Bill stopped to rest for a moment as the wet Welsh wind swirled about him. He had not met with very great success. Marc'harit Gurley had been resolute in her refusal to allow Gwen to visit her stepfather. Bill had trod as carefully as possible; obeying every strict rule of behaviour that he could remember from what Anders' great-uncle had instructed him. He had spoken only in French and essentially pled with his mother-in-law to even let Gwen speak via floo to her stepfather.

But Marc'harit Gurley had merely laughed at him. She had told him that she had not even informed her husband that Gwen had eloped until they had returned to Wales and that she had been keeping all of Gwen's owls from him since that time. It had become clear to Bill that Gwen's mother had finally found a way to keep Esmond Gurley entirely to herself and was not willing to share him even with her daughter. George had warned him that it would probably be a mistake to go into Wales, but Bill could not omit trying anything that might make Gwen happier. Unfortunately George had been right.

His only option now was to try to contact Gurley through Andromeda. He would have to approach Kent again, since Kent was on friendly terms with the elder Yaxley twin. Eldred Yaxley was a junior in Gurley's cohort and therefore could check the cohort register to find when Gurley would be putting in his hours in situ. Bill could find out with an inquiry, of course, however any inquiry might get passed on to Gurley, which was not likely to forward Bill's cause. Bill had not wanted to give Eldred Yaxley a chance to repay his brother Wilfred's debt to Charlie yet. He had intended to use the Yaxley brothers' obligation in order to help Ginny when she finished her training. However Ginny was married now and Harry could probably pull in more favours to help her than Bill could.

Bill reached the head of the road and looked round himself. This was the place, he knew it. He could apparate from here safely. In fact, they were supposed to be at his parents' house in almost an hour, so he had better hurry. He had to stop by George's flat first, but since Gwen might have forgot about that evening's dinner he really did need to be quick so he could give Gwen enough time to change.

As Bill barged into the sitting room from the kitchen forty minutes later, dusting off his robes from the fireplace, he called out, "Gwen? Where are you? We have to leave soon if we are going to…" Bill stopped as soon as he saw her and hurriedly pulled off his cloak and knelt down next to his wife on the rug. "What is it, Gwen?"

Gwen, who was holding in her hands a complicated hat of folded, stiff white lace that Bill recognised as an older style coiffe, said only, "Mammig sent it."

Recognising the Breton word for mother and knowing that Gwen's use of the term implied that she was very upset, Bill asked, "It is a coiffe?"

"Yes, of course. But it was my grandmother's. I was to have worn it for my wedding."

Bill frowned. "I see."

Gwen gestured to a long box with a lid that was partially ajar. "She sent the robes, as well."

Although he knew the answer Bill asked, "Your wedding robe?"

"Yes. My real father's family commissioned it when I was 12." Gwen set the coiffe down on the floor reverently and then pushed open the lid to the box.

Bill saw a heavy black robe that was so covered in gold embroidery that it was probably stiff enough to stand on its own. The wide white lace collar was so heavily starched that it stuck up strangely from the rest of the dress. As Gwen lifted it from the box, Bill could see that the robe was a costume that clearly had incredibly poignant meaning to his wife.

"Just look, Bill. It would have been so beautiful. Have you ever seen anything like it?"

Bill thought privately that he would never have called it beautiful, but the handiwork was exquisite. The robe must have cost over a thousand galleons. "No, I haven't."

"I never thought that I would see it again. They only showed it to me once and it was only half done then. I have so little from my real father's family, but it used to make me happy to think that at least I would have a piece of him with me when I married. I had so many daydreams about how beautiful I would look sitting on the wedding throne."

Bill felt his stomach churning and the blood rushing to his ears as he realised how much Gwen had been longing for what she had missed when they eloped.

"My cousin Isolde used to say that she wouldn't marry any wizard whose Binding spell didn't have at least 10 levels. Most of the older families have ludicrously complex spells you know. I've heard that some take over an hour to complete. My cousin Maëllys's husband wouldn't allow her to take food that he had not prepared for her during their entire wedding trip. They are the only love marriage I ever remember in our family other than Mother and my stepfather and you and me. Most husbands only carry out the feeding tradition during the wedding party, which is eight hours at the most. But Olier still feeds a sweet cake to her on their anniversary and they've been married fifteen years."

Bill watched Gwen as she swayed back and forth, holding the robe up to herself and talking. Although she was speaking to him, he felt as though she didn't completely realise that he was listening. Yet she had classified their marriage as a love marriage. It was the first sure indication that she had ever given him that she saw it that way.

"Mammig sent another trunk full of things, too. It is in the kitchen. I don't know if you will want to keep any of it, but they are some of the things that came from the Bizouarn family when she was married. She has always hated it all and told me that I was supposed to have it when I married."

Bill looked in the direction of the kitchen and then back at Gwen. "Did she send a letter with all of this, Gwen? What was her reason in suddenly giving this to you?"

Gwen eyes seemed to focus suddenly on Bill and she hastily laid the robe in the box and said, "Yes, of course. It is on the desk there."

Bill stood up and reached forward to pull the parchment from the desk. It only took a glance for him to realise that he couldn't read it. "You'll have to tell me what it says."

