Chapter 47

“Curtis, I…I want to apologize,” I stammered.

He looked surprised. “For what?”

My eyes dropped shamefully to the ground. “You were so sweet after…after that day. With Father, and my injury and everything. You came to visit me and even sent me letters after we moved. And I never responded. I only just read them today. I didn’t know your arm was broken, and that you had been shot. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to think of you, and none of what happened was your fault at all! I want you to know that I am so, so sorry. You were such a good friend, and I wasn’t a good friend at all. You deserved better.” I hung my head, ashamed.

We were silent for a long moment. Curtis stepped closer and took my hand. Then he cupped his other hand under my chin and raised my face up. “Hey, you were my best friend. You had a rough patch, and I knew that. Of course I wished you wrote back, but I understand why you didn’t. You had a lot to deal with.”

I gently squeezed his hand. “I’ve missed you so much, Curtis.” I confessed softly. “More than you know.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Curtis whispered. “I never forgot about you. I kept waiting and hoping you would come back. I loved you then and that never changed. I still do.”

“I love you too.”

We stared at each other. My heart began to beat faster. Was I crazy? I had come here to congratulate Curtis on his engagement and to apologize for being such a terrible friend. For running away when he had needed me. And here I was proclaiming my love for him!

“Truly, I know when I wrote that letter, I said that you are worth waiting for,” Curtis began.

“But?” I asked apprehensively.

“But I don’t think I can wait any longer. I need you in my life. I couldn’t bear it to lose you again.”

He knelt down and pulled out a ring. “Will you marry me?”

My mouth fell open. What? How could this be happening so fast? I knew that I loved him. Of course I knew. Just as he had said his love for me had never waivered, neither had mine. All these years later, any time I imagined myself married, it was always Curtis beside me. It was as though I had been hoping all this time, for just this to occur, but now that it had, I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there, dumbstruck.

Merely twelve hours before, I hadn’t even dreamed I would be attending the ball. My mind had already accepted that Curtis would never be in my future, even if my heart was still struggling with that concept. And then there had been the whirlwind of finding Curtis’ letters, coming back to the palace, reuniting with him, and discovering Curtis still loved me… Was I ready to move forward?

Curtis winced, and I realized he had been uncomfortably kneeling while my thoughts had raced through my mind. “Curtis, I don’t think you need to keep kneeling. You can stand up.”

He didn’t move. “You didn’t answer my question. Will you marry me?”

“Curtis, I… I don’t know.”

Fear crept into his face.

“I’m not saying no!” I said hastily. “I just… I just need some time to process all of this. This afternoon I still thought you were going to be running off to Avivia to marry Aria.”

He slowly stood up. “I guess that would be a bit of a shock,” he conceded. “But you said that you loved me.”

“And I do!”

“So marry me!”

I hesitated.

“Truly. When you left, it was like a part of me died. Every day since then, I have wished that you would come back. I need you back in my life. You make me a better person. You give me a reason to wake up in the morning and be the best I can be. If you walk away tonight, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. I can’t live without you anymore. Marry me.”

“But…” my thoughts were a blur. So many questions tumbled around in my mind, and finally I stammered, “H…how long have you had the ring?”

He held the ring up to catch the light. It was beautiful, a delicate golden band with diamonds cloistered at the top. It was a ring worthy of a princess. “I got it about the time that the ball was announced. I made sure to tell one of the couriers where your house was so that he would be sure to invite you. Just to be sure, we invited every girl in your town.”

“I thought every girl in the kingdom was invited.”

Curtis shook his head incredulously. “The castle would have been overrun!”

“But, the invitation said…”

“That was just another tactic from the Council. They had us pick out a few towns nearby, and we sent invitations exclusively to them. We couldn’t possibly accommodate all the thousands of girls that would have showed up otherwise. So I picked your town, and Hubert picked another. I think he threw a dart at a map to pick.”

I laughed, marveling that Curtis went to such great lengths to make sure I was invited to the ball. Now the smaller number of girls I had noticed milling around the ballroom made sense. He hadn’t wanted every eligible maiden in the kingdom. He had wanted me. He still loved me. I had never been able to stop thinking about him, after all these years. I loved him too. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Yes?”

“Yes, I will marry you.”

Elated, Curtis slipped the cool band onto my finger. We gazed into each other’s eyes, lost in the moment. We were going to get married. I was going to be my best friend’s wife.

