wondrous fair:

when Love is naked, he is fully armed.

Let him love tomorrow who has never

loved,

and let him who has tomorrow love!"

Pervigilium Veneris

– Albius Tibullus

"… is not to be entered into unadvisedly, nor lightly; but reverently, deliberately…" the vicar intoned, his voice ringing in stony, rebuking echoes from the transept of St. George's of the village of Anglesgreen.

Now they bloody tell me, Lt Alan Lewrie thought in anguish!

"… and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God," the vicar continued, casting a chary eye upon the couple before him, which made Alan almost wilt. He directed bis gaze to his right, where Caroline stood flushed and trembling, ready to faint with joy, and the smile she bestowed upon him at that moment was so radiant, so shudderingly glorious, that he found himself quaking as well, not completely in terror of his bachelorhood's demise.

"Into this Holy Union, Alan Lewrie, gentleman, and Caroline Chiswick, spinster, now come to be joined. If any of you assembled may show cause why they may not be lawfully married, speak now; or else forever after hold your peace," the vicar warned, wincing at the words, as if he expected the Hon. Harry Embleton to charge through the doors at the back of the nave on horseback with sword in hand. The crowd… a devilish thin crowd, Alan noted… fairly bristled and stirred, and a sigh or two, a grumbly cough could be heard.

"I require and charge you both, here in the presence of God, that if either of you know any reason why you may not be united in matrimony lawfully, and in accordance with God's Word, you do now confess it," the reverend rushed on in breathy relief.

The tiniest quirk of a smile touched Alan's lips, in spite of his best intentions, as he mulled over his passionate, albeit brief, "marriage" to a Cherokee/Muskogee Indian girl named Soft Rabbit, and wondered if it counted. No, he sighed, no benefit of proper clergy there, he thought; no way out. Damme, and my enthusiasms for quim!