He had allowed her time to know the man he had become. He never assumed that the promises they made so long ago entitled him to anything from her now. He courted her carefully, asked her opinions and listened to the answers, even when she disagreed with him at length. Somewhere among those ordinary days, Caroline had fallen even more in love with him.
Thomas turned from the water and guided her towards the shelter of the cliff. The broad rock waited where it always had, warmed a little by the winter sun.
Caroline looked from it to Thomas. "I wondered whether we might come here."
"So did I."
"Though I had expected you to be rather more conversational once we arrived."
He released her arm and stood before her. The sun caught warmly in his amber eyes, but there was an uncertainty in his expression she had not seen since the morning of their first kiss.
Her amusement faded. "Thomas?"
"I had intended to wait until the practice was more firmly established."
Caroline stared at him. "Why?"
"Because I told you once that I would return when I was able to support you properly."
She folded her arms. "Do not tell me that you have brought me all the way along this beach to announce that I must wait another five years."
He cleared his throat and she noticed he was rocking from foot to foot. She had seen him in almost every mood but never this. Was he anxious? It was so unlike his usual level countenance that she almost laughed aloud. "No," he said after the silence between them had stretched.
"Good. Because I have become considerably less patient with age."
That brought a smile to his face at last, though it did not quite disperse the nervousness in his expression. Instead, Thomas drew a breath and slipped a hand inside his coat. When he brought it out again, he was holding a small wooden box, simple but beautifully made, the grain of the wood was polished to a mirror shine and their initials were engraved in the lid.
"My father made this," he said.
"Thomas," Caroline breathed, her voice almost a whisper.
He stood there looking at her for what felt like an age, as if gathering his courage for what must come next. Then he opened the box. Inside lay a ring. At its centre was a piece of green sea glass that had been cut and polished like a precious jewel, its surface catching the winter light with a soft green fire. Smaller pieces of pale blue and cloudy white sea glass surrounded it, each one shaped and set into the delicate gold band like a cluster of diamonds. The whole seemed to catch and hold the colours of the shore itself. It was not fashionable in any way. No fine lady in London would have declared it elegant. But to Caroline, it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Her breath caught in her throat. "I do not know what to say."
"The first piece I sent you after you left Scarborough," he said, indicating the centre stone. "Martha gave it back to me several weeks ago along with a few others from the collection."
Caroline looked up, her eyes wide. "She told me it had been misplaced while packing." A watery laugh escaped her, though tears had already begun to gather in her eyes. "That woman has spent years lecturing me on the evils of deception."
He took the ring from the box, and before Caroline had fully recovered herself, he went down on one knee before her. For a moment she could do nothing but stare. The sunlight lay across his dark hair, the sea flashed behind him and the wind stirred his coat, but all she could truly see was Thomas, looking up ather with love so open and certain that it seemed to strip away the years between them. He had knelt nowhere grander than this wild stretch of beach, with the cries of gulls above them and the salt wind around them, and yet Caroline thought no ballroom in London had ever witnessed anything half so fine.
"Six years ago," he said, "I sat beside you upon that rock and fell in love. At the time, I had nothing to offer you beyond my intentions, and even those must have seemed very poor things beside everything your family expected for you. I told myself that I could not ask you to share my life until I had made something of myself, until I could return with every part of our future properly secured and place it before you."
His eyes did not leave hers. "I know now that I was wrong. I do not mean that I was wrong to work or to want to be worthy of you, for I would have done both in any case. But I was wrong to think I must become a different man, or present you with a finished life, before I might ask whether you would build one with me. My practice is new. My rooms are rented. There will be long days, and no doubt many difficulties I cannot yet foresee. But there is no uncertainty in what I feel for you, nor in what I want."
His voice softened then, though it did not falter. "You have been the truest friend of my life from the moment we met, and you are still the person whose thoughts I most wish to hear,whose good opinion I most value and whose happiness I most dearly want to secure. I do not ask for a wife who will simply fit herself into whatever life I provide. I ask for you, exactly as you are, with your courage, your wit and your remarkable habit of disagreeing with me whenever I most deserve it. Caroline Bingley, will you marry me?"
By the time he finished, the tears were running freely down her face, though she was laughing a little too. "Yes," she said at once, her voice breaking around the word. "Yes, Thomas. Of course I will marry you."
Relief and joy transformed his face so quickly that it undid her all over again. He rose at once and caught her around the waist, lifting her from the ground with such ease that another laugh escaped her as he turned her once in a circle. When he set her down, his hands came up to cradle her face, his thumbs brushing away the tears that still clung to her cheeks, and then he kissed her.
Their first kiss, all those years ago, had been tender and wondering, as if neither of them could quite believe such happiness had fallen within reach. This kiss held all the tenderness still, but now it was deepened by certainty, by the knowledge of what they had endured and what they had chosen. Caroline clutched at his coat and kissed him back with all thejoy in her heart, the cold and the wind and the brilliant winter morning vanishing entirely for those few suspended moments.
When at last they drew apart, Thomas rested his forehead against hers and let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "You said yes."
"I did."
"I am very glad to have it confirmed. I was not nearly so calm as I meant to appear."
