Sweet Summer Kisses

by Erin Knightley

  Then Louisa broke into laughter.

  “Oh, Thomas,” she gasped. “I am laughing so hard I am crying, and yet I have no handkerchief.”

  He caught her mood of hysterical relief. “Well, I would offer you a corner of my blanket,” he replied, holding up a scrap of the damaged velvet with a perfectly straight face. “Mind you…” He looked quizzically down at it, then at Louisa, who burst into a fresh peal of merriment.

  “Oh, thank you for that.” Louisa dabbed at her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve, smearing the delicate drops of ink splattered across her nose ever so slightly. “I was as nervous as a cat. Now I feel much better.”

  “Nervous?” At least the ink spill gave him something to do with his hands. He swabbed at the stain ineffectually. Beckwith would have to come in and render aid in a moment. “Why are you nervous?”

  “Because, you see, I have a confession to make.” Louisa paused, drawing in a deep breath. “I love you—and yet I don’t want to have to choose between my love for you and my work with the Veteran’s Group.”

  Chapter 11

  Thomas could do nothing for a moment except stare at Louisa. Had he heard correctly? Surely not. What he thought he heard was what he wanted to hear for so long. He had to have made the whole scenario up in his mind. The spreading ink, Louisa’s flushed cheeks, his heart pounding unevenly in his chest—all of this was but a figment of his imagination.

  “You aren’t saying anything.” Louisa’s eyes sparkled dangerously, as though she were coming close to tears. “Why aren’t you speaking? Have I offended you?”

  “I…uh…” He grasped after reality. He must be dreaming, still. How to pull himself out of his reverie and understand what Louisa had really said?

  “Sophie and Lucy would quite despair of me if they knew I made a declaration of love to a young man,” she continued, whirling away from him to pace the rug. “I can’t help it. I’ve humiliated myself, of course, because it’s obvious by your stunned amazement that you don’t reciprocate my feelings. But since you are a gentleman, you’ll be kind to me even though I haven’t acted as a young lady of my position should.”

  “No.” If this was a dream, would Louisa continue talking so? This must be real. How on earth could his dearest wish come true, and in such a fashion? “I just couldn’t believe my ears. I thought for certain I must be dreaming. I couldn’t imagine that you…that you…” He coughed. Why were the words so difficult to say? He was a soldier, and used to far more dire situations than this.

  Out with it, man. If she’s brave enough to declare her love, then you should show some spine too.

  “I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing.” He forced himself to meet her eyes. “I had fallen in love with you the moment I saw you, but I knew that you couldn’t love me. You shouldn’t love me.” He clenched his fists to calm his roiling emotions. “I know how much your work means to you. I would never be able to ask you to stop working with the Veterans’ Group.”

  “You love me?” Louisa halted her pacing. “You do, honestly?”

  “More than I can say,” he admitted. It was so good to finally admit the truth aloud.

  “Oh, Thomas!” Louisa rushed around the desk and launched herself at him, peppering his face with kisses. “I adore you and I know we will make a most suitable match.”

  Thomas gathered her in his arms and kissed her with all the pent-up fervor of the past few days. “Darling Louisa,” he murmured into her hair. “I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve a girl as wonderful as you are, but I will spend the rest of my days endeavoring to make you happy.”

  “I think I know our key to happiness,” she replied, drawing a little away from him. She played nervously with the lapel of his jacket. “We are going to have to be brave. Quite extraordinarily daring, in fact.”

  “You aren’t hoping that we’ll elope?” Sudden tension clenched his insides. “I should hate to think what your father would do to me if I were so stupid as to attempt an elopement.”

  Louisa laughed. “No, indeed. I wouldn’t be able to face him myself. Our courage will have to start after we’ve been married. We can have a nice, elaborate wedding, the sort of event our families will expect us to have. After the ceremony is over, though, and we set up housekeeping, I daresay we can do whatever we want.”

  He nodded, a glimmering of understanding lighting in his mind. “Once we’re a married couple, we are adults. Nothing we do or say can really be controlled by our parents. So, for example, if you wished to continue your work with the Veterans’ Group rather than spend your days in a social whirl, you could do so.”

