by Fanny Finch
I hope that you will find me worthy of her. I know that she is dear to you. Know that I address you in the humblest of tones, knowing that she is your beloved child. I will care for the woman as you have cared for the girl.
With esteem and affection,
James Norwich
He folded the letter up and sent it off, and then immediately ordered his servants to begin packing.
“Something light, only for a few days,” he told them. “We can send the rest of my clothes after. I must travel light in order to take an express carriage.”
He could have ridden on horseback had he felt truly desperate. But Bath was just far away enough that it would have been too much hard riding, and it would have taken him more than a day at that. He did not fancy turning up to see Miss Weston in stinking, muddied clothes, exhausted and disheveled.
As soon as he was prepared to go, he departed. After so many false starts, after so much waiting, after so long in between despair and hope… he was not going to waste another moment.
The journey was arduous, but that was mostly because of his own feelings. His heart would not stop racing. His hands clenched and unclenched where they rested on his thighs as he looked out the carriage window, watching the English countryside roll by.
When he arrived in Bath he resented every moment that he had to spend returning to his home and taking care of things. He wanted to rush straight to Miss Weston but of course he could not forget himself.
If she said yes—and she had said that she would say yes—he would be staying in Bath indefinitely. After the proposal there would not be time for him to open up his house again. He would be too busy swept up in the congratulations and planning and informing everyone.
He hurriedly deposited his things, let the servants know that he was back, that yes it was only himself, and to keep the staff minimal as a result. His valet and others would be arriving shortly. They had taken another carriage.
After everything was dealt with it was already late into the night. He could not possibly call on her then.
Instead he slept. Fitfully, of course. But he did manage to get some amount of rest. In the morning he outfitted himself. It was not ideal but that was what he must endure for racing ahead of his valet.
One of the other servants helped him to tidy himself up and ensure that he had not missed anything in his appearance.
Then, at last—he could go to her.
He tried not to leave too early in the morning. Rather, he attempted to arrive just early enough so that she would have had no other callers yet, but not so early that she was still abed.
His heart pulsed in his throat as he knocked on the door. The servant let him in and announced him.
It was time.
He entered into the drawing room and saw her.
Mrs. Weston was not there. Either she was still asleep or she had heard who it was and had wisely quitted the room. Whatever the case may be, he was glad of it.
Miss Weston stood upon his entering. Her dark eyes were wide but dark. Nervous. She looked paler than usual.
He wanted nothing more than to cross the room to her and take her into his arms. But not yet. Not quite yet.
“Miss Weston.”
“Mr. Norwich.” Her voice was almost breathless, as though she could not believe that he was truly there in front of her.
Had she thought that her letter would be ill-received? That he would throw it into the fire as she had said?
No, never. He couldn’t—he couldn’t have stopped loving her if he’d tried. If he’d even wanted to.
“Would you like something?” she asked, her voice soft and hesitant in a way it so rarely was. “I can call for some tea, or…”
“No, thank you,” he replied automatically. “Perhaps. Ah. That is.”
He gave a rueful chuckle. He was all but certain of what her answer would be and he was still fumbling like a schoolboy. “Forgive me. You have always had the power to render me incapable of the speech and manners that I normally find quite manageable.”
Miss Weston smiled at him, sweet and soft. “I find that it is rather the same with me. My wit has quite abandoned me. And at a time when I perhaps need it most. I do so love to be witty for you. I enjoy that I can entertain you. That I can make you laugh.”
“It is the same for me,” James confessed, rapidly, on an exhalation of breath. He could feel some of the tension going out of him, knowing that she was as nervous as he was.
“Can you forgive me?” Miss Weston whispered. “For how I have behaved?
“I confess that I… I have not been able to sleep much these past few days. I knew that it would take some time for the letter to reach you. Yet I kept checking the mail in the morning, to see if you had written me a response. To see if you had rejected my apology.”
“I couldn’t,” James blurted out. “I could never—I should have known that you would need some time to reflect. To reconcile who you thought I was with who you now knew me to be.”
“But I was so awful…”
“And I was a coward who should have told you who I was from the first instead of putting you in a position of confusion.”
