Her hand tightened about his arm.
“And?” she asked.
“He would not answer,” he said, shaking his head. “He would neither deny it nor confirm it. He merely looked at me in that inscrutable, half-smiling, half-mocking way of his and kept calling me hisboy. Why did he come to our wedding, Elizabeth?”
“He is your mother’s friend,” she said.
“Friend,”he said softly.
“Colin,” she said, “does it matter? I mean, does itreallymatter?” It was a foolish question.Of courseit mattered very much to him to know who his father was. “You are who you are. You have grown up to be a man of principle and kindness. You have learned to stand alone yet have not cut yourself off from the dream of family and love. You have set yourself the task of building bridges and mending fences and whatever other analogy you care to cite. And with some success. Ruby and her family will be with us during the summer. So will Blanche and Nelson. And probably your mother. And all my family. All because of you. Start from today and discard what troubles you from the past.”
It was always easier said than done, of course.
He gazed at her. “I would rather start from yesterday,” he said.
“From our wedding?” She smiled at him. “Let us build a happy future, Colin. And let’s do it by living a happy present whenever we possibly can. We are together here in these rooms that feel so much like home because we made them home last night. What more could we ask of the present moment? You are the man I chose, and I believed you when you told me I was the woman you chose. I love you, you know. With all my heart.”
Whynotbe the first to say it? Why not make herself vulnerable by opening her heart to him? She trusted him. She had trusted him with her person, and her heart was part of her person. He would not hurt her.
He moved then to take her in his arms and settle her head on his shoulder. She heard him sigh.
“I can remember telling you at the first ball of the Season we both attended,” he said, “that the only time I had looked across the ballroom and found myself gazing transfixed upon a special someone, she was you. You laughed, believing I was joking. I laughed because I thought it too. Or, rather, I thought the truth inappropriate and therefore made light of it. And so I proceeded to look elsewhere for a bride, and you proceeded to make the way clear for Codaire to offer for you again. But I meant those words, Elizabeth. With all my heart I meant them even as I pretended to myself that I did not.”
“Oh, Colin,” she said, sighing against his neck. “And I knew it too when I saw you in the receiving line. But I refused to recognize it.”
“We almost allowed nine years to come between us,” he said. “When you look at me, Elizabeth, do you see a man nine years younger than yourself?”
She drew back her head and looked up into his face.
“No,” she said, raising a hand to cup his cheek. “I see Colin. The man I love.”
“And I see Elizabeth,” he said. “The woman I adore.”
“But not because I am on a pedestal,” she said.
“What pedestal?” He stared at her blankly until his eyes crinkled at the corners.
He kissed her then, and they clung together as though the world were spinning away from them and they had only each other as an anchor.
“I love you,” he murmured against her lips after a while. “May I alsomakelove to you? Or is that absolutely not allowed during the daytime?”
“Somewhere else in the world it is night,” she told him.
“Ah,” he said. “A good point.”
And then he drew something of a shriek from her as one of his arms came beneath her knees as he stood up with her and carried her to the bedchamber they had used last night.
She was laughing by the time he had maneuvered the door open, stepped inside with her, and shut the door with one booted foot.
•••
They remained in London for four more days before leaving for Roxingley. Colin looked forward to going with eagerness and trepidation. He had not really lived there since the age of eleven and had not been there at all since he was eighteen. There were no doubt all sorts of challenges awaiting them. There was no knowing what changes his mother had made to the house and park during those years the better to accommodate the parties she so often hosted. The letters of complaint he had received from the one neighbor did not reassure him—and that was just the man who had had the courage to write. There were perhaps a dozen more who would have liked to complain.
But he kept in mind Elizabeth’s admonishment to think of the present rather than being bogged down in the past. Their suite at Mivart’s Hotel really did feel like home in an absurd sort of way. But Roxingley wasreallyhome. It was where they would live for most of the rest of their lives. It was where they would bring up any children with whom they were blessed. They would put the imprint of their own personalities upon it, their own hard work and optimism and love and sense of family.
His mother might decide to live there too, of course, and that was a bit of a drag upon the spirits. But she could dominate their lives only if they allowed it. Not doing so was never as simply done as it sounded, not with his mother, but again it was a challenge he was prepared to take on—with Elizabeth by his side. If he did indeed have a dower house built at Roxingley, the problem would be at least partially solved. In the meantime there were little-used apartments in both the east and west wings—at least, they had been little used in his time, and he could not imagine that that had changed. Elizabeth suggested they prepare a large and sumptuous suite of rooms in one of the wings for his mother’s exclusive use.
His wife, he knew, was quietly excited about the move. She would be mistress of her own home again after a number of years of living in her brother’s house in Kent with her mother. And, in Colin’s estimation, she had been made to manage her own home and family. That aura of peace and serenity and competence he had noticed about her from his first acquaintance with her had been shaken in the last while but never shattered. It had returned in the days since their marriage until it enveloped him too and made him more content than he had ever dreamed of being. He would never admit it to her, but he still did place her on some sort of pedestal in his mind.
