Unable to bear it any longer, Thomas shot to his feet and pulled Nora into his arms. “But she will, Nora. We will live with her in our hearts.” His throat momentarily clogged with emotion. “She brought us together all those years ago and we owe her for that.”
“I love you, Thomas.” She tilted her head to look up into his face. Her tear stained cheeks were pink from the wind and her eyes glittered from unshed tears, and, by God, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. “I will be your wife in every way.”
Thomas dipped to press a kiss to the top of her head with every ounce of tenderness in his soul. He broke the contact to look around where they stood. Though they stood in Hyde Park, the largest park in England’s busiest city, it was as if they were the only two in the world. Autumn flowers bloomed in their golds and burgundies and oranges. The leaves from the trees cascaded in the breeze like falling stars. They stood beneath the ancient arch carved from love by hands he’d once believed to bemythical. Beth had believed in this place—she’d known in her heart it had existed even though her eyes had never witnessed it. Her trust in it had guided her life and paid off in the end.
And Thomas knew what needed to be done.
“Let us recite vows here and now,” he said, smiling broadly.
“Here?” Nora laughed incredulously.
“Why not?”
“Because they will not be legally binding.”
“What of it?” Thomas lifted her hands and pressed them to his thrumming heartbeat. “Don’t you feel it? The magic of this place? Beth?”
Nora laughed breathily and nodded her head. “I feel her here.”
“Then I can think of no better place to honor Beth and have her with us than beneath this arch.” Thomas cupped her cheek. “I, Thomas Andrew James Bexton, take you, Eleanor Marie Allen, to be my wife. I promise to honor you and your dreams, to care for you even when you do not wish me to, to love you to my dying breath and beyond.”
Nora covered his hand with hers. “I, Nora Marie Allen, take you, Thomas Andrew James Bexton, to be my husband. I promise to honor you as you honor me, to care for you even if you are insufferable, to love you to my dying breath and beyond. I cannot promise to obey you in all things, so I shan’t lie.”
A chuckle bubbled up from his chest. “I expect nothing less from you.” He cupped her face in his hands and slowly, savoring every lessening inch of space between them, he bent to press his lips to hers. Their kiss began sweetly and then morphed into an expression of their passion and all the years of their separation.
Birds flitted over their heads, twittering and swooping, landing atop the ancient arch to stare in wonder at the scene below. An unseasonably warm breeze tugged at Nora’s navy skirts, swirling around the couple a multicolored cascade ofleaves. The branches around them swayed like the arms of joyous celebrants.
If one listened closely, the whisper of a woman’s elated laughter might be heard beneath the rustle of leaves.
Epilogue
"That isn’t fair! Papa! Tell Beth she must return my horse to me!”
“It’s my turn!”
“No! It is my toy!”
Nora fought a smile as her husband leveled a look at their children from over the edge of his newspaper. She marked the page of her book and watched the exchange. Thomas possessed a nearly infinite well of patience with most things, and the children were no different. Still, it amused her to no end that they instinctively knew precisely how to rile him.
Following their more traditional wedding ceremony, she and Thomas had immediately begun working on a family. Jacob had followed eight-and-a-half months later and Beth, a year after him almost to the day. Now, at four and three years of age, respectively, the children were at each other’s throats when they weren’t working in tandem to create as much chaos as possible. Of course, Thomas blamed Nora for their mischievous behavior. Each time, she narrowed her eyes at him, remindinghim that he’d been quite the troublemaker in his youth, which he staunchly denied. It wasn’t until Beth and Jacob had formed a short-lived truce to exact revenge upon him that Thomas had—rather sheepishly—admitted that he’d played the same prank with the frogs in his pillowcase on his own father in his youth.
Nora had never been so satisfied.
Well, almost never.
“Didn’t I give you your own horse when you fell in love with Jacob’s, Little Princess?” he asked his daughter. “Where is your horse?”
Beth stuck out her lower lip and looked up at her father from beneath her impossibly long, impossibly dark lashes. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should take better care of your things,” Jacob piped in with an air of superiority far beyond his young years.
This immediately launched another battle between the children. Thomas sighed and set aside his paper, as well as the spectacles he’d taken to wearing these last few years. He’d initially resented the need to wear them, but Nora found them achingly handsome—especially when paired with the distinguished silver that had so gradually begun to creep into the rest of his hair from his temples. He remained hale and hardy, strong and fit as ever, her husband. And he made her swoon with his words, actions, touches, and kisses on a daily basis. She subtly masked her mouth with her hand so the children wouldn’t see her smile as she watched Thomas’s efforts at peacemaking. Words were ineffective and he eventually had to settle for hiking a child beneath each arm.
“I will purchase you each a live pony of your own if you cease this instant.” Immediately, the children halted their thrashing and stared adoringly up at their father.
As if summoned by magic, the nanny appeared in the doorway to take the children for their nap. Thomas sigheddramatically and set the children back on their feet. They kissed his cheek, then dashed over to Nora to kiss hers before each took one of Nanny’s hands and quit the room. Thomas dropped into the chair and slouched as the door shut.
“Monsters. Both of them.”
