Jasper did know. He felt it coming on him like cold water — the stares, the whispering, the pew of farmers' wives with their hands at their mouths. He had come one hundred and twenty miles on the strength of an unsigned letter and a madman's hope, and he had stood up in a stranger's church and called a stranger's bridegroom a thief and a seducer in front of thirty witnesses, and the man had looked him in the eye and denied it, and he had nothing. Not a paper. Not a witness. Not so much as a description. If Lennard had walked into his house in Grosvenor Square tomorrow and handed him his card, he could not have sworn to him.
*It could be a hoax,* Thrale had said.
"Your Grace." Fothergill had come forward a step, wringing his book. He looked miserable. "I must ask — I must, you understand, in law — is Your Grace able to allege a particular impediment? A prior contract? A degree of kinship? If so, I am bound to delay. But if not—" He swallowed. "If not, I am afraid I am bound to proceed."
Behind Jasper, someone in the pews laughed — a short, nervous bark, quickly smothered.
He thought: *I have done this badly. I have done everything badly, all my life, where she was concerned, and this is only the last of it.*
He thought of Imogen at eighteen, standing in the hall at Kelmscott in her blue riding habit, saying *Jasper, please,* and of what he had said to her in answer. He had never told anyone what he had said to her in answer.
"No," he said. His voice sounded strange to him. "No. I cannot allege anything. I beg your pardon, sir. I beg all of your pardons." He made a small bow — to the clergyman, to the uncle, to the man who called himself Saltash. He found he could not look at the bride. "I was told that the man who took my sister would be here. I was told to ask him. I have asked him, and he says he is not that man, and I have no means of saying otherwise. Proceed, Mr. Fothergill."
He turned to go.
He had taken one step when the bride spoke.
"Lady Imogen Tremayne."
She had not raised her voice, but the church was so silent that it carried to the back pew. Jasper stopped as if a hand had caught his collar.
He turned round.
She had put back her veil. Under it her face was white — not pretty, exactly, but clever and strongly made, with dark straight brows and a wide mouth pressed hard together, as if to keep it from shaking. Her eyes went past her uncle, past her bridegroom, past the clergyman. They went straight to Jasper's, and stayed there.