Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-three

Two weeks later

My dear daughter, the Viscountess Payne,

The bells are ringing in St. Ursula’s today! I told the vicar they must, no matter that you’re all the way in Northumberland. How happy we were to receive your letter. As my friends always tell me, my intuition is unparalleled. I always knew that rascal Payne would be my son one day. But who could have guessed his viscountess! You have done your mother proud, dear. Of course, you must take time for your honeymoon, but do think of returning to Town for the celebrations of the Glorious Peace. Diana must be next, you know. She will be well placed to take advantage of your new connections. I have higher hopes for her prospects than ever. If you can catch Payne, surely Diana can snare a duke!

Yours, etc.

Mama

With an amused smile, Minerva refolded the letter and placed it in her pocket.

She paused in the middle of the path, drawing a lungful of the warm, fragrant late-spring air and loosening her bonnet strings to let the straw bonnet slip down her back. Then with a light step, she continued on the country path that led from the village to Riverchase.

Bluebells waved drunkenly on their slender stalks, begging to be plucked. As she went, she stopped to gather them, along with primrose and a few remaining daffodils. She had quite a posy accumulated by the time she climbed the hill. As she neared the ridge’s apex, a smile bloomed across her face. She warmed with joy, just anticipating the sight of the familiar granite facade.

But it wasn’t Riverchase she first glimpsed as she crested the hill.

It was Colin, walking down the same path—toward her.

“Hullo,” he called, drawing near. “I was just on my way to the village.”

“What for?”

“To see you, naturally.”

“Oh. Well, I was on my way to see you.” She gave him a shy smile, feeling that familiar touch of giddiness.

He gestured at her bouquet of wildflowers. “Collecting flowers today? Not rocks?”

“I like flowers sometimes.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Vases of flowers are much easier to send round to the cottage.” His gloved fingertip caressed her cheek. “Miss Minerva, may I . . . ?”

“A kiss?”

He nodded.

She offered her cheek to him, leaning in to accept the tender, courtly gesture. But at the last moment, he turned her face to his and kissed her on the lips instead. Oh, he was ever the scoundrel, and she was glad of it. Their kiss was brief, but warm and sweet as the afternoon sun.

After a moment, he straightened. His gaze wandered her form. “You look . . .” He shook his head, smiling a little. “Cataclysmic with beauty today.”

She swallowed, taking a moment to recover from his masculine splendor. “You rather devastate me, too.”

“I’d like to think my kiss can take all the credit for that lovely blush, but I doubt it’s the truth. What has you so self-satisfied?”

“The kiss has a great deal to do with it. But the post came through this morning.” She fished a pair of envelopes from her pocket. “I had two rather interesting letters. The first is from my mother. She extends her felicitations on our marriage.”

She handed him the letter from Spindle Cove. He unfolded the page and scanned its contents. As he read, the corner of his mouth curled in amusement.

“I’m sorry,” Minerva said. “I know she’s dreadful.”

“She’s not. She’s a mother who wants the best for her daughters.”

“She’s mistaken, is what she is. I didn’t tell her we’d married. I only said we’d stopped at your estate, and she shouldn’t expect me back for a month or more. But she’s obviously assumed.”

“They’ve all assumed. I had a letter from Bram just the other day. He wanted to know why I hadn’t sent the solicitors written proof of our marriage yet. ‘Don’t I want my money?’ he asked.”

Together, they turned to walk toward Riverchase.

“They’ll learn the truth eventually,” she mused.

“Yes, they will. You said you had two interesting letters. Who sent the other?”

“Sir Alisdair Kent.”

She noted a slight hitch in his step. The subtle hint of jealousy thrilled her more than it ought.

“Oh, truly?” he said, in a purposely offhand tone. “And what did the good Sir Alisdair have to say?”

“Not much. Only that the Royal Geological Journal has declined to publish my paper about Francine.”

“What?” He stopped dead and turned to her. The affectionate sparkle in his eyes became a flash of something irate, verging on murderous. “Oh, Min. That’s bollocks. They can’t have done that to you.”

