The Proposal

all give, give, give. It is taking as well. It is allowing the other one the pleasure and joy of giving. Let me love you.”

She thought her heart would surely break. All her life, it seemed, or since her marriage, anyway, she had held herself together, tried always to be cheerful, tried not to be negative or bitter. She had tried to love, and she had accepted love in return provided it was the quiet, steady love of her mother or her brother or Lauren or Lily or the rest of her family.

But …

“It would be like jumping off the edge of the world,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be there to catch you.”

“Will you?” she said.

“And you can catch me when I jump,” he told her.

“You will squash me,” she said.

And they were both laughing, hugged together in each other’s arms, both damp from her tears.

“Gwendoline,” he said when they were finally quiet again, “will you marry me?”

She held him, her eyes closed, and inhaled the mingled smells of cologne and sweat and maleness. And the indefinable something wonderful that was Hugo himself.

“Do you think I can have children?” she said. “Do you think I deserve another chance? What if I cannot?”

He clucked his tongue.

“No one ever knows for sure,” he said. “We will find out as time goes on. And yes, you deserve to have children of your own body. As for me, don’t worry. I would a thousand times rather marry you and have no children than marry any other woman in the world and have a dozen. In fact, I don’t think I will marry anyone else if you will not have me. I’ll have to start going to brothels.”

They were snorting with laughter again then.

“Well, in that case,” she said.

“Yes?” He drew back his head and gazed at her in the lamplight.

“I’ll marry you,” she said, sobering. “Oh, Hugo, I don’t care how many different worlds we have to cross in order to find our own little world within. I don’t care. I will do what has to be done.”

“Me too,” he said.

And they smiled at each other until they both had tears in their eyes.

He sat up and rummaged around in the heap of his clothing until he found his watch. He held it up to the light of the lamp.

“Half past two,” he said. “We had better be out of here by half past five. Three hours. What can we do in three hours? Any suggestions?”

He turned to look down at her.

She opened her arms to him.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “An excellent suggestion. And three hours gives plenty of time for play as well as feasting.”

“Hugo,” she said as his arms closed about her again and he lay down on his back, bringing her over on top of him. “Oh, Hugo, I love you, I love you.”

“Mmm,” he said against her lips.

Hugo made the announcement at a late breakfast, which everyone attended. He ought perhaps to have spoken with Gwendoline’s brother first, but he had already done that once upon a time. And perhaps the announcement ought to have been made to her family first, but … why? Her family would be informed as soon as they returned to London.

“Ah,” Constance said, looking about the table and sounding wistful, “all the excitement is over, and tomorrow we will be returning to London.”

“But every moment of our stay has been wonderful, Constance,” Fiona said, her voice warm and animated in a way Hugo had never heard before this week. “And there is still today to enjoy.”

“And the excitement is not all over,” Hugo said from the head of the table. “At least, for me it is not. And for Gwendoline it is not. For we are newly betrothed and intend to spend the day enjoying our new status.”

She had told him last night that he might make the announcement today if he wished. She smiled now and bit her lip as the room filled with the sounds of exclamations and squeals and applause and everyone clambering to speak at once and chairs scraping back across the floor. Hugo found his hand being pumped, his back being slapped, his cheeks being kissed. Gwendoline, he saw, was being hugged and kissed too.

He wondered if her family members would react with such unbridled enthusiasm, and it occurred to him that quite possibly they would.

“You owe me ten guineas, I believe, Mark,” Cousin Claude called across the table. “I did say by the end of the week. And there were witnesses.”

“You could not have waited another day or two, Hugo?” Mark asked.

“And when are the nuptials to be?” Aunt Henrietta asked. “And where?”

“In London,” Hugo said. “Probably at St. George’s on Hanover Square. As soon as the banns have been read. We want to be married and back here for the summer.”

They had discussed other possibilities—Newbury Abbey, Crosslands Park, even Penderris Hall—but they wanted both families to attend, and any place outside London seemed impractical, partly because of the number of people who must be accommodated, and partly because his own family members had already just taken a holiday of several days. Besides, the Season would still be in full swing and Parliament still in session. They really did not want to wait until summer.

“St. George’s,” Aunt Rose said. “Grand! I hope we are all invited.”

“We could not possibly hold our nuptials,” Gwendoline said rashly, “if you are not all there, as well as all my family.”

“But I have nothing to wear,” Constance said and laughed merrily. “Oh, I am so happy I could burst.”

“Not all over the food, please, Con,” Cousin Claude said.

Hugo was tired. He had slept for perhaps an hour after the second, vigorous lovemaking, but he had used up all his renewed energy on a third bout, which had finished perilously close to half past five, the time by which he had decided they must leave the stables. It would have been a ghastly embarrassment to be discovered there by a groom.

Gwendoline had gone to bed when they returned to the house. He had not. He had been too excited—like a schoolboy.

He was tired now, but pleasantly so. His body was sated and relaxed, his mind centered upon happiness. And he would not allow entry to any mental warnings about happiness being a precariously temporary state or about romance being even flimsier. He was not just in love with his betrothed. He loved her. And he had no illusions about happily-ever-after. He knew that happiness was something that had to be worked for as hard and as diligently as he had worked as a boy at following in his father’s footsteps and later at being the best military officer in the British armies.

He was not afraid of failure.

Fiona strolled outdoors with him for a while after breakfast, linking her arm through his. It was a cool, cloudy late morning.

“This is all so beautiful, Hugo,” she said. “All the time we have been here, people have been telling you what they think you ought to do to develop the park, and you have said yourself that you will be making some changes. Don’t make too many. Sometimes nature just is.”

He looked down at her and was surprised at how much affection he felt for her, this woman whom his father had loved and with whom he had sired a daughter—Constance.

“I am not going to change it a great deal,” he said. “I am not going to make a grand, gaudy showpiece of it. Constance and I went to a garden party in Richmond a short while ago, you may recall. The garden was quite