No Angel [antikvár]

CHAPTER ICelia stood at the altar, smiling into the face of her bridegroom and wondered if she was about to test his vow to cherish her in sickness and in health rather sooner than he might have imagined. She really did feel as if she was going to vomit: there and then, in front of the congregation, the vicar, the choir. This was truly the stuff of which nightmares were made. She closed her eyes briefly, took a very deep breath, swallowed; heard dimly through her swimmy clammy nausea the vicar saying, 'I now pronounce you man and wife', and somehow the fact that she had done it, managed this marriage, managed this day, that she was married to Oliver Lytton, whom she loved so much, and that no one could change anything now, made her feel better. She saw Oliver's eyes on her, tender, but slightly anxious, having observed her faintness, and she managed to smile again before sinking gratefully on to her knees for the blessing.Not an ideal condition for a bride to be in, almost three months' pregnant; but then if she hadn't been pregnant, her father would never have allowed her to marry Oliver anyway. It had been a fairly drastic measure; but it had worked. As she had known it would. And it had certainly been fun: she had enjoyed becoming pregnant a lot.The blessing was over now; they were being ushered into the vestry to sign the register. She felt OHver's hand taking hers, and glanced over her shoulder at the group following them. There were her parents, her father fiercely stem, the old hypocrite: she'd grown up seeing pretty housemaid after pretty housemaid banished from the house, her mother, staunchly smiling, Oliver's frail old father, leaning on his cane supported by his sister Margaret, and just behind them, OUver's two brothers, Robert rather stiff and formal and slightly portly. Jack, the youngest, absurdly handsome, with his brilliant blue eyes resdessly exploring the congregation for any pretty faces. Beyond them were the guests, admittedly rather few, just very close friends and family, and the people from the village and the estate, who of course wouldn't have missed her being married for anything. She knew that in some ways her mother minded about that more than about anything else really, that it wasn't a