Prim looked away, gnawing at her lip anxiously. She couldn’t believe she’d said that aloud.
“Your loneliness is so obvious to me, Jamie. I think you long for your family.”
James drew Prim into his arms. Lifting her into his lap, he kissed her softly. “Nay, lass, all I long for is you. I left home, not because I felt as if I didn’t belong there, but because I was so bombarded by wedded bliss from all sides I couldn’t bear the envy. I came to America to find my own.”
“Your own what?” Prim asked in confusion.
“Wedded bliss,” he repeated. “Were you not listening?”
“I was. I am.” But she was still too muddled to make heads or tails of it. Was he saying he was looking for a wife all this time? No, she’d never believed that tale. He would have wed long ago.
“I know you want a life of freedom, lass,” he went on. “One where you make your own decisions. Your own choices.”
“What are you getting at, Jamie?” She had to ask because there was no way this was going in the direction it sounded.
“Let me into your life, not to rule it, but to share it. Marry me, Prim. Be my wife.”
But it was going that direction. Stunned, Prim stared at James, wondering if honor compelled him to propose after what they’d shared in his bed.
Or if he’d simply gone off his rocker.
“W-what?” she stuttered.
James picked through the clothes he’d dropped on the floor earlier and came up with a blue box in his hand. He opened it to reveal an enormous oval diamond ring surrounded by amethyst.
“I’m asking you to make a choice. Choose me.”
CHAPTER 30
He fell to the seat, she by his side. There were no more words.
~ Victor Hugofrom Les Misérables
Christmas Day
James took the oblong package Maggie handed him curiously. “Another? You’ve already given me a gift.”
They’d spent the last hour opening the many packages sent from Scotland for them both, as well as those they’d chosen for one another. Maggie gushed over the ermine caplet and muff he’d gotten for her and he was pleased by the new gloves she’d given him.
“I’d finished shopping weeks ago. This is something I decided on more recently to put together for you,” she said. “I thought you might like it.”
Pulling on the string tied into a neat bow, he unwrapped the satin fabric and pulled out the two thick books within. Though bound in red leather with gold foil stamping on the spine, the covers of both were blank. He looked at Maggie curiously.
“I’ve bound the three editions ofThe History of Woman Suffragefor you in one and some of the articles written by Mrs. Anthony and Mrs. Stanton in the other,” she explained, continuing when she read his puzzlement, “Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony are the former and current presidents of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. I thought you might enjoy finding out exactly what Mrs. Eames is fighting for.”
James nodded, flipping through the first few pages. Several words jumped out at him that he’d heard from Prim’s lips over the past month. Equality. The vote. Though he’d agreed with her in the generalities of her cause, Maggie was right, it would be interesting to get to the foundations of what had put her in the mindset.
“I will enjoy them. Thank you.”
“Have you asked her yet?”
He sighed, scratching his jaw. “I did, as a matter of fact.”
“Really? Oh, how wonderful! Why didn’t you tell me?” Maggie stopped abruptly. “She said yes, didn’t she?”
“No.”
“I can’t believe she’d deny you.”
