“So are mine.” He rose creakily from the chair. Even burlap padding wasn’t enough to make it comfortable for a night’s sleep. “Shall we pace back and forth along the balcony?”
“I have an idea.” She moved behind the chair and began kneading his neck and shoulders. It felt wonderful. More proof of the physical ease between them.
When she was done, he did the same for her, some of the massage moving into areas that made her swat his hand away. “Behave!” she ordered.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly.
When they were feeling more flexible, they walked back and forth on the balcony, holding hands while watching the darkness and rain. He thought about the troops out in the entrenchments on Hampstead Hill, who must be up to their eyeballs in mud. But he hadn’t yet heard anything to suggest that they’d been attacked by British forces.
Eventually the eastern horizon began to lighten, but to their mutual frustration, the sky was still too heavy to see any detail of the fort. Gordon retrieved the spyglass for a closer study, then shook his head. “I can see the flagpole and there is a flag hanging on it, but it’s impossible to see what flag it is.”
They were joined by Josh and Sarah, then Molly and Trey. Sarah fried up some eggs and sandwiched them into the last of the biscuits and served them with hot tea. They ate, watched, and waited, saying very little.
The clouds began to thin and the sky lightened. With striking suddenness, the clouds shifted and sunshine illuminated the star-shaped fort and the flag unfurling over it in the wind. “Look!” Molly breathed. “Just look at that!”
The morning breeze caught the flag and the huge banner rolled out with lazy power. Red, white, and blue, stars and stripes.
Fort McHenry was undefeated.
* * *
Callie gasped. The most beautiful flag she’d ever seen flew over the fort, the stripes and stars clear as the breeze snapped the banner out to its full, magnificent size. “We won,” she breathed. On the horizon she saw masts of British ships. They were sailing away, already disappearing into the morning mist.
As exhilaration blazed through her, she shouted it out. “We won! They’re gone! The little brick Star Fort withstood the greatest navy in the world!”
As Trey whooped, Molly wept, and Sarah and Josh hugged, Callie grabbed Richard and spun him around. Laughing, he caught her close. “They could be planning an attack from a different direction,” he warned, but he was also grinning like a fool.
“They won’t. It’s autumn and they’re going to go off to some nice warm place like Bermuda or Barbados,” she said firmly. “I have one of my feelings, Richard. Remember them? Baltimore issafe.”
“You’re usually rather accurate with your feelings,” he said as he tucked her under his arm and gazed across the harbor at the luxuriantly rippling flag as if he couldn’t get enough of the sight of it.
As she gazed in the same direction, she realized with a shock that it had been years since she’d had one of her feelings of certainty. They’d been common in her youth, but they’d vanished—when?
When she’d married and moved to Jamaica. For fifteen years she had done what was necessary and moved forward one step at a time, but the vivid, rebellious spirit of her youthful self had been buried.
With sharp-edged clarity, she recognized how she had adopted her stepchildren and their grandparents as family not just because they needed her, but because she had desperately needed them.
But now she felt reborn, and she was ready for a new adventure. As more jubilant cries began to be heard from the streets and rooftops around them, she grabbed Richard’s hand and drew him back inside, away from the rising clamor of victory.
Staring into his enigmatic gray eyes, she asked, “Lord George Gordon Richard Augustus Audley, do you still want to marry me?”
He blinked at her use of his full string of names. “Yes.”
“Then do you want to ask me again, or shall I ask you?”
He laughed exuberantly and embraced her with an energy that swept her from her feet as he swung her around in a circle. “Ask me, Catkin! I hadn’t realized that I was dreaming of a day when a beautiful woman would ask me to marry her!”
He set her down, his smile bright enough to illuminate the dawn-lit living area of their attic home. Becoming serious, she caught both his hands and looked up into his dear, handsome face, more familiar than her own ever since they were introduced in the nursery of Rush Hall.
“As you said to me, we’re both damaged in different ways, but we’re better off together than apart. Outside on the balcony I realized that I haven’t had any deep feelings of certainty since I lost you and had to marry against my will. Until today. Iknowthat the British are withdrawing from this battle, and Iknowthat I want to travel on the adventure of a lifetime with you. The same adventure that was cut off once before, but now it’s our time.” She drew a deep breath. “Will you marry me, my Lionheart?”
His expression changed and for the first time she saw vulnerability and need in his eyes. Ever since he’d galloped to her rescue in a ridiculously romantic fashion when Washington burned, he’d been endlessly competent and in control. But this was a glimpse of the deeper man, and it touched her heart.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to give you as much as you deserve, Callie,” he said gravely. “But I swear and vow, I will marry you and give you all that I have.”
Her hands tightened on his. “What more can a woman ask?”
“Well, a roof over her head, and I can give you that,” he said with a grin. “It’s in London, but if you like, we can find a different roof in a different place.”
