Aggie rolled her eyes. She had no idea where her mother had come up with such a silly idea. The idea that Aggie had a soft spot anywhere in her being was preposterous. Well, okay, so she did have one soft spot. But it was very small and well hidden. She only let Jace see it very occasionally. At least that’s what she liked to make herself believe.
Mom took a drag off her cigarette and blew a long stream of smoke from between her lips. “That flight was the longest eleven hours of my life. I’m going to have chain-smoke for days to get caught up on my nicotine.”
“You could have used the flight as an opportunity to quit,” Aggie pointed out. She didn’t like the smell of the smoke, or the nuisance of having a smoker in tow, but mostly she wanted her mother to quit because she worried about her health.
“And you could have used it as an opportunity to learn to speak Mandarin,” Mom countered, taking another drag off her cigarette.
Jace chuckled, which earned him a squeeze around the shoulders from his soon-to-be mother-in-law.
“You are so cute when you laugh,” she said, words that immediately wiped the smile off his face.
They crossed a wide field of grass, found a pathway around the immense castle—which was even more beautiful and romantic than Aggie remembered—and climbed the steps to the building’s main entrance. Mom paused at the bottom of the steps to finish her cigarette near an ashtray. At least she wasn’t crushing her butts into the landscaping. Aggie paused at the top of the stairs and turned to wait for her, but found her lighting up another cigarette as she scrunched out the cherry of the first. She hadn’t been joking about her need to chain-smoke.
“I’ll find you in a minute, don’t worry about me,” Mom said, waving them into the building.
Aggie shrugged and turned to Jace, who was gazing across the lawn toward a garden.
“Jace?”
He didn’t so much as blink.
She waved a hand in front of his face.
“Earth to Jace.”
He took a step toward the garden, and she jerked his arm. “Where are you going? We need to meet with the planner.”
“But she’s waiting…” he said, his voice distant.
“I’m sure she is. We’re already late. Come on.”
She pulled him toward the door. He sucked in a deep breath and rubbed his face.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “You’re so out of it. Jet lag?”
He looked at her as if he hadn’t realized she was standing beside him. “Nothing,” he said and held open the door so she could enter the castle.
“You always act so strange when we’re here,” she said, glancing around the spectacular entry to get her bearings. Now, where was Charity’s office again?
“I feel strange when we’re here. Not bad strange, but strange.”
She saw a familiar corridor and headed for the office. “What do you mean?” she asked, half her attention on him, half on finding their way.
“The way I feel when I get home after being on tour for a couple of months.”
“Tired and horny. Gotcha,” she said with a laugh. They tended to spend several days in bed when he returned from a tour. And usually they spent most of their mattress-time not sleeping.
“Settled,” he murmured.
She was feeling particularly unsettled, truth be told, but she was sure that feeling of nervousness in the pit of her stomach would vanish after the ceremony.
“Tripod!” Eric’s voice echoed through the cavernous room.
If not for the crazy rock-star haircut, Aggie would have thought Eric had walked through a window in time. He was wearing a black coat with long tails over buff-colored trousers. He held a large top hat and cane in one hand, had some travesty of a floppy bow at his throat above a fitted cadet-blue vest, and wore brown calf-hugging boots on his feet. She really did do a double take of the lovely petite woman at his side. She wore a delicate pink gown with a ruffled bottom and ruffled sleeves all trimmed with ribbon and lace. Elbow-length opera gloves completed her look. Well, those and the splotches of crimson highlights in her blond hair.
“Rebekah?” Aggie said. “Where did you get that dress?”
“From our favorite costume shop,” Rebekah said. “We had Malachi hunt down all sorts of costumes for the Halloween ball and ship them here from all over Europe and the United States, so everyone can find something grand to wear. Eric and I are vintage 1820s, but there are gowns dating back as far as fifteen hundred. We have nothing newer than the nineteen thirties and everything you can imagine in between. So it’s not a period ball, exactly, but it’ll be lots of fun.”
“Did you know Rebekah doesn’t have periods? It’s awesome,” Eric said, which earned him an elbow in the ribs from his wife.
“You decided to tell a period joke over a ball joke?” Jace said. “I’m stunned.”
“I’m saving the ball jokes for later,” Eric assured him.
“I thought you’d go for a Halloween theme for the party. Like monsters and zombies and stuff,” Aggie said. When the couple had begged Jace to allow them to throw a Halloween party in lieu of the traditional rehearsal dinner, Aggie had expected it to be more, well… Halloween.
“Well, at first we thought you were getting married in a creepy old castle, but this place is grand,” Rebekah said, twirling slightly as she gazed up at the ceiling high above. “It’s so beautiful and romantic and fabulous. We decided a period ball would be more fun and far more fitting.”