“I do.” His voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut through the warmth like a blade. “I’ve rehearsed every speech in the arsenal, and none of them fit. So I’ll say it plainly.”
He dropped to one knee, a movement so sudden and unpracticed it almost toppled him into the hearth. He steadied himself with a hand on the rug, then looked up at her, eyes unwavering.
“Pearl, you are the only gift I want. Marry me.” The words hung there, enormous and impossible.
Pearl inhaled so sharply it stung her throat. Her hands began to tremble—first at the fingertips, then through the wrists, until she had to clutch them together to keep from shattering. Her vision blurred, then sharpened again. The room seemed both impossibly large and suffocatingly small.
She searched his face for doubt, for irony, for any hint that this was a dare or a joke. There was none.
The fire hissed. Somewhere, a clock ticked down the last moments before midnight. The space between them was filled with every unsaid thing they’d carried since that summer twenty years ago.
“I—” she began, but the words failed.
She pressed her palm to her mouth, as if to hold in all the wild, recklessyesthat threatened to escape. Her eyes burned, and she hated herself for it, but she would not look away. She would not look away.
Victor reached for her hand, his own trembling. He took it as one might lift a wounded bird—slow, reverent, careful not to squeeze too hard. His thumb stroked the back of her knuckles, a silent apology for all the years between now and the last time he dared to touch her.
“Say you will,” he said, his voice fraying at the edges. “Say it, and I’ll never ask you for anything else.”
Pearl wanted to laugh, or cry, or both. Instead, she squeezed his hand hard enough to hurt. “Ask me again,” she whispered, the words raw and new.
Victor swallowed. “Marry me. Please.”
She closed her eyes, letting the answer well up from the place where she’d kept it hidden all these months. “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, Victor. Yes.”
He exhaled, a shudder that ran the length of his body. He stood, pulling her up with him, their hands still joined. For amoment, they simply stared at each other, the weight of the moment holding them motionless.
Then she laughed—a high, unguarded sound—and flung her arms around his neck, the years of caution dissolving in a rush of joy and terror. He caught her, solid and certain, and buried his face in her hair.
The fire blazed, the tree shimmered, and the world outside the Abbey, outside this room, ceased to exist.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Victor’s arms were a band around her, every muscle pulled taut against the possibility of waking to find it all undone.
He drew back just enough to look at her and noticed the tears trailing over the flush of her cheeks. He thumbed one away, carefully, almost reverently. “I am sorry,” he said, the words clumsy in his mouth. “I shouldn’t have—”
Pearl shook her head, reckless with relief. “Don’t. I have wanted—” Her voice failed, then returned, steadier. “I have wanted this for so long. But it always seemed…” She trailed off, a laugh and a sob tangled in her throat. “Impossible.”
He made a sound, a strangled exhale, half curse, half prayer. He took both of her hands in his, pressing them to his heart. “It never was, Pearl. Not for a single day.” The truth of it nearly staggered him. “I loved you. Long before Percy. Long after. I watched you choose him, and I thought… God, I thought it was the right thing to do. For both of us.”
Pearl looked down at their hands, her lashes dark with tears. “It was right, then. Percy was… safe. He made the world seem bearable.” She paused, searching his face for permission to go on. “When he died, I swore—I told myself I would never feel that kind of pain again. Never love. Never—”
“Never be vulnerable,” Victor finished, softer.
She nodded. “I thought I could be a good mother, a good widow, and that would be enough. But you…” She let out abreath, trembling. “You made it all come alive again. I hated you for that. I wanted to hate you for that.”
He smiled, small and sad. “You did a poor job of it.”
“So did you.” She touched his face, tracing the line of his cheekbone, the silver at his temple. “Why did you wait so long?”
He shook his head. “I thought you hated me. Or worse, pitied me.”
“Never.”
He let the silence gather. The only sounds were the hiss of the fire and the thud of his heart, loud enough to echo. “I wanted to tell you how I felt. At the ball that night. The summer before he proposed. I tried—God knows I tried. But you were so—” He broke off, searching for the word, then settled on, “luminous. I thought you deserved someone less… broken.”
Pearl’s laughter was watery but true. “I was never luminous. I was scared out of my mind. You made me want things I didn’t have words for.”
He stared at her, incredulous, the burden of a decade’s misunderstanding falling away in increments. “I’m an idiot. I’m a bigger fool than Percy ever was. I wanted to speak to you sooner, but you were in mourning. How could I intrude on that?”
