He smiled as he rested his forehead against mine. His thumb brushed lightly against my cheek, pushing away a drop of rain or maybe a tear. I wasn’t entirely sure.
“Why are you out in the rain?” he asked.
A soft laugh came out of me, but I was also shivering now that I was soaked and not distracted by kissing him. “I couldn’t stare at the wedding decorations anymore.”
His mouth pressed into a line. “Yeah, that makes sense. It’s pretty insane in there.”
“Yes, it really is.” I sighed, toying with the ends of his hair as reality came crashing back in. “Those people have been working so hard and now I have to go tell them?—”
An idea snuck into my head, so sudden and so crazy that I cut myself off. Will pulled back slightly, frowning as he arched a brow at me. “You have to go tell them to take it all down? Miriam told me. I, uh, you should also know that Jesse isn’t coming. Well, I mean, he’s here, in England, but he also decided against going through with it.”
A flicker of relief passed through me. “That’s good. I was worried about how he might feel, but that’s not why I stopped talking.”
“Okay, why then?”
“We don’t need to waste a perfectly good wedding,” I said slowly. “If we’re going to do this, we might as well do it properly. Perhaps I don’t need to tell them to take everything down after all.”
He blinked slowly, like he was doing a double take. “I’m sorry, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you and I could get married on Sunday. We’d have to probably do a new contract and all that, but?—”
This time, I stopped talking because Will was suddenly grinning, reaching into his coat pocket without a word. He produced a small, velvet-covered box and my heart nearly stopped.
“Will, what is that?”
“It’s what I would’ve picked for you if I wasn’t trying to think like my brother.” He lowered himself down on one knee right there under the old gazebo, completely soaked but also entirely serious. “Eliza Roderick, I did this completely wrong the first time, but if you’ll let me, I’d like to do it right.”
A lump the size of the rock of Gibraltar lodged in my throat when he flicked open the box to reveal a much simpler, much smaller ring, but it was so elegant and perfect that my breath stalled in my lungs. Filigree detail wrapped around a larger center stone with two smaller stones beside it, every one of the diamonds tiny in comparison to the one currently on my finger.
“Will you marry me, not because of any contract or our families, but just because you’re the one for me and you always have been?”
A tear slipped free as my head started bobbing up and down of its own accord. “Yes. Yes, Will. Of course.”
Relief crashed over his face as he slid the other ring off my finger, his hands warm despite the rain. “Thank God.”
I laughed through my tears as I watched the ring he’d bought—my ring—slide into its rightful place.
As he rose, he tossed the other straight into the lake, then reached for me, but even as his head descended, I saw the tiny splash out of the corner of my eye. “Was that really necessary?”
“Absolutely,” he said. Then his mouth claimed mine for a kiss that rendered my legs entirely useless.
Long before I was ready, he lifted his head away from mine, grabbing my hand and dragging me and my unsteady legs out into the rain, running at full speed toward the castle. “Come on, fiancée. I’ll race you home.”
CHAPTER 47
WILL
The night before the wedding, I was standing in the castle discussing linen choices with Miriam. This was not how I’d pictured my life going and yet I was as happy as a fucking clam.
“To be clear, I have no strong opinions about napkin folds,” I said as I watched her tick a box on her clipboard.
She didn’t even look up at me. “You will. Trust me, young man. If they’re wrong tomorrow, you’ll notice and you’ll never claim not to have an opinion again.”
Since I couldn’t be sure that she was wrong, I sighed and raked my fingers through my hair, finally deciding to at least try. “Okay, what are my options?”
“A classic fold or something more contemporary.”
“Classic,” I said immediately. “We’ve had enough drama.”