  “Precisely.” Louisa glanced up at him, a warm glow kindled in her lovely eyes. “We can live however we choose to, once we have made this first leap. When you decided to devote so much of your fortune to charitable pursuits, you inspired me. Why shouldn’t we live as we choose together, once we are wed?”

  “Louisa, you are brilliant.” He smiled down at her, holding her close. Why shouldn’t they have the lives they wanted together? There was no need for either of them to bend to any pressure from society or from their families. As long as they were doing the work the Lord called them to do, what person could or should interfere? “Shall I go to your father today and ask for your hand?”

  Louisa sighed. “Yes, but before you do, I need to have a discussion with Papa.” A look crossed Louisa’s face, a look he knew all too well. He would see this expression on his beloved’s face many times over the coming years, he was certain. She was plotting something, and since her schemes usually had everyone’s best interests at heart, why not encourage her to continue?

  “Very well. When should I come?”

  Louisa took his pocket watch out of his waist-coat pocket and flipped it open. “Papa will be at the Club right now. He’ll come home to an early supper with me in about an hour or so. Then he will be expecting to go back out again, perhaps with Madame Catalogna.” She shut the watch with a click. “Of course, he hasn’t reckoned on us. Why don’t you come by as supper is drawing to a close? You can join us for dessert.”

  Thomas smiled, shaking his head. “I can only imagine how dessert will taste. As nervous as I am to face your father, I doubt I could eat a bite.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about Papa,” Louisa rejoined. She drew away from him, tugging at her sleeves and putting her hand up to her hair. “I’ll take care of him. Do not despair. If we are going on this journey together, we must be brave, for we will have to encounter many dragons on our way. Do I look all right? I don’t want to go home looking like I just tussled with a military hero.”

  Warmth suffused Thomas. He regarded Louisa with a glance that could never be critical, for she was always beautiful to him. “You look lovely.” Then he paused. “Wait. Dragons?”

  “Yes. Dragons will plague our journey, I am certain. Dowagers with nothing better to do than gossip, our own friends who may not understand how we choose to live—naysayers, in short.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “I’m off, then. Better to talk to Papa now than to let the matter linger. Besides, I am ready to marry you tomorrow. Waiting a second longer than necessary is a dreadful thought.”

  She left the room in her customary swirl of skirts.

  Thomas gazed after her. How did this ever happen? How did a less than illustrious younger son come to receive such a gift? She would marry him tomorrow, she said. All that, and here he had been thinking she didn’t even love him.

  He stared at his ink-besplotched desk, and on it, his ruined handkerchief. Life with Louisa would certainly never be dull. In fact, she was a splash of color, a sudden rush of warmth, when his existence had been cold and gray. If there were, indeed, dragons to be met in his life, he would want no one by his side but his beloved.

  ~*~

  Louisa toyed with the food on her plate. How many times had she felt this same sort of apprehension while dining with Papa? Yet, this time was different. This was a pleasant sort of nervousness. Papa would, of course, g
ive Thomas his consent. Giving voice to the words, acknowledging that she had, in fact, fallen in love with a young man that was a highly eligible bachelor and a suitable match posed the difficulty.

  Papa would be so obnoxiously delighted, and would likely take it as a sign that she had capitulated. Of course, once she was married and a grown woman in her own right, she could do just as she and Thomas pleased. Papa would have nothing to say in the matter then, so she must hold her temper in check no matter how much he crowed over her news.

  She hazarded a glance at Papa. He was deeply engrossed in the newspaper, his plate already cleaned. He was utterly unaware that his daughter’s life had changed over the course of just one day.

  Louisa cleared her throat. “Papa.”

  “Yes, Louisa?” Papa’s voice was decidedly absentminded. He didn’t look up, but continued running his finger down the paper before him.

  “Papa. Ecoute.” Louisa rapped on the table. Nothing seized Papa’s attention faster than speaking in French. As a staunch supporter of Wellington, Papa had nothing but contempt for anything that smacked of Bonaparte, including the French language.

