Rae
Rae Stone surveyed the law office, the same one where Flicka had married a few days before with most of the same characters hanging around. Bookcases filled with matched leather-bound books blocked the walls, and the mahogany desk carved with ornate columns skirted the elegant edge of ostentatious.
She held her chin up, even though she felt entirely outclassed by the lawyers running around, shoving papers at French officials. Flicka’s wedding, having been planned for over a year, had run more smoothly.
Two gold-leafed, white-velvet chairs were set five feet apart in front of the desk, just like at Flicka’s ceremony.
Weddings should not be celebrated sitting in chairs, out of arm’s reach, like they were stuck in the Middle Ages and the wedding was part of a peace treaty where she was being wedded in exchange for half of France and a subsection of Spain.
That royal analogy seemed awfully presumptuous. Rae was a ranching girl. Her bride price, paid to her father rather than dowered from him, would have been a dozen head of cattle and range rights, maybe water rights if she were pretty.
She turned to Wulf, who was discussing something with the Mayor about the stock market. “Excuse me,” she said, not embarrassed about her American-accented French because that was who she was. “Wulf, may I speak to you?”
“Mais oui, I mean, yes.” He excused himself and turned back to her.
Rae sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t want to get married sitting down.”
Wulf raised his eyebrows slightly.
Rae plowed on. “People shouldn’t get married sitting down, like it’s a transaction. We should stand, and hold hands, and face each other.”
Wulf paused, and she could almost see the wheels spinning behind his sapphire eyes, calculating the quantities of propriety and tradition that would be shifted to the negative column.
He straightened and beckoned Dieter over. “We’ll need to move the chairs.”
“Where to?”
“The back of the room.”
The security guys busied themselves with removing the chairs.
Wulf smiled down at her. “Is that better?”
Rae nodded, feeling like she made a fuss, but it was important, darn it.
“I can’t make everything perfect on such short notice,” he said, lowering his voice, “but I will do what I can. In a month or so, at the religious wedding, it will be perfect.”
“Oh, it doesn’t have to be perfect. I’m not picky.”
“I am.”
She smiled up at him, knowing that he had never had an opinion on clothes or fashion or decor in his life. “Okay, then.”
Wulf took her hands, holding them softly. He smiled down at her, his dark blue eyes as gentle as the summer sky. “Shall we begin?”
Oh, Lord, yes. She was so ready to begin her life with him, and no matter what Wulf thought, it would be a long, long life.
Even if he was still hiding something, because there must be a reason for this rushed wedding, something serious, something dire, and it scared her to think of what it might be.