I told him about my plan for the clinic and the church. “The worst of the smallpox outbreak is over,” I said, “but there is still a need, especially in the north. And there’s a want for local medical care and a sense of community.”
“Charlotte, that’s wonderful,” he said, his eyes lighting up, and I was instantly brought back to those happy days on the boat.
I reached for his hand. “I have something to show you.”
I felt like I was presenting my newborn baby for the first time, such was my pride and joy as I took John around the property. After touring the barn, the horse stables, and other outbuildings, we climbed a hill to where I had placed a bench carved from a single piece of a tree trunk. We sat together, finally at ease with each other, drinking in the scene before us. From this vantage point, we could see my herd of cattle as they contentedly wandered the valley floor foraging for grass and snoozing on the cool, muddy shore of the lazy, meandering stream. Dusk descended and the crickets began their lonely, nightly lament for a mate.
“I love this place,” I said.
“I can see why. Nothing in England could rival it. The perfect place to make a home.”
“You really think so?”
“I do.”
He withdrew his handkerchief from the breast pocket of his vest, carefully unfolding it. “My brother found these in my pocket after the beating,” he said. “It was months before I was well enough to see them properly, but I was confounded when I did.”
He opened his hand to reveal two gold rings: a plain gold band and an engagement ring with three small diamonds. They looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place them. I looked up at him questioningly.
“I hadn’t the faintest idea where they came from. No memory. I didn’t buy them. I would’ve had a record of it. My memory came back in bits and pieces, a flash here, an image there. Some of it very painful.” He paused for a moment. “It took a long time, but I finally put it all together. Hortense Wiggins gave them to me.”
“Wiggles?” I asked. “Were they her mother’s?”
“They’re from your cousin, Edward. He had asked Hortense to send them with her next correspondence to you. Seems he’d found an old trunk in the attic full of your mother’s things. The rings were in it—they were your grandmother’s.”
I gasped and pulled his hand towards me to have a better look. Picking up the rings, I turned them over in my fingers, thrilling at their touch. They were my only link to my past, to my family.
“They’re for me?”
“I wasn’t planning on wearing them. They don’t fit, for starters.” John chuckled. “I knew Hortense had encouraged you to make the journey, so I paid her a visit to tell her how you were getting on. We had a nice chat, and she asked me to pass the rings on to you—when I told her how I feel about you.”
I held my breath. “And what did you tell her?”
“That I’ve thought of you every single day since we parted—that I was guilty of making the worst mess of a proposal that any man has ever made, that I was going to try again, because I love you. I believe we share something that few others do, and I can’t imagine spending the rest of my days with anyone else.”
He took my hands, and, looking deep into my eyes, said, “Charlotte, will you marry me?”
I thought of the day I stepped aboard the Tynemouth, a bundle of nerves and full of trepidation over the upcoming adventure, an innocent in so many ways—naive and impulsive, a young woman with much to learn about the world, as well as herself. But I was a much different person now. I had come into my own, and I was very comfortable with myself and my place in the world. I had no need to marry if I didn’t want to.
“Yes,” I said, slipping the rings on. They fit instantly. “No sense in taking them off.”
“Keep just the engagement ring for now. The wedding band has to wait for the actual ceremony.”
I handed him back the gold band.
“It’ll be a proper church wedding in town as soon as I can arrange it, and then back here to live in paradise.”
I pulled him to me until my mouth found his. A tingling warmth flared throughout my body as he held me close and his soft lips closed over mine in a long, full kiss. My mind drifted to images of our future together. I imagined us spending our days in easy companionship, riding the range and sharing long evenings with fine meals by the fire. I saw myself waking in the night and feeling the warm comfort of his body beside mine.
I got up from the bench and looped my arm in his. “Let’s go in for dinner.”
When we set foot on the wood-planked floor of the veranda where Cora had set out dinner, we heard the strains of a fiddle striking up. Garret regularly entertained the cowboys with renditions of popular tunes, and tonight I recognized the haunting melody of a song that the Americans had brought north with them, “Weeping Sad and Lonely.” From their Civil War, the deeply moving song captured the current prevailing sentiment of our generation.
We were a cohort of men and women who had left home seeking better lives—impoverished women who travelled halfway around the world for new opportunities, soldiers who chased glory in wars that others had started, and prospectors who searched for untold wealth in the sandbars of raging rivers. Some returned;
