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Hawthorne moved to the edge of the great hall, motioning for people to follow and to review their pamphlets as they began the tour.
“Hawthorne has it well in hand now,” Letty said cheerfully. “I had no idea he was going to say anything about me. I never thought he would.”
“I asked him to,” Anne said, and her reward was the delighted grin that spread across Letty’s face. She pointed to the front page of the pamphlet. “I created this with Marcus’s help, detailing who you are and the work that you put into the house. People will know your name.”
It was written there in bold serifed font under an illustration of the front of Hawthorne House.Miss Letitia Barrow, Designer. Anne underlined it with her finger and jabbed the page. “This is for you.”
Letty took the pamphlet and beamed down at it. “Thank you.”
“I rather thought you would like to go through the tour and add your voice to Hawthorne’s in each room. Please do, if you want to. I wanted you to come as our honored guest.”
“I think I am quite familiar enough with the public rooms,” Letty said. “Perhaps we could retire for a brief moment to one of the more private ones?”
Anne nodded.
Letty grinned. “Robert, go expand your mind on the tour.”
Anne led Letty beyond the public rooms to the back of the house and stopped in front of a closed door. She stood with her back to it, one hand on the doorknob. “Over the past few months, you have revealed so many rooms to me, Letty,” she said. “And with each one, I understood more of myself. I am so grateful to know that someone knows me so well. I don’t have your talents for color, or arrangement. But I wanted to give you something.”
She wanted to show Letty that she understood what a gift her work had been and how much she appreciated it.
She wanted to show her the love they could share.
* * *
Anne opened the door and stood back, gesturing for Letty to enter before her. Letty was touched—no one except royalty preceded a duchess. She stopped short after entering the room. It was the little parlor that she had so admired, the one overlooking the terrace. The room itself was largely unchanged, but it was now overflowing with greenery.
Roses, tulips, and orchids were placed on every available surface. Heavy copper tubs sat at the entrance to the terrace, green leafy trees waving gently in the fresh breeze from the open windows where gauzy curtains fluttered. The door was open to the outside, and although the yard was not yet in bloom, Letty could see the potential in her mind’s eye.
“I had the gardeners from Hawthorne Towers send me cuttings and plants from the greenhouses there. I couldn’t position things in here the way you would do, with your clever arrangements of furniture, but I had new curtains put up, and here”—she gestured to the table—“I had paint chips and fabrics assembled, to match as close as possible to the drawing in your sketchbook.” Shades of pale yellow and light gray fanned out on the table, on top of a dark blue velvet swatch.
“It’s beautiful,” Letty said. She couldn’t find the words to express what it meant to her. She didn’t have much in her life these days that she hadn’t fought for.
“Like you,” Anne said. “I know the flowers are temporary bursts of beauty, but the trees will thrive forever. Like the building that surrounds them. Like what you have built for us inside these walls.”
A book lay on the table by the paint chips. Letty picked it up and turned it over in her hands. It was bound in buttery soft yellow leather, with her name etched in gold leaf on the cover.
“Open it,” Anne urged her.
Letty thumbed through the pages, bright white and unmarked, and inhaled the familiar crisp woodsy scent of a new book. There was a note inside the front cover, written in a hand that she recognized as Anne’s own. She read it aloud. “For your next project. Wherever it may take you, may you always come home to me.” She looked up. “Oh, Anne.”
“You have made a living creating homes for other people wherever you go. Because you were tossed out of your own, you know the value of it—and I want to share mine with you. This room is for your pleasure, to sit and while the time away, or to take tea with Fraser and Marcus. It’s not meant for work. But foryou. Really, you can have the use of any room you like, though I hope you will consider my bedchamber to be first among them.” Anne took a deep breath. “I understand what you meant now about making space. I was so focused on my own pleasures and my own needs, and I’m sorry that I didn’t listen enough or pay enough attention to your own. Take me to eating houses and taverns and I’ll take you to balls if you wish. I want to spend as much of my life with you as I can—in public and in private. No more secrets. No more hiding.”
“I love that idea,” Letty said and was surprised to find tears obscuring her vision. “I am sorry for doubting you, and for saying such horrid things. I was so afraid that I didn’t belong in your life, and I lashed out in anger and fear. I know where I belong now. I belong withyou.”
“I love you, Letty,” Anne said softly. “You are so strong, and capable, but I want you to know that I am here to support you just as much as you have supported me. I want you by my side, in this house or any other. You turned my heart upside down when you tore up the estate, and I don’t ever want the work you’ve done on me to stop. I love how you think, how you challenge everything you come up against.”
“I love you too, Anne.” Letty’s heart felt as light as the gossamer curtains on the window. “Watching you discover yourself has been one of the greatest joys of my life. I want to go on discovering our lives together and creating it new again and again with fresh challenges and projects.”
Anne’s eyes were bright. “Yougave me the gift of myself. I didn’t know what I wanted until you showed it to me. I didn’t know how much I could have, if I could have only dreamt it. Now we have our own fairy tale ending.”
Letty wrapped her arms around her and pressed her mouth to Anne’s, trying to pour all of her emotion into her kiss when words didn’t seem to be enough.
“I don’t wish to let you go,” Anne said, cupping Letty’s cheek. “But you are the guest of honor at this grand opening, and the tour must be done by now. You should greet your adoring public.”
Letty laughed. What a gift today had been, in so many ways. “I daresay they are hardly adoring. But maybe they found something to please them along the way.”
“I certainly have,” Anne murmured, her eyes caressing Letty’s body, and they both laughed.
