Carriage, yes.
Accident, no.
It was the polished ebony cabriolet, with its shining wheels and spotless leather harness and its majestic white Arabian stallion, fit for a hero. But Priscilla’s father was not at the reins.
The woman he loved slid awkwardly from the cab in a flutter of flower petals and expensive silk, to land—stocking-footed?—on the street below.
“Thaddeus Middleton,” she called up, lilting voice strong and pure. “You have something that belongs to me.”
His fingers gripped the iron railing as he stared down at her.
Half her hair was in perfect ringlets. The other half looked as though it had lost a battle with her parrot.
She had never been more beautiful.
Even his neighbors were hanging out windows to watch.
“What do you want?” he shouted. Or meant to shout. He wasn’t certain his voice had carried over the sound of the falling rain and the pounding of his heart.
“You.” Her eyes sparkled as she gazed up at him. “There is no one else I want. You possess my heart.”
“I don’t have much else,” he called back. “This townhouse is rented, and my gig—”
“I’m not in love with a house or a carriage,” she called back. “I’m in love with you. Nothing else matters.”
He tried to contain a dangerous wave of wonderful, breathless hope.
“You say that today,” he pointed out with resignation. “But what about tomorrow, or next year, or the decade after that, when your love turns into resentment for stealing you away from all the things you want more?”
“There is nothing I want more,” she said fiercely, her eyes at once determined and beseeching. “You are my first and only choice. Anything else would be settling for less.”
He wished he could believe that. “What about your father?”
“Papa’s here,” she said with a lift of her shoulder. “He’ll be gone by nightfall. He invited me to join him, but why would I? I’d miss the best part.” Her gaze never strayed from his. “The real adventure is a life here with you.”
“Here?” he said doubtfully, gesturing behind him.
“No matter what the guidebooks say,” she told him, “there is no mystical utopia hiding in the jungle. Any place can be paradise if we make it so. For me, that place is wherever you happen to be.”
“I can’t afford to spend every day of the year traveling,” he reminded her. Like she’d told him from the first: you don’t have what I need. “And I wouldn’t wish to be unmoored forever.”
“That was my misconception,” she admitted. “I thought I had to choose one or the other. I didn’t realize I could have a home and adventure. I didn’t know I could have love… and take it with me.”
More windows flung open as people openly gawked at the street.
His hands gripped the iron railing as hope fluttered within him. “You’d like a home and adventure?”
She turned to the carriage, pulled a book from the squab, and held it high over her head with both hands. “See this?”
He didn’t need to browse the words inside to know it was the half-finished biography he’d started to write about her. Part One, before the intrepid adventuress was famous.
“You were right,” she called up. “The story is only half over. But ‘part two’ isn’t about me. It’s about us. There is no adventure worth having if it doesn’t involve both of us together.”
It was as if she was reading the words right from his heart. There was nothing he wanted more than to spend every moment of forever with her.
Still holding the journal aloft, she raised her voice for all to hear. “Thaddeus Middleton, mon chéri, gardien de mon cœur. Will you join me in a love story we write ourselves?”
Joy flooded him. She meant every word. She loved him. He was the adventure she chose. We. Us. The white stallion had been a sign after all:
