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‘He is your dad, then,’ she said softly, ‘because if the positions were reversed wouldn’t you do the same?’ She reached up to smooth back his hair in a gesture he’d seen her use with Fleur. It stopped the breath in his body. ‘He must be so proud of you, all you’ve accomplished.’
‘I don’t know about that. He was interested in you. Do you mind that I talked about you?’
‘It depends what you said.’
‘I asked for his advice. I told him I was in love with this beautiful, brilliant Englishwoman and she had a sweet little girl and she was surrounded by all these people who love her, and I’d stuffed up.’
‘You’re in love with me?’
Nik swallowed down hard. He wanted more than anything to take her in his arms, especially when she sounded so uncertain, but he had to get through this first. He had to give her that certainty they’d once held between them back.
‘He told me thirty-five years ago he’d been in love with my mother but he could see that she loved my father more, and he let her go. He told me if he’d known about me it would have been different, he would have made a different choice. And I thought about that, Sybella. I thought about all the variables in our lives. What if your Simon was still here? What if Deda hadn’t found that picture in Country Life? And I realised the only element in all of this that I could control was me. I had choices. If I went ahead and punished Galina I would lose you. Because you can’t love the man who would do something like that, because of the woman you are, and that’s the woman I love. That’s the man I want to be for you.’
Sybella wasn’t sure how it happened, but she was in his arms and it felt like coming home. Her whole life with its good and its bad had been leading up to this moment.
More than anything she knew now this was what the fates had had in store for her.
All the bad things that could happen to a person had rained down on her and then Fleur was born and her life had taken on new meaning, until this moment when it all made perfect sense.
Embodied in this one, extraordinary man. Who was hers.
‘Oh, Nik, I’ve been so lonely without you,’ she confessed in a fractured voice as the tears came. ‘I don’t care where we live. As long as we’re with you it doesn’t matter.’
‘Net, it does matter.’ His big hands smoothed over her back possessively. ‘I want you and Fleur to be with me and I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.’
She began to cry in earnest and he held her tighter. For once she was happy to give way to his natural dominance.
‘I was so proud of you for going ahead with the show, for not withdrawing the funding.’
He framed her face, wiping away her tears with his thumbs. ‘On that front I thought I’d have a lot of explaining to do.’
‘No, Meg did that.’ She sniffed happily, gulping on all the heady emotion surging through her. ‘She explained everything, bless her.’ Sybella pressed her temple to his bent one. ‘I’m just so happy you’re here.’
He dropped down on both knees in front of her and she heard Meg give a very un-Meg-like gasp of excitement some distance away.
‘Sybella Frances Parminter, will you marry me?’
Sybella’s face lit up with a smile she felt from her toes to her fingertips. ‘Yes, of course I will.’
Then she fell to her knees in front of him and wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
‘That’s my yes,’ she said against his mouth, ‘in case it wasn’t clear.’
Then she kissed him again, and Nik wrapped her up in his arms and breathed freely for the first time since he’d driven out of Edbury.
He had her; he was home.
* * *
The four of them made their way down the hill towards the carnival atmosphere of the village.
Fleur on Nik’s broad shoulders, Sybella holding his hand, Meg picking her way through the field in her heels.
Sybella’s heart was overflowing with all of her blessings.
Later in the afternoon when family had been told, impromptu champagne had been drunk, her father-in-law Marcus had taken a walk with Nik from which they’d returned somewhat late, having ended at the pub, only then did Nik propose they go up to the Hall.
