BRENDAN POWER spon round as the door creaked open and his younger brother Hogarth entered the glacial cold of the vestry of St. John the Baptist Church in the village of Winslough. Beyond him the organist, accompanied by a single, tremulous, and no doubt utterly uninvited voice, was playing “All Ye Who Seek for Sure Relief,” as a follow-up to “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.” Brendan had little doubt that both pieces constituted the organist’s sympathetic but unsolicited comment upon the morning’s proceedings.

“Nothing,” Hogarth said. “Not a ginger. Not a git. And no vicar to be found. Everyone on her side’s in a real twist, Bren. Her mum was moaning about the wedding breakfast being ruined, she was hissing about getting revenge on some ‘rotten sow,’ and her dad’s just left to ‘hunt that little rat down.’ Quite the folks they are, these Townley-Youngs.”

“Maybe you’re off the hook, Bren.” Tyrone — his older brother and best man and, by rights, the only other person who should have been in the vestry aside from the vicar— spoke with guarded hope as Hogarth closed the door behind him.

“No way,” Hogarth said. He reached in the jacket pocket of his hired morning coat that, despite all efforts by the tailor, failed to make his shoulders look like anything other than the sides of Pendle Hill incarnate. He took out a packet of Silk Cuts and lit up, flicking the match onto the cold stone fl oor. “She has him by the curlies, she does, Ty. Make no mistake about it. And let it be a lesson to you. Keep it in your trousers till it’s got a proper home.”

Brendan turned away. They both loved him, they both had their own way of offering consolation. But neither Hogarth’s joking nor Tyrone’s optimism was going to change the reality of the day. Come hell or high water— and between the two it was more likely to be hell — he would be married to Rebecca Townley-Young. He tried not to think about it, which is what he’d been doing since she’d fi rst dropped by his office in Clitheroe with the results of her pregnancy test.