Curtis bent toward me, his eyes lowering to my mouth. As he placed his hand at the back of my neck, I could feel how large his hands were. I placed my own palm against his chest, remembering all the stolen moments in the year before the accident, and knew what to do as though no time had passed. Curtis pressed his lips to mine, pulling me close and wrapping me in a tight embrace. My arms wrapped around him, wishing this moment would stretch on forever.

There was no stable boy to interrupt us now, no teenage worries at all about being seen, so we kissed again and again. I somehow felt like I was breathing too fast and not breathing at all, but it didn’t bother me in the slightest. Nothing mattered except for this moment.

After a long time, we broke apart, but still looked at each other. “Wow, I really missed you!” Curtis said, and gently pecked my lips again.

I smiled widely. “And here I was thinking you would just replace me with the first pretty face that came along.”

“There is no face prettier than yours,” Curtis said fervently.

“You are very generous with your compliments.”

Did he even know about my disfigurement? He must—he said in one of his letters that Comfort had told him about it. I bit my lip, unsure of how to begin. Curtis merely took my hand and began walking over near the lily pond where Father had proposed to Mother.

“What is it?” Curtis asked.

“I… I didn’t say anything,” I said, surprised.

Curtis looked shrewdly at me. “You always bite your lip when you want to say something.”

“Nothing gets past you.”

We walked on, arriving at the bench beside the pond. I sat down and kicked off my shoes again. Why had I ever decided to wear those infernal accessories? Then I remembered—Comfort chose them, not me. No wonder my feet were in agony! Comfort and Mother, finishing school instructors that they were, were always daintily stepping around in high-heeled, pointy-toed shoes that pinched their toes and gave them blisters. I had always preferred big comfy shoes that I could conceal under my skirts. Curtis pulled my foot up onto his lap and began rubbing it. His large hands putting pressure on my sore feet felt wonderful.

“Where did you learn to give foot massages?” I asked.

“Hubert likes his feet being rubbed,” Curtis answered nonchalantly.

My mouth hung open, horrified. Curtis looked at me then burst out laughing. “Got you!”

I let out a long breath. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again! Here I was, picturing you two having foot massage parties.”

Curtis chuckled. “Well, I would like to claim that I have an extensive education about this matter, but alas, I am just making it up as I go.”

He massaged my feet for a few more minutes. We listened to the frogs croaking, the crickets chirping, the occasional sound of a carriage departing from the ball, trundling off toward the main road. It was peaceful.

“In your letters, you said you had a broken arm,” I ventured, trying to find a tactful way to approach the subject.

“Oh yeah, it healed in no time. I still have the scars from where the arrows went in though.” Curtis said casually. “But it is okay, every man needs a good scar story. I am quite proud of mine.”

I hung my head, ashamed to say anything about my own scars.

Curtis gasped, “Truly, I am sorry!” He began to stumble over his words. “I know you have scars too, I just…I mean, I didn’t…I didn’t mean to make you feel bad…” he trailed off awkwardly.

I hastened to explain. “No! No, it isn’t that. You didn’t make me feel bad. I am just… embarrassed of my face sometimes,” I finished quietly.

Curtis nodded, “Comfort wrote me a letter after you moved. She told me about it.” He peered into my face, pulling my hair back to examine my features closely. “You really can’t tell.”

I felt ashamed now, like I had deceived Curtis. Tricked him into proposing to me until the false pretense that I was pretty. “I wear a lot of cosmetics.” I admitted as I indicated the left side of my face. “Here especially.”

Curtis looked hard at my face and rubbed away a small portion of the makeup “That is it?” Curtis asked after a moment. “That isn’t bad at all! I wouldn’t even be able to tell if you didn’t tell me where to look. The way Comfort described it in her letter, you were almost unrecognizable.”

“I was at first,” I conceded. “Most of my hair was gone, and my face was red and swollen. It had blistered, and I had boils for a long time before they peeled off. If she wrote to you right after we moved, I was just getting over the worst of it then.”

Curtis put his arm around me. “I am sorry, Truly,” he said sincerely. “I should have been there for you.”

I leaned into his arm, let my head rest on his shoulder. “You were there for me, Curtis. You always have been.”

“And I always will be,” he finished.

We sat for a long time, not speaking, just drinking in each other’s company. I had my best friend back.