“What do you mean?”
“These past weeks, with Mary Crawford...the illusion of something akin to love. She’s a lovely woman, but my pretense was almost constant as I tried to keep up with her social needs.”
Rain began to gently fall.
“Keep rolling,” Keely called out.
“One day, Edmund, you will find the woman who brings out the best in you.”
He smiled faintly. “I think I’ve already found her.” He tightened his hold of my hands as his eyes locked onto mine. “I’ve found her,” he whispered again as he brought his forehead to mine. “Darling.”
My heart pounded and I was no longer acting. The scene played too close to home, and the emotions were real and raw. How would I get through the scene without collapsing?
“I’ve found the woman who lets me be myself. You’ve been right there all along, but I was just too blind to see.”
“Edmund,” I muttered.
“I love you, Fanny. I always have.”
He kissed me, his lips so tender and inviting. Oh, my God. I melted into him, far more than Fanny was supposed to. He wrapped me up in his arms, our chests colliding as gentle rain fell on our cheeks and over our kiss.
“Cut!”Keely called. “Beautiful. That’s a wrap.”
Her voice was so far away, and the subsequent movements of the crew seemed at a great distance as well.
“I love you, Darling,” Matthew whispered through the kiss.
“Well,” Keely said. “In case you two are interested, that is a wrap, and we’re off to celebrate.”
We turned to her then and smiled.
“We’ll see you both back at the house.” She got back into the SUV with Abbie while the small crew got into their truck and left us.
Matthew quickly cupped my cheeks and brought my attention back to him, kissing me with such passion.
“I don’t understand,” I finally said when he pulled away from the kiss.
“I think I barely understand it myself.”
“Susie? What about Susie?”
He smiled. “You mean Mary Crawford?”
I looked quizzically at him.
“I think I let myself get caught up in the magic of it all, the romance, the fantasy. Edmund and I became one, just as Susie and Mary became one. Then I saw you with Ricky.” He chuckled. “That kind of threw me for a loop. I didn’t really know how I felt about it. So, I plunged deeper into the fantasy of Susie, or Mary...depending on how you want to look at it.”
“You never said anything.”
“What could I say?”
“What would you have wanted to say?”
He smiled and cast his gaze to the ground for a moment. “That I hated seeing you with him. That he was a scoundrel and didn’t deserve you.”
“And yet you seemed to applaud the possibility of him proposing to me.”
“False bravado,” he said simply. “Fake stoicism. And a lot of confusion, I confess.”
