Read The Gates of Sleep Online

Authors: Mercedes Lackey

The Gates of Sleep (55 page)

BOOK: The Gates of Sleep
13.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

All in fun, of course, but the workshop was proving to be
very useful in providing some of the poorer children with an opportunity to
learn a skill. That left the Tarrants alone in Blackbird Cottage for the first
time in their lives, a state which seemed to agree perfectly with them. Marina
had never seen them so happy.

Margherita was Marina’s matron-of-honor, and Ellen,
who was now a nurse herself, her chief maid-of-honor, and Sebastian was giving
the bride away. Thomas was standing up for Andrew, who, if Sebastian was to be
believed, was as nervous as a cat and white as a sheet.

She didn’t believe it. After all he’d been
through, what could possibly make him nervous about a little thing like a
wedding?

With Ellen, Margherita, and her society friends hovering
around her like a flock of twittering birds, she took a last, long look in the
mirror, and was pleased with what she saw. If she was no beauty—despite
what Andrew said—she thought she cut a rather
handsome
figure.

And with Lady Elizabeth in charge of the wedding itself,
she’d had only to make easy decisions, and now had nothing to do but
enjoy herself to the uttermost.

Drifting through the open window she heard the sounds of
the string quartet beginning the melody that would end in the processional. It
was time to go.

She gathered up her skirts in both hands and led the way
out to the gardens, trailing brightly gowned girls like streamers behind her.

It was a real pity, she thought, that so few of her guests
could see the
other
guests—fauns peeking out from every possible
vantage, Sylphs hiding in the trees, a trio of Undines sporting in the
fountains, and a veritable bestiary of other creatures of myth and legend
hovering at the edge of the human crowd. She beamed at all of them, and if her
un-magical guests thought that her smile was a bit unfocused, well, that was to
be expected in someone who was only minutes from being married.

The processional began. Andrew was led to his place in
front of Mr. Davies by Uncle Thomas (who was wearing what could only be
described as a smirk) when suddenly, Marina lost her smile, and stared—

For there were
three
figures, not one, on the
little podium where Clifton Davies stood waiting to do his duty.

For one brief moment, the two of those figures who shone
with their own light smiled with delight on their daughter. Holding hands,
Alanna and Hugh Roeswood made a gesture of scattering rice, and tiny sparks of
Earth-magic flitted from their hands to land on the heads or the hearts of each
of the guests in blessing—and two of the largest, flitting like flowers
in the wind, settled softly over Andrew’s heart, and Marina’s.

Then they were gone. But Marina knew what they had left behind
with her.

Love. Love she could accept with a whole and full heart, at
last.

And she stepped forward with the first bars of
processional, and into a life she had not even imagined the day she was taken
from Blackbird Cottage—and this time, it would not be alone.

 

BOOK: The Gates of Sleep
13.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Final Leap by John Bateson
The Hairball of Horror! by Michael Broad
Grilling the Subject by Daryl Wood Gerber
My Favorite Senior Moments by Karen O'Connor
One More Bite by Jennifer Rardin
After I Wake by Emma Griffiths
Secret Shopper by Tanya Taimanglo