“And I could have insisted that you tell me who you were instead of playing along. We can blame ourselves all that we like.”
“Then stop blaming yourself. I do not blame you. I hold no anger towards you. Only…” James took a deep breath. “Only love.”
Miss Weston’s eyes went a little wide and started to shine. “Oh,” she said, the sound small, almost a gasp.
He dared to take a small step towards her. “Would you—I am torn between hope and the despair with which I am so familiar when it comes to my feelings for you. Even now, with all of your assurances, I still find it hard to speak the words. Forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” Miss Weston said quickly. “Would it help if I—if I were to say how dear you are to me? How I have missed you all of these long days? How the time seems to drag so unbearably slowly now that you are not around to distract me?
“I had never taken the time to peer into my own heart. And when I did it was with great surprise that I found you were already there. You were rooted like a tree and I could not get you out. Nor do I want to get you out.
“If you are in even the slightest doubt about my thoughts towards you, I beg of you to look at me now. I have no stipulations. No hesitations. I only want to be yours.”
James reminded himself to breathe. “In that case, Miss Weston, I…
“You have heard me say so many times in my letters to you just what you mean to me. Some days it feels as though you are everything to me. That you own my whole heart.
“Even on the days when I remember that I have a duty to other people, that I must run an estate, you are still more important to me than anything. Sometimes I wonder if I would not run to Gretna Green with you if you asked. Although I know that it would be folly and that furthermore you would never ask such a thing.
“You make me feel a fool with how deeply I feel for you. You brighten up every room that you are in. Without you, social gatherings feel lifeless. As though the color has been leeched out from them.
“You are my first thought in the mornings and my last thought at night. Writing these letters to you has been a way to share my burdens and myself with another person. It’s been a joy that I sorely miss. I wish to keep sharing my life with you in that manner. For always.”
Miss Weston was looking at him with a face so full of emotion that it nearly took his breath away. She looked as though she wanted to laugh and burst into tears and fling herself at him all at once.
It was rather how he felt inside, as well. The idea that all he was feeling towards her was being reflected back at him—that she felt about him as he felt about her—
“Miss Weston,” he said. “Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
Miss Weston let out an odd sound, almost a sob, and nodded frantically. “Yes, yes, a thousand times—�
��
He was across the room and in front of her before he even realized that he had started to move. Finally, after years of waiting and despairing and hoping, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him.
Miss Weston was crying in earnest now, and he allowed her to bury her face into his chest so that she might wring herself dry.
“Oh, my little raven,” he mused. He gently petted her hair. “This has been quite a trial for you, hasn’t it?”
“You are not allowed to give a lady such lovely letters and think that she will not fall for you,” Miss Weston said accusingly, her voice muffled from her face being pressed to his chest. “It is most unfair of you.”
“And you are not allowed to be so charming and lovely, and then think that a man will not fall for you. It seems that we have both been rather unfair.”
Miss Weston pulled back enough so that he might see her face. “I am rather too much for my own good, aren’t I? It is fortunate that I shall have you to rein me in from here on out.”
He pulled out a handkerchief for her. She laughed, taking it and dabbing at her eyes. “And you are always there whenever I am reduced to tears. What must you think of me?”
“I think that you are allowed some tears now and again and that I shall always have a handkerchief available for you to use.”
She laughed again, then looked up at him, her eyes shining. “Well, Mr. Norwich. You have caught me at last. What do you intend to do with me?”
“Well, I did write to your father, so hopefully the first thing I shall do is secure his permission.”
“You need not worry about that. Father will be delighted. Mother has been telling me to marry you for weeks now. She thinks it is rather ridiculous of me that I have waited for so long.”
“And she is listening in right now, I have no doubt.”
“Oh, no, you are lucky that she is still in bed. Give it another half an hour and she will indeed be listening at the door.”
He laughed. “Well then, if you will permit it, I believe my first order of business is to kiss you.”
“That does seem to be an acceptable first step. We are engaged, after all. I shall allow it.”
“Already speaking like a true titled lady. I fear you will become more spoiled than you already are.”
“That is impossible. And it is too late to take your proposal back. I have accepted. You will have to deal with the consequences of that as they come.”
