Page 76 of Our Strange Duet

He pulled me off the boardwalk and into the wet sand.

The heels of my sodden boots immediately sank into the sluice, but he trudged onward, drawing us closer to the rushing tide, until we reached the point where the waves crashed ashore, dousing the sand with their salty fury.

I feared one rogue wave would be enough to snatch us into the sea and turn us into a tale of doomed lovers, a cautionary ghost story to be whispered on stormy nights.

“Raoul, this is madness,” I cried out, realizing that I should have put a stop to this game so many times before now. It had started out as an adventure, something we’d one day laugh over, but the danger was now too present to ignore. “What are we even doing out here?”

Raoul stopped and let out a deep exhalation before he turned to me. Expectation lit his face. “Don’t you know what today is? Don’t you know where we are?”

I couldn’t think of a single thing special about the date. It was nearly the end of August. Raoul’s birthday was later in the year, in November. Mine in April. I glanced up and down the abandoned coast. There was nothing remarkable about this patch of land, nothing I could see, until…

Another wave crashed around us, and then I saw. The years peeled back, and the storm fell away, and I was a girl of sixteen again. Raoul was a young man, shivering before me as he held out the dripping red scarf he’d gallantly rescued from the sea.

“This is where we first met!” I exclaimed.

He nodded encouragingly. “Four years ago today. Christine, I…I’ve been wanting to do this for quite some time, but everything needed to be right. When I realized what date it was, it seemed perfect, but now…now I fear I’ve made a muddled mess of everything,” he admitted.

Every bit of breath was knocked from me as he pulled a balled-up scarf from his jacket pocket. It wasn’t my mother’s—the shade wasn’t quite right—but its cheery red was close enough that I knew exactly what he intended to do.

“Oh, Raoul,” I whispered as he knelt on one knee in the sand, heedless of the waves swarming him.

He opened up the scarf to reveal the most dazzling ring I’d ever seen. It had a large cushion-cut diamond at its center, with two smaller but equally brilliant stones flanking it. Even in the stormy gray light, they sparkled with a joyous luster that came from only the very finest of jewels.

“I don’t know what to say,” I gasped.

He only smiled. “Say you’ll share with me one love, one lifetime.”

Thunder rumbled overhead, and I clutched his hands. “Raoul…”

“Share each day with me, each night, each morning.”

“I will,” I laughed, tugging at him and wishing that I could pull him up out of the surf and the storm, wishing we were somewhere warm and safe and dry together.

But he remained planted, staring up at me with a look of such tender hope illuminating his face. “Say you love me.”

I cupped his cheek, stroking the wet skin with a sweep of my thumb. “You know I do.”

“Then marry me, Christine,” he said, and offered the ring to me.

It was such a Raoul proposal. Simple and pragmatic and straight to the point, easily communicating exactly what he wanted, exactly what I’d hoped to hear. It was perfect.

My heart swelled, and my emotions rose, filling my chest. I’d have given anything for my parents to be here, sharing in this wildly important life moment. I wanted them, especially Father, to see how happy I was.

The wind changed directions, howling with a new pitch that sounded strangely like a violin, and I smiled. Father was here. He was watching. Just as he’d always promised.

I looked down at the man before me, being pummeled by a rainstorm as he waited with such patience, waited with such hope, and I nodded. “Yes.”

Raoul let out a whoop of joy and sprang to his feet, then lifted me up in a twirling embrace. Our mouths found each other, and I could taste him and the salt and the rain as he slipped the ring onto my finger. It was heavier than I’d expected and such a strange presence on my hand that I twisted it about, admiring it from all angles.

A bolt of lightning sizzled down from the clouds and struck the nearby pier. The answering thunder cracked so loudly I feared my heart would explode. We clutched each other tightly.

“Let’s return to the carriage,” he shouted, and we raced back up the beach, laughing and breathless and so very ready to begin our new lives together.

Chapter 25

Days meandered along in a sunlit haze so idyllic I didn’t realize how many weeks had passed until shops began to fill their window displays with heavy wraps and mink-trimmed muffs. The air grew crisp as summer ceded to autumn.

Other tourists packed up and headed home.