She shrugged. “Sir Alisdair said he tried to argue on my behalf, but the other journal editors would not be convinced. My evidence was specious, they said; my conclusions were too great of a reach . . .”

“Codswallop.” His jaw tightened. “Cowardly bastards. They just won’t be outdone by a woman, that’s all.”

“Perhaps.”

He shook his head ruefully. “I’m sorry, Min. We should have gone in to the symposium that day. You could have presented your findings in person. If only they’d all heard you speak, you could have convinced them.”

“No, don’t be sorry.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Don’t ever be sorry, Colin. I never will be.”

They stood there for a long moment, smiling a little and gazing into each other’s eyes. Lately, they could spend hours like this—a palpable happiness and love welling in the space between them.

Minerva couldn’t wait to be his wife. But she would never regret refusing to marry him that day in Edinburgh, at the threshold of the Royal Geological Society.

He’d been through so much just to get her to that doorway. Faced his deepest fears, committed feats of daring. Opened his heart to her, and his home as well. He’d given her courage and strength and hours of laughter. Not to mention passion, and all those fervent words of love. In proposing to her, he’d made the bravest leap of faith she could imagine.

In return, Minerva wanted to give him this much, at least. The proper courtship he’d wanted. A chance for their love to take root and grow. When she recited those wedding vows, she wanted him to know they were vows of freely given, lasting devotion, not a hasty grab at scientific glory.

Colin deserved that much.

They’d turned their backs on Mr. Barrington and the Royal Geological Society that day. But Sir Alisdair Kent had the curiosity to follow. He invited them for a meal at the nearby inn, where they spent several hours engaged in scholarly debate with his friends. Sir Alisdair and company listened, questioned, argued, and generally afforded Minerva the respect due an intellectual peer. Colin saw that the wineglasses never went empty and kept his arm draped casually, possessively, over the back of her chair.

No, it wasn’t a medallion and a prize of five hundred guineas, but it was a symposium of sorts. And it had been well worth the journey.

Afterward, she and Colin had traveled straight back to Northumberland. Colin installed her in a lovely cottage in the village, with his housekeeper Mrs. Hammond as chaperone. And then he’d gone about living up to all his promises of a tender, attentive courtship. He called on her most mornings, and they went for long, rambling walks in the afternoons. He brought her gifts of sweets and lace, and they kept the errand boys dashing back and forth with notes that needed no signatures. Several times a week, she and Mrs. Hammond dined at Riverchase, and he took Sunday dinner at the cottage.

They also spent time apart. She, writing up her Spindle Cove findings and exploring the new craggy landscape. Colin, surveying the estate with his land steward and making assessments and plans for the future.

As for plans for their future . . . Minerva tried to be patient.

If Colin had taken a hurtling leap of faith when he’d proposed, her gesture of faith had been more of a long, slow skate on thin ice. As much as she’d been enjoying their courtship, she tried not to think about the potential for heartbreak. There was always the chance that he might change his mind.

But in the month or so since returning from Edinburgh, they’d survived their first argument—a dispute over, of all things, a missing pair of gloves. They’d also weathered their second clash. It had begun as a tense disagreement over whether Minerva could safely explore the local crags unaccompanied. (Of course she could, was Minerva’s opinion. Colin begged to differ.) The tense disagreement exploded into a grand row that involved loud denouncements of female independence, male arrogance, fur-lined cloaks, rocks of all sorts, and—inexplicably—the color green. But the eventual compromise—a joint excursion to the crags that became a passionate, frantic tryst in the heather—quite took the edge off their anger.

Since then, their courtship had been as sweet and tender as ever—but not entirely chaste.

Minerva put her arm through his, and they resumed walking down the path. “I’m not deterred. I’ll find some other way to publish my findings.”

“We’ll find a way. If you can wait five more weeks, I’ll celebrate my birthday by printing a copy for every household in England.”

She smiled. “A few hundred copies would do, and there’s no need to rush. Francine’s footprint survived in that cave for millions of years. I can wait a bit longer to make my own mark.”

“Would it help if I tell you there’s already a deep, permanent, Minerva-sized footprint on my heart?”

