“Mum!” Beatrice was ahead, at the end of one of the front pews. “Nan says we’re up here.”
She took her seat next to her daughter. Beatrice leaned into her side. “It’s very chic, you know, attending a wedding as a single. You shouldn’t feel like a goose about it.”
“I never said I felt like a goose.”
“Possibly you look a tiny bit like you feel like a goose.”
“I’ll try harder to control my expression.”
Across the aisle to her left were Winston and Allie. Allie wore a frothy concoction composed of layer upon layer of blue feathers, indecently low-cut. She’d told Rosemary earlier that it was vintage. Evita had said after Allie walked away that it was worth seven thousand pounds if it was worth a farthing, and she speculated Winston had bought it. Evita couldn’t be convinced of Allie’s healthy financial status. To hear her tell it, American money had a habit of evaporating in a wink.
Rosemary caught Winston’s eye and gave him a nod. He smiled. He appeared entirely satisfied with himself, and with his date, whose feathers brushed against him whenever she moved.
There was a commotion near the front of the church, and Rosemary turned to see Allie’s sister, May, proceeding down the aisle. Ben trailed behind her, his expression stormy.
Rosemary had turned too late to confirm whether it was May who had created the turmoil, or—far more likely—Ben’s short-tempered reaction to whatever he perceived to be a threat to her safety.
May looked painfully beautiful in the way that tall, striking women always were when pregnant.
Ben offered her no fewer than three different snacks in the short period Rosemary spent observing them. May brushed them away, her eyes busy soaking up the windows, no doubt planning how she’d sketch the scene for one of her books. Winston had told Rosemary she’d landed a three-book deal. One of them would be set in the UK, so May was dead determined to do research between Ben-mandated periods of rest.
The chamber group had fallen silent. An officiant stepped into place at the front of the chapel, and the assembly hushed, expectant.
A man sped down the aisle, half hunched over, and caromed into the pew beside Rosemary. His elbow connected to her side, but her gasp was surprise, not pain. “You said you wouldn’t make it!”
Kal smiled. His hair was half flat, half standing on end, as though he’d slept with it mashed against a pillow of rocks. His skin was wind-burned, the bridge of his nose peeling, and he wore stained khaki travel trousers and the zip-up fleece she’d never managed to convince him to throw in a bin. He looked bloody marvelous.
“I didn’t think I would.”
“You smell like a bus.”
“I smell like three buses.” He leaned close and kissed her, and oh, there was her lift. There was her heart. “Also, maybe a little bit like the cigarette”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“that the driver who took me to Dover at four this morning was smoking. Nice hat, by the way.”
The opening strains of the wedding march rang through the chapel. Rosemary touched her head. “Evita insisted I wear it.”
“It gives you that Lady Rosemary of the Pole look.”
She smacked his arm. Primarily as an excuse to touch him. “Lower your voice.”
Kal leaned in close and licked her neck. Her hand found his thigh, and his fingers wrapped around her forearm. She let out an eep that caught the attention of several people in the nearby pews, and she had to sit still and pretend to be good while Kal peeled back the sleeve of her dress and said, “Damn, woman. What’s this?”
“Beatrice and I got matching tattoos.”
“How far up does it go?”
“All the way to the elbow.” There were stylized flowers and thorns, and at the crease of her arm, parallel to the largest veins, she’d had them do Kal’s name.
They’d spent so many nights apart. They’d had to—Kal needed to be in the Khumbu for part of the Everest season, and Rosemary had to be available in New York for the final stages of editing and proofing her book, not to mention working with the publicist she and Yangchen had hired to finalize the details of the launch.
Still. Rosemary hadn’t anticipated missing him quite so much. Beatrice had manipulated this loneliness into an enormous tattoo.
Thank goodness Rosemary liked it.
“When’d you do it?” Kal asked.
“Two weeks ago, and Beatrice said it wasn’t meant to hurt for very long afterward, but she lied.”
“That’s because you got red,” Beatrice said. “Your skin doesn’t like red. Hi, Kal.”