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Soot was streaked across the strong lines of his face, and his hair fell into his eyes. He brushed it back with his hand.
A look of panic crossed his face. “Do I still have it?” He felt about his waistcoat. “Don’t tell me I’ve lost it.”
“What are you talking about?” Mari asked.
He drew something out of his pocket. “This.”
He dropped to his knees in the streaming water and soot, holding something out toward her.
Something that glinted with gold and glowed like fire.
“I’m an obstinate fool who can’t see past his own nose,” he said. “But I know one thing.”
“Edgar, your poor knees. Get up off the paving stones.”
Mari’s heart thudded and her vision narrowed. Not too narrow, because it had to be wide enough for Edgar’s broad, broad shoulders.
“Mari-rhymes-with-starry, you walked through my door and you broke all of my rules. You put me in my place. And then you made me love you. Wait.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “This is coming out all wrong.”
“Edgar...” Tears filled in her eyes.
“I love you, Mari. You give me hope. Hope that my life has meaning. That I’m not only living in opposition to some painful memory. You hang the stars in my sky. Without you, I won’t be able to see my way in the dark.”
“Ew,” said Michel. “Romance.”
“Hush,” Adele told him. “Can’t you see he’s trying to ask her something?”
“You’d better ask her what you’re going to ask her, Your Grace,” called her father. “Because I’d like a nice hot glass of whiskey and honey.”
“I’m trying to,” said Edgar. “Now then, where was I?”
She wanted to hear him say the words again. “You were saying that you loved me,” she prompted.
“You toppled my wrought iron walls like so much crumbling plaster. Thirty years from now, I’ll feel the exact same way. I love you. Plain and simple. But can you love me?”
Mari smiled. “Edgar,” she said, and she wondered at how steady her voice remained. “I’m a thoroughly practical person and I told myself I would never allow sentiment to muddle my thinking. But I’m thoroughly, impractically, impossibly in love with you. Now do please get up.”
“Then you’ll have me?” His eyes sparked with pleasure. “You’ll have me, Mari?”
“Oh for Heaven’s sake,” she replied. “Of course I will.”
“Hoorah!” cheered the children.
Edgar leapt to his feet and gathered Mari into his arms, sweeping her into a long, blissful kiss.
When he slipped the ring on her finger she saw that it was a ruby in a simple gold setting.
“My mother’s ring,” he whispered in her ear. “She wanted you to have it.”
“You visited her?”
“Yes, and she told me not to come back until there was a wedding to plan.”
“What’s going on here?” asked Mr. Grafton, joining them and wiping grime and ashes from his face with a handkerchief.
“She’ll have me,” Edgar said, wonderingly.
Mr. Grafton chuckled. He clapped Edgar on the back. “Ambrose, it is, then.”