  Her father looked up, scowling. “Really, LouLou.”

  “This is important.” She gave him her most winning smile. “I have an important announcement.”

  “Yes, well, do go on.” Papa glanced back down at his paper. “There’s a most interesting tidbit about the shipping forecast, and I am eager to read on.”

  Shipping forecast? Louisa fought the urge to roll her eyes. Her news was far more interesting than that. “Very well. I shall make haste. I just wanted you to know that I have fallen in love, and proposed marriage to a young man, and he has accepted my offer.”

  The newspaper slipped off the table and landed in a pile at Papa’s feet. “Is this some sort of jest?” Papa asked, staring at her.

  At last, she had the attention she needed. “No, I am not joking. I’ve already spoken of the young man to you, Papa. His name is Thomas Wright. We’ve been friends for several weeks and I simply fell in love with him. We wish to be married as soon as possible.”

  “You proposed to him?” Papa thundered, looking over at her with the strangest expression on his face she’d ever seen. Given how many scrapes she’d been in over her lifetime, this was quite an achievement.

  “Well, I didn’t exactly propose. I confessed my love to him, and one thing just led to another, and, well, he is coming here to ask for my hand in marriage after dessert.” As she sat there, drinking in the thunderstruck expression on his face, her heart surged with love. “Is that all right?” she added meekly. Of course it would be, but the way her father looked, she wanted some reassurance.

  “Yes, yes. Of course.” Father brushed aside her anxious question with a wave of his hand. “You do love this fellow, Wright? You aren’t just settling for him to get out of a London season? Because, if that is the case, I won’t allow you to go through with it. I know I’ve been stern before, but I really won’t make you go through with it if you are changing your life to avoid London. You know that, LouLou. I love you and your sister too much to force you to do anything.”

  “Indeed, no.” Louisa leapt from her place at the table and hurried over to her father’s seat. She threw her arm around his shoulders, squeezing him tightly. “Thank you, Papa. I just couldn’t help myself. I fell in love. He’s so good and kind, and just being in his company makes me a better person.”

  “Well, well.” Papa patted her arm, chuckling softly. “I will give the young man my blessing, then.”

  Louisa smiled. She had obtained almost everything she desired. There was just one more small detail that needed to be settled. She looked up at Papa, the love she felt for him suffusing her. “I do want you to know that I feel most distressed about leaving you behind, Papa. I don’t want you to be a lonely bachelor while your two daughters go about this business of raising their families and living their lives. I would feel just awful.”

  “Oh, now, LouLou, don’t worry about that.” Papa chuckled. “I shall be just fine.”

  “But you won’t.” Louisa shook her head in mock despair. “You won’t have anyone here to take care of you. I am afraid you will lose yourself in the social whirl to drown your loneliness. Just think of it. Night after night, one party after another.” She made a tsking sound. “That will never do.”

  Her father’s eyebrows quirked together. “What are you talking about, Louisa?”

  She remembered the earliest conversations they had about her own marriage prospects. “You spend far too much time socializing, Papa. I indulged this fanaticism as long as I dared, for I think it a good thing for men of privilege to enjoy themselves. But you must begin thinking of the future.” She fixed him with the same tolerant gaze with which he had pinned her just a few weeks ago. “You must marry.”

  Papa’s face reddened. “Now, Louisa—“

  She interrupted him with a wave of her hand. “Unfortunately, there is no Marriage Mart for a man of your, well, dignity and position in life. Therefore, you must choose from the women who are known to you. I think Mary will do quite nicely.”

  Papa shook his head. “Young lady—“

  He was cut short by the arrival of the butler, who showed a very pale Thomas Wright into the room. Papa mopped his face with his handkerchief and gave the young man a relieved bow.

  “I am very glad indeed to see you, Mr. Wright. We can now discuss, with pleasure, your marital prospects, which will divert my daughter from my own.”

  Thomas’s eyes widened. “Sir? You already know my intent in coming here?”

