Alistair sighed and rested a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Ordinarily you might be right in this. Alas, this has become personal for me, and I feel it is my duty to help.”
“Personal?” He snapped his head up. “What does that mean?”
Alistair chuckled. “I came to see you for two reasons today, Vicar Norleigh. One was to offer you help, as I have done. The second is to ask for your blessing, that which I hope you are willing to give.”
“My blessing?”
“Yes…” Alistair smiled. “I wish to marry your daughter, and I have come here to ask for your permission to do so, as is right.”
Vicar Norleigh looked as if he had seen a ghost. “You… Yvette… you wish to marry her?”
“I do.”
“I do not…” He gave his head a shake. “How much of that whiskey did I drink?”
“Too much, but that is irrelevant. The simple fact is that I love your daughter, Vicar Norleigh, as she loves me. And we intended to wed so the entire world will know it.”
“But you are… she is…”
“Our status is irrelevant,” Alistair spoke over him. “Our love for one another is what matters. Now, do you give us your blessing?”
Vicar Norleigh blinked his eyes; they were bloodshot and watery. He looked at Alistair as if the man was speaking gibberish, no doubt certain this was some sort of joke. But Alistair held the man’s stare, determined for him to know the truth of it.
And finally, after much silence, Vicar Norleigh smiled. It was a funny thing, that smile, the way it seemed to fight back the drunken stupor of the man, almost sobering him up, such was its power.
“Yvette…” He laughed. “I cannot believe it.”
“Nor can I.”
“Of course I do.” Vicar Norleigh leapt from the chair, nearly fell, and Alistair had to take his shoulders to keep him from doing so. “Of course I give you my blessing.”
“And you will marry us,” Alistair said. “Yvette was rather insistent.”
That was when Vicar Norleigh started to cry. He wept openly and freely, allowing the tears to fall down his cheeks. Alistair pulled the man into a hug, and Vicar Norleigh blubbered all over his chest, wetting his shirt, making such horrendous noises that Alistair wondered what the footman thought to hear them.
“Come on…” Alistair kept an arm around the man’s shoulder as he led him from the office. “Let us get your things and take you out of here.”
“My daughter… a duchess…” He laughed again. “I cannot believe it.”
“You'd best start,” Alistair said. “Because it is happening.”
It was a simple thing for Vicar Norleigh to collect his few belongings after that, at which point Alistair led the man back to the carriage. There, they climbed inside, the doors closed behind them, and they started their journey back to the manor.
Vicar Norleigh was still drunk, but he was sobering quickly. And as he looked out the window, watching the fields pass him by, he wore a happy smile that spoke of his happiness and how he looked forward to what was to come.
Alistair joined him in this smile. His world was about to change, and he saw only good things in his future. He had a brotherwhom he would help to raise and mold into a better man than he was. He would soon have a wife with whom he would spend the rest of his life. They would start a family together. They would make memories worth cherishing, ones that were better than all those that came before.
Alistair’s life had not been easy. He had many a tragic memory of his childhood that were better off forgotten. But those bad times, every single one, had led him here, and if that was the price he needed to pay for his own happily ever after, then he was glad to have paid it.
It is a small price to pay for what awaits me. And I would pay it again, one hundred times over, without blinking. For Hugh, for Yvette… for our future together.
EPILOGUE
“And in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I now pronounce you man and wife.” Alistair’s father spoke those final words, and when he did, the entire parish erupted with applause and cheering so loud it seemed to rattle the walls and lift the roof.
Yvette barely heard any of it.
Her attention was focused solely on Alistair, as his was on her. They stood facing one another, holding hands, gazing into the other’s eyes as if nothing else in the world existed save for the two of them.