“I’m certain that I shall delight in every consequence,” he assured her.
She was perfect, smiling up at him, her dark eyes shining. She should always look this happy. He would do everything in his power to ensure that she was.
He leaned in, slowly, because even though she had given him permission he did not wish to startle her.
Miss Weston raised herself up onto her tiptoes, and he kissed her softly.
Of course she was not content merely with that, and brought her hands up to catch his face so that she might kiss him with a little more passion. When he pulled away she was smiling at him, mischievous and impertinent and lovely.
“I suppose we ought to tell your mother,” James remembered, stepping back. He reluctantly let go of Miss Weston.
Julia. He could call her Julia now.
Not in front of others, of course. Even married couples would generally call one another by their last names when in front of company. He certainly could not dare call her by her Christian name around others until they were married.
But he could think of her that way in his mind. Julia. His Julia.
He waited patiently while Julia went upstairs to awaken her mother. He couldn’t stop thinking her name in his mind. Julia, Julia, Julia.
Mrs. Weston came down a short while later. She was wearing a simple dress and was not quite done up as she usually was. Most likely in her haste she had not bothered with the trimmings.
“Mr. Norwich.” She crossed to him, smiling warmly. He took her hands and bowed over them when she offered them to him. “You know what a pleasure this is for me. I know that you will both make each other very happy.”
“It is all that I could have hoped for,” he assured her.
“Mr. Carson is going to have a fit of some kind when he hears of this,” Julia said suddenly. The thought seemed to have only just occurred to her. “He proposed to me, you know. When I turned him down he asked if it was because I had feelings for you.
“I should have turned him down no matter what my relationship with you might have been. But he is going to be quite put out when he hears.”
“Let him be put out,” Mrs. Weston replied. “What does his opinion matter? You two are to be married and you are happy about it. That is what matters.
“And I daresay the news will not be a complete surprise for most of us who know you. I have not spoken to anyone directly on the matter but it would not surprise me if many people have been expecting this for some time.”
“Are you telling me that I was the only one who did not know of my own feelings?” Julia asked. “Or of his?”
“Well, my dear, you are so smart in other fields. There had to be one in which you were not quite so well versed.”
Julia looked simultaneously put upon and fond of her mother. “Well. I suppose we ought to put the banns up then and get it over with. Let the hordes of well-wishers descend! I shall meet them as if in battle.”
James laughed. “And there is that humor that so won me over, my darling.”
He could call her that now as well. All of the things that he had been keeping stopped up inside of his heart, he could now freely express. It was liberating and rejuvenating.
Julia smiled up at him. “I am glad to hear it, for you will be experiencing quite a bit of it in the years to come.”
James looked forward to it. In fact, he couldn’t wait.
The Extended Epilogue
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A Lady’s Choice
Preview
Chapter 1
Emma looked around the ballroom for her cousin, Lady Camilla Fielding. The crowd was not yet as plentiful as it would be soon and she could tell Camilla had not yet arrived. She looked down at her gown and ran her eyes over her gloves, trying to do it as inconspicuously as possible. She had to look perfect tonight.
Her father had warned her: this was the season when she would need to find a suitor. By the end of the season, it was imperative that she be on her way to wedlock, if not already there.
She lifted her eyes and stared blankly in front of her, remembering the conversation before she’d left for the ball with her mother and younger sister.
Her father, Aaron Michael Wentworth, Duke of Corning, was not a young man. He wasn’t a young man when he married her mother and was even older when he married her stepmother, two years after her own mother’s death. With the second Duchess of Corning, the duke had taken on the responsibility of her daughter, Katherine, who was only two years younger than Emma. The duchess was also a widow, having lost her husband in the war. They had two twin sons, Mi
chael and Thomas, six years ago.
His health was ailing. Only those closest to the family knew the true state of things.
He’d called her into the parlor, where he was seated in front of the fireplace, his legs covered by a thick blanket. He looked so old to her. She knelt by his chair and rested one small hand on his knee. She tried not to wince visibly. Touching his leg was like grasping the bones of a skeleton. It cut her to the very core.