“I believe you are wrong in that,” he said. “Much as I do not deserve such good fortune, I have children who love me and wish to see me happy. They loved their mother, but they accept the fact that she is gone while I am still here. And what of the Westcotts, Matilda? They seem a decent lot on the whole. Why would you expect them to object to your finding happiness at last?”
“Oh,” she said, “it is not that they do not wish for my happiness. But to them I am just Matilda. Or Aunt Matilda. I am the sister who stayed home to look after my mother while the other two married. They would all …”
“Laugh?” he suggested when she did not immediately complete the thought.
“No.” She was frowning again. “Not that. They would not be so unkind. But they would be … incredulous.”
“And perhaps a little bit happy for you?” he suggested.
“I am not sure,” she said. “They certainly might doubt my judgment. When they first learned that you were Gil’s father they immediately recalled your unsavory reputation.”
“It was a well-deserved notoriety,” he said, “and has been hard to shake, even impossible in some circles. I can understand the concern they will feel for you. However, if you decide to marry me, they will learn that I have changed. Perhaps some of them already know it. They all treated me with warm courtesy when I attended Riverdale’s dinner.”
“But you were not my betrothed then,” she said.
“And I am now?” He smiled at her. “Then I will have some work ahead of me. I will have to persuade them that I love you, that you are all the world to me and always will be. And you, if you decide to marry me, will have to show them that you are notjustsister Matilda or Aunt Matilda butMatildawithout any qualifiers, a person in your own right, free to make your own choices. A person deserving of happiness.If, that is, you love me more than you fear change or the incredulity of your family and society.”
“Oh, Charles.” She sighed.
He released his hold on her hand, set his arm about her shoulders, and drew her head down onto his shoulder.
“Two simple questions,” he said. “First, do you love me?”
“You know I do,” she said. “I always have.”
“Second,” he said, “do youwantto marry me?”
There was a long silence before she answered. “Yes,” she said at last.
“One somewhat more complex question, then,” he said. “Willyou marry me, Matilda?”
“Oh,” she said.
He waited.
“Yes,” she said then, her voice barely audible. “Oh yes, Charles, I will.”
He released the breath he had not realized he was holding. “Then let us rest upon that for tonight,” he said. “We love each other. We are to marry and spend the rest of our lives together. Sometimes life really is that simple.”
“But—” she began.
He set one finger across her lips. “No buts. Not tonight.”
“And tomorrow we awaken from the dream?” she asked against his finger.
“There is a funny thing about tomorrow,” he said. “It never comes. Have you noticed? For when the day that ought to be tomorrow arrives, it is actually today. And today we are in love and planning to marry.”
She gazed at him and then laughed—with that delightful merry sound that could always make his heart turn over. “How absolutely absurd,” she said. “You have set my head in a spin.”
He grinned at her and kissed her again before sitting quietly with her, gazing out into the pink-hued darkness and listening to birdsong and the distant sounds of music and voices and laughter.
“We are going to bemarried?” she asked him after a while.“At last?”
“At long last,” he said softly, his cheek against the top of her head. “And it will be good, Matilda. I promise.”
“Yes.” She smiled, and in the glow of the lamp he watched one tear trickle down her cheek and disappear beneath her chin.
He did not show that he had noticed. He closed his eyes instead and rested a little longer upon his happiness.
