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Anne looked at Matthew. “Are you certain you wish to marry me?”
“I was about to ask you the same question.”
Margaret laughed. “It is an adventure.”
Anne folded the letter.
“An adventure in which my wardrobe will occupy half the ship.”
“Only a quarter,” Simon corrected.
For a while, Canada seemed less like the end of everything familiar and more like a journey that could be taken one stage at a time.
Chapter L.
Henry intended only to discover whether Anne knew if Matthew would be visiting today. He was passing the drawing-room when he heard the familiar voices of Anne and Sarah and was about to enter when their conversation gave him pause.
“I know I ought to be nothing but happy,” Anne was saying, “and I am happy, Sarah. You cannot imagine how happy I am. But the thought of leaving you all and knowing that I shall not be here when you and Henry marry, makes me very sad.”
“Oh, Anne, I have been trying not to think of it myself,” Sarah replied. “I have always imagined you beside me on that day. I cannot bear the thought of your being so far away.”
“And I cannot bear the thought of missing your wedding. I have looked forward to it for so long, and now it seems I shall have to hear about it in a letter, after everything is over.”
There was a brief silence before Sarah spoke again.
“We shall write to one another constantly, of course, but it will not be the same.”
“No,” Anne said softly. “It will not.”
Henry stood quite still for a moment. He knew how much the girls meant to one another, and the thought of Anne leaving England without being present for his own wedding suddenly seemed a great pity. He and Sarah had been happy in their courtship, with no particular reason to hurry what they both knew was coming. He had intended to ask her to marry him soon, and had looked forward to doing so in his own time.
But perhaps there was no reason to wait.
A double wedding. The idea seemed so natural that he wondered why it had not occurred to him before.
He did not enter the room. Instead, he turned at once and went to speak with Sarah’s father.
It was some time before Henry returned, and when he did, he went directly to find Sarah.
“Sarah, would you come and speak with me for a moment? There is something I should like to say to you.”
She followed him into a quieter room, looking at him with curiosity. Henry’s expression was so earnest that her smile softened.
He took her hand and held it. “I knew a girl once,” said he, “who climbed the apple tree at Delaford in her good frock and tore the hem climbing down again, and did not care in the least; whose hair had a private understanding with every wind that blew, and went its own way regardless of ribbons; who fell in the mill-stream twice in one summer and considered it, on the whole, a successful summer. I was exceedingly fond of her. I did not think, in those days, that anyone could improve on her.” He turned her hand over, and looked at it, rather than at her, because he found he could not quite do both at once. “And now I cannot account for it. I left that girl some years ago, and I have come home to find her so lovely. You quite take my breath away.”
“Henry.”
“I do not know how a person does it — grows up, I mean, into exactly the thing that was wanted, without any warning to the people who are meant to survive it.” He said it lightly, but his voice had gone unsteady on the last few words, and he did not try very hard to mend it. “I have never been so happy as I have been since coming back to you. You are the one person I should most want beside me for the rest of my life and I would like, very much, if you are willing to have me by yours.” He looked at her properly, then. “Will you marry me, Sarah?”
For a moment she did not answer at all. Her eyes had filled, all at once, in the unreasonable way that eyes do when a thing is both perfectly expected and entirely too much; and she gave a small, helpless, watery laugh, and dashed at her face with the back of her wrist, and said, in a voice that would not quite hold steady, “Yes, yes, of course it is yes!”
“I have been meaning to speak to you properly for some time,” he began. “You know how much I love you, Sarah. I have been happy courting you, and I had thought to ask you to marry me before long. But I have been thinking, and I do not see any reason why we should wait any longer.”
He paused, looking down at her hand in his.
“I love you, Sarah.”
She moved closer to him, and for a moment they were content simply to look at one another, the happiness of their engagement needing no further words.
