“She asked,” he shrugs.
I study Anya, now intensely studying a butterfly flitting through the greenery ahead. Then I look back at Rolan, who’s watching his daughter with a completely undefended expression.
The beauty of it — the ordinary, extraordinary beauty of this moment — catches in my throat and holds.
“I need to ask you something,” Rolan says.
He’s no longer watching Anya. Instead, his gaze is fixed on me.
He reaches into the interior pocket of his jacket.
The box is small. Dark velvet, slightly worn at one corner, as though it has been carried for longer than today — transported, consulted, returned to its pocket, carried again.
He opens it. The ring inside intercepts the conservatory light and scatters it in every direction. My breath flushes from my lungs in a single, quiet gasp.
The center stone is a deep, saturated green, and it’s flanked on all sides by diamonds that capture the ambient light.
“Elizabeth, I’m not a man who does things… conventionally. I am aware of this. You are aware of this.”
“I am,” I manage. The words arrive on a breath that barely qualifies.
“I am also not a man who—” He stops himself and regroups. “I’ve spent fifteen years constructing what I believed I understood the value of. I was wrong. I understand it now.” His gaze moves briefly toward Anya, who is now studying soil with the tip of her index finger. “There is nothing more important than this… than us.”
I press my lips together. The pressure behind my eyes intensifies.
“Elizabeth Calloway. You were never a mistake. In truth, you are the greatest certainty I have.”
“Rolan—”
“Let me finish.”
I close my mouth. The tears are staging a full-scale insurrection, and my defenses are crumbling.
“I want you to be my wife,” he says. “I want you to be Anya’s mother — which you already are, in every way that matters. I want you to argue with me and challenge me and enter my office without knocking and occupy the chair across from mine at breakfast and sleep beside me for every remaining night I’m granted.” He swallows, composes himself, then continues. “I want you to be my queen. Not because of a contract or a debt. Because I?—”
He stops.
“Because I love you.” The words emerge as though released from prolonged confinement. “And I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
The tears prevail as I feel the relief of hearing this man, this impossible, infuriating, extraordinary man, say the words I wouldn’t let myself need until this exact moment.
“Yes,” I say. Before he completes the thought. Before he arrives at the formal question. “Yes, Rolan. Obviously, irrevocably, without a single reservation — yes.”
The smile that crosses his face is fuller than any I’ve ever seen on him. Complete, unguarded, unmistakable.
He stands.
He frames my face in his hands, and he kisses me, unhurried.
For a fraction of a second, we’re the only two people in the world.
Then, from behind us, Anya’s voice pierces the moment: “Papa, did you know that some orchids can survive for a hundred years? That’s older than Mikhail.”
He pulls back, resting his forehead against mine, and laughs. “I know.”
I laugh too. The sound emerges slightly wrecked but entirely genuine.
He slides the ring onto my finger, and it fits perfectly.
