He stepped forward, cupped her face in his hands the way he had in the garden, and kissed her.
It was nothing like in the garden.
The kiss in the garden had been a beginning, tentative and slow, the careful approach of two people who had not yet admitted what they were approaching.
This kiss was different. This was the thing that came after the beginning, after the weeks and the distance and the cost of the distance.
It was just him and her in a courtyard outside an orphanage, with the cold air around them and the document in her hand and all of it, finally and completely and without any reservation, real.
She kissed him back with everything she had not been saying, and he felt it.
I will not lose this again.
When they broke apart, her forehead came to rest against his. They stood there in the cold air, neither of them speaking for a while. The silence was the best kind.
“The baby would need a name,” Cecily said eventually, into the warm space between them.
He laughed. “She does.”
“I have been thinking about it for weeks. When she was with us.”
“Have you?”
“I have a list.”
“Of course you do.”
She pulled back enough to look at him. Her eyes were bright, and he thought that he had never in his life seen anything as arresting as her face in this particular moment.
“Come home,” he coaxed, “and tell me about the list.”
She smiled at him. “Yes.”
CHAPTER 30
“Slower,” Isadora called from the top of the front steps, the moment the carriage had fully stopped. “Letitia, you are going to knock her over.”
“I am not going to knock her over,” Letitia protested, already halfway down. She was not, in fact, going slowly.
Cecily stepped out first.
William, who was stepping out behind her with the baby tucked against his chest and her fist curled against his lapel, had approximately two seconds to clear the way before the impact.
Letitia launched herself at Cecily, sobbing.
Cecily tapped her. “Letty, can’t breathe…”
“Oh! Sorry.” Letitia grinned and loosened her grip. “You came back,” she murmured into her shoulder. “You’re actually back.”
“I said I would.” Cecily pressed her face briefly into Letitia’s hair, which smelled of the rose water she used on Sundays.
“You said you hoped to.” Letitia’s grip was still very tight. “That is not the same thing, and you know it.” She pulled back and looked at Cecily’s face
“I missed you.” Cecily beamed.
“Obviously,” Letitia said. “The house was bleak without you in it. Nobody laughed at breakfast. The heroine in my new book is very peculiar, and I cannot wait to tell you about her.” Letitia stepped back and took a good look at Cecily’s face
“You look better.”