Gwen's cheeks flushed slightly. "Oh. I had forgotten. She is sending me the dress and the other things since they are not hers to bestow, but are coming to me from my real father's family."

"Is that all?"

Gwen turned away and busied herself with patting down the robe in the box and straightening its folds. After a minute of silence she answered, "No. She asks me once again not to send any more owls to Father, since he doesn't want to hear from me anymore."

Bill uttered a heartfelt curse under his breath against Marc'harit Gurley. "I see."

"I'm sorry that I said all that before. I shouldn't have rambled on about all those things. They were just a silly girl's daydreams. I didn't have any idea then what I was really fantasising about."

Bill knelt down beside Gwen and said gently, "I wish you wouldn't hide away from me, Gwen. I had no idea that you had been missing all of those things. You never talked to me about it."

Gwen closed the box and picked up the coiffe, which she then set on top of the box. As she played with the long streamers, Gwen answered, "There wasn't any point, Bill. I gave up on those traditions once I'd met you, since there was no chance that I could ever be married to you that way."

Bill blinked as he gazed fixedly at his wife, who was obsessively smoothing out the fabric of a streamer. "Is there nothing that we could do now, Gwen?"

"What do you mean? About our wedding?"

"Is there anything that I can do for you that would give some of that back to you?"

Gwen swallowed convulsively. "I don't know, Bill. All those daydreams were looking forward to a future that I will never have. I don't want to have it either. I would have done it all and married Servan de Plugastel and lived in his draughty home on the coast just to please Mammig, but then everything changed."

Bill pulled Gwen's hand away from the coiffe and held it tightly in his lap. "Tell me what changed, please."

Gwen stared at Bill for a moment before she replied, "Well I could have made myself marry to please the family when I didn't actually love anyone else, Bill. But how could I do it when I wanted you?"

Bill closed his eyes and made a superhuman effort to control himself as he asked, "You wanted me because you knew that I was in love with you or because you loved me, Gwen?"

Gwen's hands jerked to her face and she got up on her knees and crawled over closer to Bill. As she spoke she looked up into his face. "Because I love you, Bill. You didn't understand that?"

Bill could only manage a one word reply, "No."

Gwen placed both of her hands in Bill's and leant forward. "Why else would I have done all this, Bill? Of course I love you. But we haven't been happy at all and I haven't had any idea what to do about it."

Bill's mind slogged through his emotions, trying to form a response but unable to process everything that he had heard. "You never told me, Gwen."

Gwen allowed herself to be pulled forward by Bill's left arm into his lap. It was a full minute before Bill asked, "Why did you never tell me, my love?"

Gwen tried to move to a more comfortable position, but had to resign herself to speaking into Bill's shoulder because his hold on her was too firm. "I did not know that I needed to say anything, Bill. It seemed impossible to me that you did not know, since nothing else would have made me do what I have done. Especially the night that I practically begged you to propose to me."

Bill's voice rumbled in Gwen's ear through his chest as he answered, "That is not how I remember that night, Gwen."

"Well I did."

Bill shook his head. "You have to know that I have been looking for any indication from you that you returned my feelings. For all the times that I have told you how I love you, why did you never say anything in return?"

Gwen replied uncertainly, "We don't talk about those things, Bill. We are taught to show our emotions only through our actions. I don't know…I know that you are different from us but I don't know how to say those things to you."

Bill finally released his hold on her and looked down into Gwen's face as she sat up. "I need to hear you tell me what you feel, Gwen. I have been going mad trying to understand you these four months. I never know what you want from me and even though you will go along with anything I want, I am not a fool. I can see when you are unhappy."

Gwen did not respond, but continued to look at him with a hard, intent expression. However, Bill had seen her posture stiffen and so he pulled away from her with a grunt of anger. "Maybe I can't be the wizard you want, Gwen. I don't know what you are looking for from me. I have tried to make you happy, but I can't bear this." Bill turned away and stood up from the floor. He pressed his hands against the mantelpiece and stood looking into the fire as he spoke. "I have to keep proving myself constantly by showing how powerful I can be, but I don't want that. Just because I can get something by force doesn't mean that I should have to do it. Can't you be satisfied with knowing that I could?"

Bill heard Gwen move behind him and felt her hand on his shoulder. Her voice was unusually forceful as she said, "Bill."

He did not turn round, but continued unhappily, "Gwen tell me, is there some one thing that you have been waiting for me to do? Do I have to learn a specific spell or is there some tradition that I have trodden all over with my 'English ignorance'? What is it that I have to do?"

Bill turned round from the fire and saw that Gwen was looking at him in a way that no one had ever done before. Before he could speak, she said in a very shaky voice, "I have seen us falling apart from the beginning, but I didn't know what to do either, Bill. I have been so sure that you were going to end it because I know that I haven't been what you wanted."

Bill placed his hands on her hips and replied tightly, "I don't want to end it, Gwen, I want to fix this."

The next moment, Bill was almost knocked back as Gwen jumped up and threw her arms about his neck and said forcefully, "I want that, too, Bill." Staring down at his wife, who was gazing up at him with unexpected intensity, Bill realised that she meant it.