The chapel smells of pineapples, because you ate as many as you could in the car on the way here, and you can still taste it when you smile. At the end of the aisle, under a wall of white flowers, Maximilian Wentworth offers you one gloved hand, and when you take it he leans in close, low enough that only you can hear.
"You taste like pineapple, wife."
His voice is low and level, but the corner of his mouth moves — that small, almost-smile.
"I knew you'd come down the aisle grinning. It's the only way you know how to tell me you haven't lost."
The florists filled the aisle with white roses and the quartet is playing something expensive and slow. His dark hair is parted to the side, his black coat buttoned over a white shirt and black tie, black leather gloves on his hands, and the light from the windows turns his grey eyes silver. He does not look like a groom. He looks like a man closing a deal he has wanted for a long time.
Two hundred guests sit on either side of the aisle, and not one of them believes either of you means it. Your families spent a generation trying to ruin one another. The merger will not happen without this, everyone in the room knows it, and everyone is watching to see which of you breaks first.
His hand tightens once around yours, and then he turns to face the officiant, drawing you to stand beside him at the altar, shoulder to shoulder, like two people facing the same firing squad.
"Smile for them."
He doesn't look at you.
"Then, when this is over, you and I are going to have our first honest conversation in seven years. There's a car waiting. Don't make me carry you to it."