  “Of course. Louisa told me the whole thing. I do apologize that she apparently threw herself at you. I had hoped I had raised her to show a trifle more dignity.” He tucked his handkerchief away.

  Louisa laughed. Papa might not know it yet, but Thomas’s appearance didn’t mean the topic of Madame Catalogna was tabled forever. “I smoothed the way for you, darling,” she murmured to Thomas.

  He drew close to her and placed his arm about her shoulders and faced her father. “May I have your blessing, then, sir?”

  “You do.” Papa grabbed his glass of water with a huff. “Take her away, as soon as may be. She needs to be occupied with a family and children of her own, and out of my personal affairs.”

  Thomas looked positively thunderstruck by the ease with which her hand was granted. “Of course. I will marry her as soon as may be. But may I ask, why are you so eager to relinquish her? You seem more preoccupied with your own affairs than hers.”

  “I relinquish her, young man, because I know you are a good lad from a fine family, and I know you will take good care of her. She is also entirely too concerned with my own matrimonial prospects, and I find her attention highly uncomfortable.”

  Thomas glanced down at her quizzically.

  “Mary,” she mouthed back.

  Thomas raised his eyebrow and shook his head, holding her more tightly. “I thank you for your blessing, sir.”

  Louisa gazed with love at the two men she adored. Everything was going to work out beautifully. Just how it would, she didn’t know. Life with Thomas would be a grand adventure, and, borne of the certainty that came with that adventurous spirit, she knew Papa would find love with Madame Catalogna.

  Aided and abetted, of course, by herself.

  Epilogue

  Louisa stood in the vestibule of Saint Swithin’s, trying her utmost to hold still. Sophie had given her strict instructions to stop fidgeting before she went inside to find her seat beside Captain Cantrill in one of the pews. “If you keep swirling about like you do, you’ll knock your veil loose,” she had huffed, securing it in place with a few more hairpins.

  It was difficult indeed not to simply dance up the aisle and waltz crazily with Thomas before the altar, but she was keeping her promise. Her wedding promised to be as grand of an affair as her sister Amelia’s had been. If she could just lean forward a bit more, she could gaze through the crack in the doorway, an
d perhaps she could spot Thomas standing at the front of the church. She bent further, keeping her head close enough to the door that she could see, but not close enough to knock her veil askew.

  “That will do, Louisa,” a familiar voice rumbled behind her. “You’ll see your young man, soon enough.”

  “Papa.” She turned to behold her father, resplendent in his morning suit. “Upon my word, you look grand.”

  “Not as much as you do.” He held her at arm’s length, his eyes twinkling. “Well, I daresay it’s time for us to proceed. The organist’s cue is soon to follow.”

  “No, Papa. We must wait for a pause in the music.” She tucked her hand under his elbow and turned to face the doorway. Two footmen waited, their hands on the latches, waiting to fling the doors wide.

  “Pause in the music? I didn’t hear of that before.” He looked puzzled, but patted her arm reassuringly.

  “It’s something new. Thomas and I thought of it a few days ago.” If Papa knew what they’d been about, he would have put his foot down. Amelia would have, as well. In fact, the only people who truly approved of this change in ceremony were Thomas and she.

  There was a brief pause from the organist, and the footmen, on cue, opened the doors. The congregation rose, turning to face them. As they took their first step forward, a glorious soprano voice soared from the choir loft, echoing through the rafters.

  Papa froze. “Louisa?” He muttered her name in a furious undertone. His features were still composed in a placid expression for the benefit of everyone watching.

  “You wouldn’t bring Mary to the wedding, even though I asked you to. You wouldn’t include her. So I invited her for you,” Louisa replied in a soft undertone. She nudged him, and like a marionette, he began jerkily marching her toward the altar. “I am being brave for our entire family, and for you especially.”

  As they neared the altar, Mary’s silvery voice floated out over the chapel, sending goose bumps racing up and down Louisa’s arms. Thomas stood, facing her, a wry grin on his handsome face. He didn’t know all of her plans before the day started, but from the look on his face, he was in hearty approval of her inclusion of Mary.