Give me a sign, God. Am I a fool for going through with this?
The procession music started. Too late.
Max tilted his chin slightly as he watched the matron of honour walk haltingly towards him in some screechingly fashionable apricot material.
There was something about the dogged yet vulnerable expression on the woman’s face that aroused his sympathy because he’d approached the altar with just such a halting advance.
Max frowned. Was there a problem or was his new cousin-in-law-to-be unbearably nervous? Embarrassed didn’t make sense because she looked gorgeous—fertile with her baby bump bulging beneath the shiny fabric—but gorgeous nonetheless.
She paused again and seemed to suck air in through gritted teeth before she raised her chin and resumed her approach.
Max knew Tayla had been reluctant to include her midwife cousin, Georgia, in the wedding party but he’d thought that had been because of Georgia’s unfashionable pregnancy and some vague hint that she was depressed. Maybe there were other reasons.
Before he could ruminate on that thought his non-blushing bride staged her spectacular entry and the gasps from the congregation drew Max’s eyes towards his future wife.
Max could do nothing but stare as feathers rippled and parted in the breeze and held him spellbound.
He blinked in disbelief. Tayla seemed to have been devoured by a white duck.
Framed against the door for an extended moment, his bride’s shapely arms and legs stretched from beneath a strapless froth of feathers that only just covered her thighs at the front and fell in a frothy tail to the floor at the back.
A large apricot bow around her tiny waist matched the rose in her father’s lapel.
Good grief, Max thought, and suppressed a smile. He’d fallen into Swan Lake and he had never felt less like a prince.
His bride floated up beside him, as did one of the feathers that had come unstuck and drifted just ahead of her in an eddy, and went to hand her feathered fan to the matron of honour.
Cousin Georgia was not having a good day as she missed the one cue she’d been assigned. He could see Tayla remained seriously unimpressed with her attendant.
For Georgia Winton, being matron of honour had assumed the nightmare proportions she had hoped it wouldn’t.
The first unexpected labour contraction had hit her as she’d entered the church at the precise moment the whole congregation had noticed her entrance.
The next contraction had grown to such intensity she almost dropped the bouquet as her cousin handed it to her.
When she was able to, Georgia offered an apologetic glance at the bride and groom, which neither acknowledged. Tayla had tossed her head in disgust and Max had continued to stare, bemused, at Tayla’s dress.
Georgia clutched the bouquet like the dead duck it resembled and forced her shoulders to drop as the pain eased away. Distraction, distraction, distraction, she reminded herself. There was plenty of that.
Max Beresford, the groom, was pretty distracting. She’d known of him, but until now not by sight as he’d missed rehearsals because of some crisis at the hospital.
The real Max was tall, broad-shouldered and far too handsome for his own good, but his kind eyes had surprised her with their warmth.
Though younger than she’d expected, he looked every inch the new department head of obstetrics for the North Coast Region of Hospitals—a position he was taking up after Tayla’s and his honeymoon—and she was surprised how much she instinctively felt that Tayla had chosen well.
After her baby was born, Max would apparently find her a midwife’s position in the region, so she really did hope she wouldn’t ruin his wedding.
Max’s brother, Paul, who had played groom each time they’d practised the wedding service, seemed pleasant enough but not a warm person and he stood beside Max now as a paler shade of his brother.
Unfortunately Paul’s eyes were fixed a little too intently on his brother’s wife-to-be.
Meanwhile Tayla, gloriously aware of everyone’s attention, proceeded to lift her eyes theatrically towards the stained-glass window and shimmy her feathers.
Georgia could see no softness or devotion or anything redeeming from her cousin despite the perfect setting and the man beside her. Though she had adamantly said to Georgia that of course she loved Max.
On the groom’s part, even the smile Max gave his fiancée seemed strained and disconnected.
Georgia ached with disappointment. Weddings shouldn’t be like this. What was wrong with every-body? Except for her parents, who had remained blissfully in love until their deaths, she had begun to despair that all marriages were destined to be travesties.
Tayla she could understand. Tayla had always wanted the extravagant white wedding and the rich husband, topped off by the bridal magazine shoot currently in progress.
While her cousin would enjoy being married to a handsome consultant as she flew in to join Max briefly for social occasions in whatever city or town he visited, Tayla didn’t intend that her marriage would markedly change her life.
A tiny worry line drew Max’s thick black brows together even further and Georgia glared at him for not savouring the moment. Didn’t he realise the sacredness of marriage?
What was in it for Max if he didn’t have some affection for his bride?
Romantically, Georgia had hoped this wedding would restore her faith in true love. She’d hoped there would be a incandescent joy between these two as they stood before God and declared their troth.
Then the third contraction gripped her belly and all else was forgotten as the searing pain snatched her breath at the peak. This time the intensity drew a stifled gasp she couldn’t contain. Even the minister looked across at her with raised eyebrows.
It wasn’t fair. Labour was supposed to start with gentle regular contractions, gradually increasing in intensity. She should have been supported by her midwife friends at home, with birdsong playing. Not the Wedding March.
The only thing bird-like about these pains were that they flew straight to a pain score of ten.
When the contraction finally eased she accepted that it was likely the wedding would go on without her.
Georgia chewed her bottom lip and tried to focus on the glorious blue-green stained-glass window until the minister began to speak again. In the lull before the next pain, she could almost believe she could wait at least until the man-and-wife part of the service.
Tayla was going to kill her and when she looked at the bride she wanted to cry. Pregnancy hormones, of course—but, then Tayla had always made her want to cry.
She tried to concentrate on the ballet of the shooting fountains in the artificial lake below—surely the next contraction would be further apart—until a tiny clicking pop sent the trickle of warm fluid down her leg and forced her to call it a day.
‘Excuse
