them stood Demery, talking quietly with the vicar. They spoke of the weather, Cate decided: both Demery and the vicar were the kind of man who would.

There was no one else in the church. Cate had hoped her brothers or sisters might come — but then, Sir William thought she was a dangerous influence upon Madalene and Sophia. He would have forbidden them from coming, perhaps not even told them she was getting married. He might have let her older brother Luke come though. She had always been closer to him than her sisters, who were many years younger. When the baby was born, she had not had to think twice to know who to name him after — the only man who had ever truly been her friend.

Cate caught up to Miss Skinner at the end of the aisle and hovered there, uncertain of what to say. Everybody was looking at her. Then Luke started crying, and the silence was broken. Lady Balley — she never had been Mother, let alone Mama, to Cate — looked at the bundle of cloth that swathed him.

"I suppose I might look at my first grandchild," she said.

Sir William cleared his throat. "Let us not call him that. No bastard has a father, let alone grandparents."

Nevertheless, Lady Balley propelled herself to her feet and waddled imperiously to peer at the bundle in Miss Skinner's arms. She sniffed. "He looks healthy enough. Mark those eyes will be brown before long though. They're already muddy. Stop him crying, will you?"

Miss Skinner shushed Luke ineffectively. His wails echoed around the vaults of the church.

"Let me hold him," Cate said. "I can hold him while I am wed, can't I?" She looked at the vicar. "That's not forbidden, is it?"

"There is no reason you cannot," the vicar said. "It is all the same to God, I believe."

Cate took Luke into her arms. He settled a little, grizzling against her chest. Perhaps he was hungry, but that would have to wait. She felt better, holding him. It made the weight of Demery's impassive gaze more bearable somehow. Today, in respect to the occasion, he wore an embroidered ivory waistcoat and an Esterhazy-grey morning coat. She was not used to him wearing anything but black. He looked somehow even more sombre in pale clothes. He had not spoken since she had come within earshot.

"Let's get on with it then," Sir William barked. "We're late enough already."

The vicar fumbled for his pocket watch and peered longsightedly at it. "We are to time, Sir William."

"We are a year behind! Or do you take the babe to be a premonition?"

The vicar coloured and pushed his spectacles higher on his long nose. "Yes, yes, of course." He coughed to clear his throat. "If you will take your positions, ladies and gentlemen, standing, please. To my right, Miss Balley, next to your bridegroom." The vicar cleared his throat again. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today..."

The suddenness of the ceremony's beginning startled Cate. She stumbled her way through the vows and, when the time came for the ring, shifted her hold on Luke just enough that Demery could slide it over her finger. It was a thin, rather dingy gold band, with the speck of a jewel glinting within it. Cate felt ashamed immediately for caring how meagre it was; it was more than she deserved to receive a ring at all.

After the service, the vicar issued a few brief prayers and a sermon, and then Cate went to sign the parish registry. For that, she had to relinquish Luke to Miss Skinner again. Her arms were tired from his weight and her hand trembled on the pen. It's the last time I'll sign my name Catherine Balley, she thought; I'm Catherine Demery now.

It was an alien, uncomfortable sound. But — she glanced over her shoulder at the dark bulk of her father standing behind her — there was some faint relief in it too: Balley had been a weight on her shoulders for years.

They emerged out into the vestibule where through the open doors the countryside was beaten down under a now steady drum of rain.

"An inauspicious day for a wedding," Lady Balley remarked.

No one had anything to say to that, perhaps because it seemed so inauspicious a marriage.

Sir William's groom had been minding the horse and carriage under the shelter of some oak trees on the other side of the road. As they stood in the church doorway, he nudged his horses forward and around. Catherine's heart leapt when she recognized his familiar, soft features. She darted down the church steps, into the rain, and ran across the road to meet him.

"Luke!"

Luke drew the horses up short and leaned down to meet her hug with one arm. "Cate!"

