“You were saying?” he said when she did not immediately continue, raising her hands to hold palm-in against his chest. Lydia had to take a step closer to the fence.
“WillI make you happy?” she asked him. And here she went having to blink her eyes again to rid them of tears. “Willwebe happy? Harry, I do not have much experience with happiness.”
“Neither do I,” he said, holding her gaze. “We will seek it and find it together, Lydia. But I think happiness comes in moments, not in great swaths of time. I do not think it is a future thing at all but only a present something we can carry forward with us if we choose. I feel awfully happy at this precise moment because I believe you are saying yes, and I want you to say it more than I can remember wanting anything else in my life. Take a chance with me, Lydia. Trust me. Trust yourself. Trust the future. For though we cannot control it or have any real idea of what lies ahead, we are not entirely helpless. We can promise ourselves and promise each other that we will work on a marriage to each other every day for the rest of our lives. Both of us. As equals.”
She gazed into his eyes—the loveliest eyes she had ever looked into, for there was kindness there as far back as she could see. As far back as the very essence of him, where darkness had led him to humility and empathy and kindness. And not just those things. There was love too. And right now it was focused entirely upon her—his someone special. She saw a little bit of uncertainty too and vulnerability because she had not yet actually spoken the word.
“Yes,” she said, and smiled. “Iamsaying yes.”
And nothing in her whole life, surely, had felt so right.
He gathered her against him, fence notwithstanding, but the brim of her bonnet got in the way as she tried to nestle her head beneath his chin, and they both laughed. And he kissed her.
Right out in the open, she in her front garden, he out on the road, the sun beaming down on them, for the whole world to see if the world chose to come and look.
“Soon,” he said when he drew back his head a few inches.
“Yes.
“Very soon.”
“Yes.”
“Sooner than soon?”
“Absurd.” She laughed, and he kissed her again.
“Lydia,” he said, “I think you had better invite me to tea. We have some plans to make.”
“Well,” she said, “since I seem to have very little reputation left to lose, I think you might as well come in.”
Lady Hill and her son and daughter did not remain long at Hinsford after Harry and Lydia left. They still had visitors at home, awaiting their return. A number of other members of the Westcott family had gathered on the terrace in the meanwhile—some of the cricketers, a couple of the returning riders, those who had been at the summerhouse, and a few from inside. The men among them wandered away soon after the visitors had left.
“So, Mama,” Louise said, “you did not like the notorious Mrs. Tavernor?”
“Mama gave her a stinging setdown earlier, when Harry brought her here to introduce her,” Matilda explained to those who had not been present to hear it.
“And she gave it right back to me,” the dowager countess said. “The brazen minx.”
“You liked her, then, Grandmama?” Jessica asked, smiling.
“She has backbone,” the dowager admitted. “Which fact does not excuse the decision she made after her husband’s death to live alone, without even a servant to add respectability, and then to entertain gentlemen at night.”
“There is no evidence, is there, Grandmama,” Abigail said in her quiet, gentle voice, “that Mrs. Tavernor has ever entertained gentlemen?Harry is not plural.”
“And there is a difference,” Anna added, “betweeneveningandnight, Grandmama, when one is speaking of a gentleman calling upon a lady.”
“Do I have any other granddaughters who wish to offer me some witticism or reproach?” the dowager asked, looking about the group. “Camille?”
“I think you like her, Grandmama,” Camille said. “Because she stood up to you.”
“Hmph,” her grandmother said.
“Harry will be thirty years old before another week has passed, Eugenia,” Mrs. Kingsley said. “My guess is that Mrs. Tavernor is close to him in age. Perhaps what they do in private together—or what they donotdo, for that matter—is their business and not ours. Or that Mrs. Piper’s.”
“Quite right, Mother,” Mary, her daughter-in-law, said.
“She handled herself admirably just a little while ago,” Anna said. And she proceeded to describe what had happened with Jeremy Piper. “Harry was nothing short of magnificent.”
