"I thought we might read them together," he said. "Now that we are husband and wife you cannot run away in mortification."
"I could still run away in mortification. I would simply have to take you with me."
"A fate I would gladly accept." He settled onto the settee and patted the space beside him. "Come. I want to show you my favorites."
She sat beside him, tucking her legs beneath her, and watched as he untied the ribbon with careful fingers. The papers were worn at the edges, soft from handling. He had read them many times, she realised. Not just once, but over and over.
"This one," he said, pulling a letter from the stack. "This is the one that broke me."
She took it, recognising her own handwriting from years ago. The ink was faded, the paper creased from folding.
I wonder sometimes if you see me at all,she had written.I wonder if, when you look at me, you see only Edward's sister, a child to be tolerated, a nuisance to be endured. But I am more than that. I am a person with thoughts and feelingsand dreams, and the most impossible of those dreams is that someday, somehow, you might look at me and see everything I am. Everything I could be. Everything I want to be, for you.
"You were eighteen when you wrote this," Martin said quietly. “I had tried to suppress my emotions for you
"If I had known…if I had any idea that you felt even a fraction of what I felt…"
"You would have done exactly what you did," Vanessa said gently. "You would have kept your distance, because that is who you are. Honorable to a fault."
"Foolish, you mean."
"That too." She leaned against his shoulder. "But we are here now. That is what matters."
He set the letters aside and pulled her into his arms. She went willingly, curling against him, her head finding its place in the hollow of his shoulder.
"No more letters," he said. "From now on, you tell me everything directly. Every thought, every feeling, every complaint about my insufferable personality."
"That could take considerable time. Your insufferable personality has many facets."
"Then we had better get started." He tilted her chin up, his eyes soft in the firelight. "Tell me something. Something true. Something you would have written in a letter but never said aloud."
She considered. There were so many things, years of unspoken words, unsent confessions, feelings too overwhelming to articulate.
"I used to imagine this," she said finally. "Being your wife. Living in your house. Falling asleep beside you and waking up to your face." She traced the line of his jaw. "I imagined it so often and so vividly that I was afraid the reality could never match the dream."
"And? Does it?"
She smiled. "It is better. The dream did not include your terrible jokes or your habit of reading at breakfast or the way you argue with Edward about cricket. The dream was perfect and distant and untouchable. This is..."
"Messy? Complicated? Full of minor irritations?"
"Real," she said. "This is real. And real is better than any dream."
He kissed her then, soft and slow and thorough, a kiss that spoke of time and patience and the long, unhurried future stretching before them.
"I cherish you," he murmured against her lips. "Have I mentioned that recently?"
"Not in the last five minutes."
"An oversight I shall correct immediately. You are the very reason I draw breath.” Each declaration was punctuated by a kiss
He pulled back, studying her face with an expression of pure contentment. "Are you tired? It has been a very long day."
It had been. The ceremony, the breakfast, the endless receiving line, the farewells, she should be exhausted. And yet...
"Not particularly," she said. "Are you?"
"Not in the slightest." His smile turned wicked. "I believe there was something in your letters about a particular evening you had imagined. After a ball, if I recall correctly. Something involving considerably fewer clothes and considerably more…"
