“We would not be standing here as husband and wife if it were not for you.”
Lucy paused mid-step on hearing a woman’s voice.
She had not meant to linger. Indeed, she had every intention of passing straight through the small antechamber, collecting her gloves, and conducting herself with the brisk innocence of someone who most certainly did not listen where she ought not. Yet she paused, knowing that if her aunt caught her eavesdropping, she would get into even more trouble.
“I was certain I should grow old alone,” the woman was saying, her voice warm. “I had resigned myself to it. I told myself it was sensible. Peaceful, even. Then you met with me andremember what you said to me, Madam? You said I was simply mismatched, not unlovable.”
Lucy leaned closer, one hand resting lightly against the wall.
“I said no such thing,” Selina responded.
“You said worse,” the woman replied, laughing through emotion. “You said I was brave for wanting more.”
Her husband cleared his throat. “You told me I had been searching for comfort instead of joy. I did not care for hearing it at the time.”
A pause. The sort that followed truth well delivered.
“You sent us away separately,” the woman continued. “Said we should think on one another for a fortnight and return only if the thought felt inevitable.”
“And it did,” the man said simply. “From the first evening.”
Lucy smiled despite herself.
“You gave us space,” the woman said softly. “You let us choose. When we met again, it felt as though the world had already decided. It felt right.”
Selina murmured something Lucy could not quite hear, but the husband pressed on.
“My wife laughs more than she ever did before. She argues with me. She challenges me. Our house is louder, messier, and infinitely happier.”
The woman laughed outright at that, and there was a short pause that followed.
“You saw us, Madam Mullens,” she said. “Not as we wished to be nor as others had described us, but as we truly were. You placed us in the same room and trusted that we would recognize one another.”
“We came only to say thank you,” the man said, “as people whose lives are better because of you.”
Selina answered modestly, but Lucy barely heard her. The words from the couple settled too deeply, striking something that had lived inside her for a long time. Because this was what Lucy had felt that day at her cousin Cecilia’s wedding long ago, when she had interfered where she ought not to have done. When circumstance, impulse, and a dreadful misjudgment of propriety had conspired to place two people in precisely the wrong position, at precisely the wrong hour. The scandal had been spectacular. Her shame had followed swiftly after.
Yet the outcome...
They had married within the year. Happily. Undeniably. Against all expectations.
Lucy and her cousin had never really spoken of it again. But the truth had refused to stay buried. She had seen it then as clearly as she heard it now in the voices beyond the door. Some people did not need persuasion. They needed proximity. Permission. A moment brave enough to change everything.
Lucy closed her eyes.
She had made up her mind long ago about the shape she wished her future to take. Not the particulars, not the names or faces, but the purpose. She wanted to be useful in this way. To stand at the edge of other people’s lives and recognize the patterns they could not yet see.
To bring order where there was longing. Courage where there was doubt.
The couple’s voices softened as the conversation drew to a close, gratitude tapering into murmured affection. Her aunt, Selina, did not possess magic. What she possessed was discernment, and Lucy had never been more certain of anything in her life than she was of this.
It was a skill she, too, could learn.
Lucy was still standing there when the door opened. It did so without a warning creak, and for a breathless instant, the worldlurched. The voices became bodies, and reality rushed back in with alarming speed.
The couple emerged first, still smiling, still angled toward one another as though the room had not quite released them. Lucy stepped back too quickly, her heel catching on the edge of the rug, shock flashing sharp and unwelcome through her chest.
Selina followed.
