Chapter 310: Chapter 312: The Wedding
ARIA’S POV
The wedding planner’s name was Celeste Dubois.
She was fifty one years old, French-trained, impeccably dressed, and had planned weddings for three heads of state, two royal families, and one very famous actress whose name she would never confirm or deny. She had a waiting list of eighteen months and charged accordingly and came with a reputation for being completely unflappable.
She had never met Damien Blackwood before.
Aria almost felt sorry for her.
Almost.
She arrived at the estate on a Thursday morning at ten with two assistants and a presentation and the specific composed energy of a woman who had done this a thousand times and intended to do it a thousand more.
Damien met her in the sitting room.
He had a notepad.
Aria, coming down the stairs, stopped on the landing when she saw the notepad. She had not known about the notepad. She looked at Marcus in the hallway below and Marcus looked back at her with the expression of a man who had known about the notepad and had made a considered decision not to mention it.
She came down the stairs.
She sat on the sofa.
She waited.
Celeste opened her presentation.
It was beautiful. Genuinely, professionally beautiful....three concept directions, each with its own colour palette, floral scheme, venue suggestion, and aesthetic vision. She walked through them with the efficient clarity of someone who had distilled months of expertise into forty five minutes of practical options.
She was twelve minutes in when Damien interrupted.
"The flowers in concept two," he said.
Celeste looked at him. "The garden roses."
"They’re not right."
Celeste’s expression didn’t change. She had been trained on more difficult people than this. "In what sense."
"She doesn’t like garden roses," Damien said. He said it with the complete certainty of a man stating a fact. "She likes the ones that don’t look like they’re trying. The simple ones."
Aria looked at him.
"Peonies," she said.
He pointed at her. "Those."
"Peonies are a spring flower," Celeste said carefully. "Depending on your date...."
"Then we choose a date that works for peonies," Damien said.
Celeste looked at her notepad. She wrote something. Aria suspected it was not about peonies.
"The venue," Celeste continued. "I’ve proposed three options. The first is...."
"The estate," Damien said.
Celeste stopped.
"Here," he said. "The grounds. The east garden." He looked at Aria. "That’s where you want it."
Aria looked at him.
She hadn’t said that. She hadn’t said anything about the venue to him directly. But she thought about the east garden.....the bench, the morning light, the greenhouse visible from the far end....and understood that he’d known without being told.
"Yes," she said.
"The estate," Damien said to Celeste.
Celeste wrote it down with the composure of a woman revising her entire presentation in real time and not showing a single sign of it.
"Wonderful," she said. "Now regarding the colour palette....."
"Not white," Damien said.
"Most brides...."
"She’s not most brides," he said simply.
Aria pressed her lips together.
Mei arrived at eleven.
She came through the sitting room door, took one look at the scene....Celeste and her two assistants on one side, Damien with his notepad on the other, Aria on the sofa watching with the expression of someone at a very interesting sporting event....and sat down beside Aria and said quietly:
"How long has this been going on."
"Forty minutes," Aria said.
"Who’s winning."
"It’s complicated."
Mei looked at Celeste, who was explaining something about table arrangements with the focused diplomacy of a UN negotiator. She looked at Damien, who was writing something in his notepad. She looked at Aria.
"He has a notepad," Mei said.
"I know."
"Did you know about the notepad."
"I did not know about the notepad."
Mei picked up the tea Mrs Abel had left and settled in.
Alexander arrived at half eleven.
Nobody had specifically invited Alexander to the wedding planning meeting. He appeared because Mei was there and he knew Mei was there and he had a meeting nearby that he’d apparently decided was less important than this.
He sat down.
He looked at the presentation.
He looked at Damien’s notepad.
Something moved across his face that was possibly the beginning of approval.
"The east garden," he said.
"Yes," Damien said.
"Good choice." He looked at the presentation. "The floral arrangements on page four are wrong."
Celeste turned to look at him.
"Too structured," Alexander said. "She doesn’t like things that look too arranged." He glanced at Aria. "You had flowers at your apartment once. One type. Just in a glass."
Aria stared at him.
"I visited once," he said. "When you were at the hospital. I noticed."
She continued staring.
"Peonies apparently," Damien said to Alexander.
Alexander nodded. "That works."
Celeste looked between the two men. She looked at her two assistants. She looked at Mei.
Mei gave her a sympathetic expression that said very clearly I understand and I cannot help you.
The breaking point came over the music.
Celeste had suggested three options for the ceremony. A string quartet, a pianist, or a small ensemble. She played brief samples. Professional, beautiful, all of them appropriate.
Damien listened to all three.
"No," he said.
"No to which...."
"All of them." He looked at Aria. "What do you actually want."
She looked at him.
She thought about this. She hadn’t let herself think about it in specifics yet....the wedding had been a concept, a wonderful abstract concept, and she’d been letting it stay abstract because making it specific meant it was real and real things could be gotten wrong.
"Something that doesn’t feel like a wedding," she said.
He looked at her.
"Something that feels like....us," she said. "Like a morning. Like the garden." She paused. "Not a performance."
He turned to Celeste.
"Find us a single musician," he said. "Someone who plays like they’re not performing. Like they’re just...in the space." He paused. "I don’t care what instrument."
Celeste wrote it down.
