The touch is electric, grounding, everything. Paul's thumb brushes over my knuckles, and I can feel him trembling too, just a little. This matters. After everything we've survived, this moment of choosing each other freely matters.
"We're gathered here—" The magistrate begins, but I barely hear him. I'm lost in Paul's eyes, in the smile playing at the corners of his mouth, in the knowledge that we made it here despite everything and everyone who tried to stop us.
"I understand you've written your own vows?"
Paul nods, pulls out a piece of paper, then stops. Folds it up. Puts it back in his pocket.
"I had this whole speech prepared." He takes both my hands. "About art and beauty and how you're my masterpiece. But standing here..." His voice catches. "You're not my masterpiece. You're not anyone's creation but your own. You're the woman who refused to say 'I do' to save yourself. Who stood up to your father in front of five hundred witnesses. Who's spent the last year making sure every single stolen treasure gets returned to its rightful owners. You're the bravest person I know, and I'm so damn grateful you choose to be brave with me."
I'm crying now, not caring about ruining my makeup.
"I promise to love you without caging you. To stand beside you, not in front of you. To paint you a thousand times and never quite capture how magnificent you are. To make you coffee every morning, badly, until we're old and gray. To choose you, every day, in freedom and in love."
"Vivianne?" The magistrate prompts gently.
I don't need notes. The words have been living in my chest for months.
"You gave me my first choice." My voice is stronger than I expected. "In that museum, when you could have exposed my family's theft, you chose to protect me instead. Every choicesince then has led us here. I choose you. Not because you saved me, but because you showed me I was worth saving."
I squeeze his hands, feeling the calluses from his brushes, the strength that's held me through nightmares and hearings and the slow work of rebuilding.
"I promise to love you wildly, freely, and completely. To be your partner in crime—literal and metaphorical. To pose for your paintings even when I'm feeling fat and cranky." A breath. "Which might be often in about seven months."
It takes him a second. Then his eyes go wide, dropping to my stomach (still flat, nothing showing yet) and back to my face.
"Really?"
"Really."
He kisses me before the magistrate can pronounce us married, lifting me off my feet, spinning me as our tiny audience erupts in surprised celebration. Merlin laughs—actually laughs.
"I now pronounce you man and wife." The magistrate's voice is dry when Paul finally sets me down.
The reception is at the tiny restaurant in the village where we've become regulars. The owner, Madame Dubois, closed the place just for us, stringing lights on the terrace and hiring a jazz quartet from Montreux. We eat simple, perfect food—nothing with foam or reduction or any of the nonsense from my engagement party. Just Swiss comfort food and good wine (sparkling apple juice for me) and laughter that comes easy and often.
Merlin gives a surprisingly emotional toast, talking about courage and second chances. "To Paul and Vivianne, who proved love wins. To the next generation—" He nods at my still-flat stomach. "—who will know only freedom."
Dr. Phillips pulls me aside during the dancing, pressing an envelope into my hands. "This came to the museum. I thought you should have it."
Inside is Mrs. Holloway's careful handwriting:
My dear girl, they're calling you a hero, you know. The woman who brought down an empire of thieves. Your father rages about it from his cell, but the staff smile. We always knew you were stronger than he understood. I wanted you to know—your grandmother would be so proud. She told me once that she'd made all the wrong choices for all the wrong reasons. You've made all the right choices for the right reasons. Be happy, dear one. Be free. With love, Mrs. H
P.S. - I've ensured your mother's jewelry box finds its way to you. Every girl should have something from her mother on her wedding day.
I'm crying again, but it's the good kind. The healing kind.
Paul finds me on the terrace and pulls me into a dance, even though I'm hiccupping with tears. "Happy?" The same question he's been asking all year, tracking my recovery like a chart.
"Yes." I mean it completely. "Scared about the baby. Worried I'll be a terrible mother. Terrified I'll turn into my father somehow. But happy. So happy it feels like flying."
"You'll be an amazing mother." He says it with such certainty that I almost believe him. "You know what not to do. That's half the battle."
"What if?—"
"No what-ifs tonight. Tonight, we're married. Tomorrow, your position at the Sorbonne becomes official. Next month, my exhibition opens. The month after that, another Nazi bunker gets emptied, and the gold is returned. Life is good, Vivianne. We made it good."
He's right. The trials are over—Father got forty years, Prescott fifteen. The Sentinel organization has been dismantled, its assets seized and redistributed. Sixty-three families have been reunited with fortunes they thought were lost forever. Museums worldwide are rebuilding collections.
