“Our marrying?” he said. “I plan to find a house in the country before my wedding, preferably just south of the Thames or perhaps in Richmond. Somewhere my wife can live in comfort and be happy, with a small park or at least a large garden where the children can play, possibly with neighborhood children, and grow up knowing an abundance of love and with an awareness of the beauties and marvels of nature. Perhaps with dogs and cats and a goat or two.”
“And chickens?” she said.
“And definitely chickens,” he said. “When she was very young, Pippa used to carry ours around as though they were house pets. They all had names.”
She smiled at him.
“I may not be able to go home every night,” he said. “There will be all sorts of business—military business for my other self to deal with—that will keep me late at the Horse Guards. But I will have my home and my wife and children to dream of when I get deeply immersed in work. My little bit of paradise, to which I will escape whenever I can. Is it, though, a one-sided, selfish vision?”
“No,” she said. “For a husband and wife ought to feel free to live their separate lives, rich in satisfaction and meaning, so they can share more than just domestic matters and…oh,romancewhen they are together. I will surely have neighbors and find all sorts of things to keep me busy and useful.”
“Will?”He raised his eyebrows. “Youwillhave neighbors? Notwould?”
She sighed again. “I love you so much,” she said. “I want to be persuaded. But I am trying to be sensible.”
“I am also thirteen years older than you,” he said. “An old man. You must not forget that.”
She laughed. “Nowthatdoes not matter to me, since we seem agreed that we can do nothing about it,” she said. “And you are notold. How absurd.”
“One item to cross off your impossible list?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Win,” he said, sitting up at last and lifting her to the seat of the sofa beside him. “I cannot change who I am or who I have been, and I would not if I could. You say you want to live a useful life. So do I. It is what I have always wanted. Protecting the land and the people who are precious to me has always seemed a worthy goal. And that land and those people do not have to be just the countryside about me and my family and neighbors. All of England and Wales and Scotland and Ireland are my land. I will not change even if I must lose in other areas of my life. But in that other area, my personal life, I have long looked for love and have found it at last. I will cherish that love and nurture it with everything that is my being if I am given the opportunity. My wife and my family, if I am so blessed as to have children, will be the be-all and end-all of my personal life. And frankly, I can see no great divide between the two lives I wish to live. They are not mutually exclusive. They complement each other.”
She tipped her head sideways to lay her cheek against his shoulder again. The moon had dipped just behind the poplar trees on one side of the alley. The tops of the trees were moving in a slightbreeze. Moonlight alternated with shade across her face as she gazed out.
“I do beg your pardon for having once called you cruel,” she said.
She could not have been more wrong.
“Oh no, no,” he said. “I do not believe you ever calledmecruel. Only my mouth.”
She laughed softly. “Then I apologize for that,” she said. “I was wrong.”
“Willyou marry me?” he asked.
“Yes.” She sighed.
“Thank you,” he said. “Shall we return to the house before someone sends out a search party?”
The dancing must have resumed a while ago. Several times she had heard distant music. She got to her feet and folded the blanket, and he laughed.
“I suppose,” he said, “I can never expect you to play the lady and wait to be assisted to your feet, can I? Or to leave housekeeping tasks to servants?”
“What nonsense,” she said. “As though I cannot stand up unassisted. Or fold a blanket instead of letting it fall in a heap on the floor.”
He held her hand and laced their fingers again as they set off in the direction of the house. The full force of what had happened in the last half hour or so hit her. They werebetrothed. She was, after all, going to be married. To someone she loved with all her heart, someone who lovedher. And he wanted children, just as she did. He wanted them to be free and happy and possibly a bit unruly, as her siblings were and as his had been. He wanted them to have pets in abundance. Even chickens.
“Win,” he said. “Will you mind if we do not announce our betrothal tonight or even tomorrow? General Haviland and his wife and daughter will be here until Monday, and I would not want them to feel more uncomfortable than they already do. They came here expecting a different outcome, knowing that others, including my whole family, expected it too. They do not deserve what they might consider a public humiliation.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“We agreed, Grace and I,” he said, “that though we valued each other as friends, we do not love each other as two people planning to wed ought.”
She somehow could not imagine Miss Haviland speaking oflove. But perhaps that was uncharitable of her.
“She lost two fiancés within a few years of each other when she was very young,” he said. “Both were officers who died in battle. She loved each of them in turn very dearly and has spent the intervening years mourning for them, whether it has been conscious or not. She has tried to eliminate deep sentiment from her life for fear of being cruelly hurt again. But I believe her experience here has helped her, and her ability to admit she did not want to marry me has somehow opened her to want to love again.”
