The absolute certainty of his love, the absolute convictionthat he would come to her at once if she needed him, had changed the very way she moved in the world. Every breath seemed richer and deeper and freer, every moment safer and more peaceful, because she was surrounded at all times by the invisible eiderdown of his love.
And the thought of him yearning for her all this time was nearly unbearable.
A little flame of fury at last ignited in her heart every time she looked for a sign and didn’t find one.
Each passing day without a sign fanned it higher.
She had not asked for a thing in her life for eight years. One little sign! One little sign that she should claim her own happiness, even if it looked different from everyone else’s. Was it too much to ask?
Apparently, it was.
And perhaps it meant that she shouldn’t.
Perhaps it was her mother’s way of protecting her. Perhaps there was wisdom in it that she could not currently see.
Perhaps... perhaps it was a decision she would need to make all on her own.
You can decide the point ofyou, he’d said.
And when she bravely tormented herself by imagining life without Gabriel, a life married to some other man, her heart contracted into a tight, hard fist. Protecting itself from the very notion.
She had known the rambling park behind their house in every season, and the sky was blushing with the dawn when she sat at her writing desk and sifted through her stones one more time.
She could have sworn she heard her mother’s voice.
What does your heart tell you, Ginny?
Goose bumps rained over her arms when she realized the truth:
Herownheart felt like a stone without him.
And she knew this was her sign.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I didn’t know when to tell you. Please forgive me if you feel as though I ought to have told you before the weddings. Because Iamtelling you. I’m not asking you.”
She had hastily gathered her worried siblings for a family meeting in the Woodville drawing room, before her sisters could go off on wedding journeys to the Continent.
She told them about Gabriel Marchand.
She told them about St. Giles, and about his son, Michael, and about Lucifer’s Fall. She told them how he had gone out of his way, even risking his life, to help her solve a very serious problem about the estate, and that he had at all times kept her safe. She told them he was funny, kind, wise, admirable, noble, and brave, and that he smelled wonderful.
She left out a good deal, and steadfastly refused to embellish with details, but Felicity and Fiona, eyes wide, mouths agape, hung on her every word as if it was the kind of vivid tale Mrs. Pariseau read aloud in the sitting room.
Instead of “happily ever after,” she concluded by saying, “I love him very much, and I want to marry him.”
“Oh, my good heavens. How romantic! He must be so in love with you,” Fiona breathed.
“Sick with love over her, I should say,” Hogarth confirmed.
Ginny looked at him sharply. But apparently, just like the secret of his disastrous wager, he was going to keep to himself why he believed this about Marchand.
“Ginny,” Felicity said. “Of course you would fall in love with someone like that. Francis is far too ordinary for you. I’ve always thought so.”
Fiona nodded vigorously.
Ginny was surprised to hear that they thought she shouldn’t marry someone ordinary.
