Daniel blinked at her. “What?”
“Uncle Jack and Uncle Jem—though Jem isn’t a blood relation,” she added. “They’ve a fishing boat out of Yarmouth. Thick as thieves for as long as I’ve known ‘em, which is all my life.”
Daniel, his mind in a whirl, blurted, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Sukie raised her brows. “About my uncles?”
“No—about Lofthouse and Butcher.”
“Well, y’know,” Sukie replied with a shrug. “Glass houses and all that.”
“Yes—but you might have said something tome,” Daniel pointed out.
Sukie blinked at him. “Thought you knew. You’re usually rather clever.”
Daniel didn’t agree with her assessment of his intelligence at that particular moment but laughed and kissed her, nonetheless.
Just then, the ringing gate-bell interrupted them.
Sukie shared a glance with him that sufficed to send him on his way. First to the sink to rinse the vegetable residue from his hands, then to the front hall to shrug on his frock coat and answer the door.
Lofthouse stood on the threshold. Butcher stood beside him in all his Gothic glory. Between them they carried a board some four feet broad and almost as tall, draped in buckram.
“Do forgive our arriving unannounced,” said Lofthouse. “May we come in?”
Daniel stepped aside to let them pass and ushered them into the parlour. At his urging they propped their burden up on the sofa. Sukie joined them from the kitchen.
“Oh, Mr Lofthouse!” she said, clapping her hands. “Is this…?”
“It is,” Lofthouse replied. His eyes danced in a way Daniel had never seen before. He laid a hand on the corner of the buckram. “Shall I? Or would you prefer to reveal it yourself?”
Daniel shook his head and made an encouraging gesture towards the artwork that even now he could scarce believe existed. “By all means.”
Lofthouse and Butcher exchanged a glance. Together, in a singular swift and fluid movement, they whisked the buckram off the board.
And there before Daniel’s eyes lay bare his own wedding day.
His eye fell first upon Sukie. In life she appeared ever-beautiful to his eye, even (or especially) with streaks of flour through her mahogany hair and smudges across her brow. He’d always despised his blue poplin on himself, but to see it on her, and how she beamed with happiness to wear it, rendered the whole more beautiful still. How well he recalled on their wedding day the way the gown’s colour brought out the blush in her smiling cheeks and the rosy tint of her perfect lips. And now, rendered through Lofthouse’s brush-strokes, her form seemedto glow with radiant joy, the brightness of hue exceeded only by the evident bliss captured in her resplendent face.
When he could tear his gaze away from the perfect portrait of his wife—which took some doing—he forced himself, with no small amount of trepidation, to look upon his own image.
What he saw there left him thunderstruck.
Never before had he recognised even a fraction of himself in any artistic representation. Only within the past year had he coaxed the looking-glass into reflecting his soul.
And now, in Lofthouse’s painting, he saw his soul again.
A gentleman sat before him. A young gentleman, and yet, confidence beyond evident years shone in the blue eyes and the set of the strong jaw (Daniel’s favourite feature of his face and one of the few he didn’t despise). The grey frock coat fit the figure as if moulded for him alone, and not acquired under questionable means from another’s wardrobe. With his shoulders drawn back, his spine straight, his head held high, and his thighs set apart with all the command of a king, he looked every inch who he was. Even the carefree wave of the golden curls appeared more like a crown beneath Lofthouse’s brush. His strong hand clasped Sukie’s, and the slight smile that played about his lips bespoke a joy beyond all possible expression.
“Butcher made the frame,” Lofthouse added just as Daniel’s eyes fell upon it. An oaken frame, carved in the shape of its own leaves and acorns, surrounded all.
Sukie praised it at once and thanked him effusively for his contribution. Daniel thought he beheld a faint rosy tint in the otherwise stoic features as Butcher bowed and murmured that they were quite welcome.
Daniel returned to the painting. Lofthouse hadn’t attended that blessed day—few had, with Aunt Molly as their only guest and the vicar as their only witness. And yet he had captured all the joy of it.
Their relationship hadn’t met with quite so much approval as they might have wished for. Aunt Molly, no doubt wary of unfulfilled promises from gentlemen to parlour maids, had strong opinions about their decision to share a cabin on their Atlantic crossing. The assurance from Daniel that they were engaged met with poorly-disguised disbelief on her part. Likewise she had fretted over whether or not they were rather too young to marry at all. (No one, Daniel noted, had considered it at all odd for him to wed at nineteen when they’d supposed him a young lady rather than a young gentleman.) However, when the day itself finally arrived—not a minute too soon, by Daniel’s reckoning—Aunt Molly had shed a steady stream of joyful tears from the moment they entered the church and on after Daniel carried Sukie over the threshold of their cottage out of her sight.
The kiss Daniel gave his Sukie at the altar was perhaps not so modest as Aunt Molly might have wished. It expressed all the exhilaration he felt to bind himself to his beloved for all eternity, to protect and cherish her to the end of his days and beyond. Words he’d dreaded throughout his engagement to Felix, and after his escape had hardly dared to ever hope he might hear, echoed again in his ears with newfound bliss. “I now pronounce you man and wife.”