“Yes.” She kissed his cheek, savoring that hint of cloves from his shaving soap. “Do you have any business this afternoon? I was hoping to spend a few hours poking through the Riverchase library.”

He didn’t answer for a moment. “If an afternoon in the library is your desire, you shall have it. But I confess, I had something else in mind.”

“Truly? What’s that?”

“A wedding.”

Minerva nearly dropped her posy of flowers. “Whose wedding?”

“Ours.”

“But we can’t—”

“We can. The vicar’s read the banns in the parish church three times now. I sent him a note before I left the house this morning, and I asked the butler to ready the chapel. By the time we return, all should be ready.”

Minerva blinked at him. He’d been planning this? “But I thought we agreed to wait until after your birthday.”

His arms went around her, wreathing loosely about her waist. “I know, but I can’t. I simply can’t. I slept well last night. But when I woke this morning, I missed you so intensely. I don’t even know how to describe the sensation. I looked at the other pillow, and it just seemed wrong that you weren’t there. As though I’d woken up missing my own arm, or half of my heart. I felt incomplete. So I rose, and dressed, and I just started walking toward you—because I couldn’t move in any other direction. And then there you were, walking toward me. Flowers in hand.”

Emotion glimmered in his eyes, and he touched her cheek. “This isn’t a whim. I simply can’t stand to spend another day apart. I want you to share my life and my home, and . . .” He cinched her tight, drawing her body in exquisite contact with his. He bent his head, pressing kisses to the soft place beneath her ear. “And I want you to share my bed. As my wife. Tonight.”

His kisses made her dizzy with longing. She clung to him tight. “Colin.”

“I love you, Min. I love you so much, it terrifies me. Say you’ll marry me today.”

She pulled back a little. “I . . .” Swallowing hard, she ran a trembling hand down her butter-yellow muslin. “I should at least change my frock.”

“Don’t you dare.” He shook his head, framing her waist in his hands. “You’re perfect. Utterly perfect, just as you are.”

Emotion swelled in her heart and thickened her throat. She felt like pinching herself, just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. But she never could have dreamed something so wonderful. She was perfect. He was perfect. This moment was perfect. She was afraid to speak, for fear of ruining it somehow.

Don’t pause to think. Just run down the slope.

“Yes,” she finally blurted out. “Yes. Let’s get married.”

“Today?”

“This very hour.” A giddy grin stretched her cheeks, and she couldn’t hold back the pure joy any longer. She launched herself at him, flinging her arms around his neck. “Oh, Colin, I love you so much. I can’t possibly tell you. I’ll try to show you, but I’ll need years.”

He chuckled. “We have decades, darling. Decades.”

Five minutes’ hasty walk saw them to the chapel door. While Colin went to find the vicar and round up a few servants as witnesses, Minerva passed into the small churchyard and came to stand before a slab of flawless granite, polished to a mirror gleam.

She stood there for a long minute, unsure how to begin. Then she took a deep breath and dabbed a tear from her cheek.

“I’m so sorry we’ll never meet,” she whispered, laying her posy atop the late Lord and Lady Payne’s grave. “But thank you. For him. I promise, I’ll love him as fiercely as I can. Kindly send down some blessings when you can spare them. We’ll probably need them, from time to time.”

By the time she left the churchyard and rounded the chapel corner, she caught sight of Colin leading the vicar, butler, and house servants marching in a bemusement-day parade. Holding open the door, he waved them all into the chapel.

“Come along, now,” he said, tapping his boot with impatience.

When the rest had all filed in, and only the two of them were left standing at the door, he caught Minerva’s gaze. “Ready?”

She nodded, breathless. “If you are.”

“I’ve never been so sure of anything.” He reached for her hand and kissed it. “You belong beside me, Min. And I belong beside you. I know it in my heart. I feel it in my soul. I’m certain, in every possible way.”

And he’d never been more handsome.

“Certainty becomes you,” she said.

Smiling, he laced her arm through his, leading her into the chapel.

And that was how the grand, epic story of their future—the tale they’d tell friends and dinner party guests and grandchildren for decades to come—ended. Just as a proper fairy tale should. With a romantic wedding, a tender kiss . . .

And the promise of happily ever after.