"They made you drive?"

"I begged them to let me." He wiped rain from his eyebrows and blinked at her. "How are you?"

Cate tried to smile. "Better now I've seen you."

"You're thin." He shook her shoulder. "Eat more! How's baby Luke?"

"Fat." Now, Cate found she could smile. "He's as chubby as anything. I wish—" She looked over her shoulder to see her parents scowling at her from the church vestibule. "I wish they would let you see him. Or me."

Luke shook his head. "I had to finagle to get them to let me drive them here. Bribed Dawson to pretend to sprain his wrist. They won't even let Sophia and Madalene mention your name. Paul wasn't sure you weren't dead and no one had told him."

Cate blinked back tears. "I might as well be, I suppose."

"Don't be silly!" Luke squeezed her shoulder. "Now that you're married, things will— look out! Father's coming!"

Sir William was bearing down on them through the rain, scowling and holding his silk hat over his slender crescent of hair. "Catherine! Luke!"

Cate drew back hastily. "Yes, Father."

"Get in your coach. Over there, go on."

There was a second coach, a very plain, dun-coloured coach, driven by a pair of plain, dun-coloured horses, coming up behind Luke's. Sir William halted it by raising an arm, opened the door, and almost shoved Cate in. She looked back through the window as it moved towards the church. Sir William was talking fiercely to Luke in undertone. No doubt Luke would pay for this later.

The dun-coloured coach drew up in front of the church and Demery came down the steps to open the door for Miss Skinner, who passed Luke to Cate before climbing in herself.

"We should reach Shrewsbury by evening," Demery said. "I will be riding behind."

"Shrewsbury? Are we not going to London?"

"We are going to my home in Wales. Did your father not tell you?"

No one had told Cate anything, except when to be at the church and to have all her things packed beforehand, and that by letter. She had assumed Demery would be taking her to London. That was where she had met him and he had courted her. Where all the friends who no longer spoke to her lived. Where she had met Luke's father. It was an unexpected relief to hear she would not be going to London — not for some time, at any rate.

"He told me nothing. Is there anything else I should know?"

Rain drummed down upon the shoulders of Demery's Esterhazy coat, darkening it to the colour of iron. He shook his head. "I don't think so."

He shut the door, closing her and Miss Skinner in the coach. Cate held out her hands for Luke, but Miss Skinner shook her head.

"You are wet," she said. "You are dripping. You will give him a cold."

Cate shivered in her sodden wedding dress. She had not really noticed the cold and damp until now, too eager to speak with Luke to care for the rain. "Do we have a blanket?"

There was a woollen blanket under the seat. Cate wrapped it gingerly around herself as a puddle started to form at her feet.

"And I must say, it is not very solicitous of Captain Demery to allow you to travel in such a wet dress. We might have stopped off at an inn for something to eat and a change of clothes."

"I am sure we will later. Besides, I do not wish to stop off in the village here. I would much rather put this part of the country behind me."

"Well!" Miss Skinner crossed and uncrossed her ankles in the way that always reminded Cate of a cat crossing and uncrossing its front paws. "I see you will brook no criticism of your new husband! I am sorry to offend!"

"I have taken no offence at all."

"You have not? That is good. I do find it very silly when wives lose their minds once they are married and always take the part of their husband. I never had the blessing of marriage, but for that I have retained my independence of mind and spirit. It would be a shame for you to lose yours, Miss Balley."

"I am not Miss Balley anymore, Miss Skinner."

"You are right, but the change is hard to bear. Balley was a fine name." Miss Skinner frowned. "I will call you Catherine."

Miss Skinner had not called Cate Catherine since she was a girl in the schoolroom. Cate shuddered at the memory but made no protest. She did not wish Miss Skinner to be the first to call her Mrs Demery. It felt like it would bring ill fortune, and Cate had had enough of that already.

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2022-09-20: I enjoyed writing Miss Skinner way too much. She's awful.