Chapter 28 #2
George inched his hand closer to her, catching hers in his palm once more as he finally dared to utter the words, “I am in love with you, Lady Cecelia Flannery, and I can only now admit to myself that I have been for all the time that I have known you. All the years we spent apart have been a wound upon my heart, and I cannot bear the sting of it any longer.”
Cecelia blinked, long and slow as if she were utterly confused by his words. “George, you do not have to—”
“Let me say this, Cece,” he said, placing his other hand over hers to cup it in both of his.
Her skin was warm between his palms, her hand much smaller than his, gentle and almost fragile but utterly beautiful.
He found himself wondering whether the single freckle upon the knuckle of her middle finger still remained there, still as dark as it had been before.
Lifting his hand for just a second, he spied it right where he remembered it and started to smile.
“What?” she insisted.
“You cannot bring yourself to believe me, can you? You cannot bring yourself to believe that I am and always have been utterly and hopelessly in love with you,” he said, sighing deeply as he realized his own foolishness in the situation.
“I cannot blame you. I have never shown you nor told you. I could not even admit it to myself for so long, and I see now that you were right. I was a jealous, interfering fool, but I cannot say now that I regret one second of it.”
He looked her in the eye, and his heart swelled as he saw the affection glowing there. Her green irises blazed with it so violently that she almost didn’t have to return his affections, for he sensed it, he knew it deep in his heart, and suddenly all the fear and all the nerves melted away.
There was not a single doubt left in his mind as he reached into his pocket and plucked out her pendant. Holding it in his palm, he held it out to her and said, “I believe this belongs to you.”
When she looked down at his palm, it seemed to take her a moment to realize what he was holding. But as the realization dawned upon her, she snatched her hand from his and placed both of hers over her mouth.
“You kept it!”
George’s cheeks heated a little as he said, “It is the most precious gift that I ever gave. How could I not see it fixed and returned to you?”
When she looked at him again, there were tears in her eyes. He noted how her lower lip quivered, the colour the perfect shade of peach.
“I … I thought it was lost forever,” she admitted, and a single tear rolled down her cheek.
“May I put it back on for you?” George asked, and Cecelia did not speak. She merely pursed her lips as if to stop her tears as she nodded and turned in her seat, sweeping her hair to one side to give him access to her slender neck.
Carefully, George placed the pendant around her neck and closed the clasp, his fingers lightly brushing the skin at the nape of her neck. Seeing the way she trembled at his touch, he trembled also.
George was only half-surprised when she twisted back in her seat to face him, catching hold of his hand before he could lower it back to his lap.
When their gazes met again, his heart stopped.
“I … I love you too, George,” she said, and he breathed a deep sigh of relief.
“All these years I had been fearful you did not,” he admitted, his own eyes beginning to sting a little, though he did what he could to deny himself the urge to weep with relief.
Overcome with emotion, he held her hand, and, with his other, he cupped her cheek. When she leaned into his palm, it felt as if some kind of circuit had finally been completed, and for a second, he dared not break the silence in case it too became broken once more.
Finally, he broke it to say, “I have been an utter fool, Cecelia. All these years, I was too scared to admit the truth, even to myself, and I nearly lost you because of it. You were right all those years ago, I was and always have been a coward.”
Another tear rolled down her cheek.
“I was wrong to ever call you such a thing,” she insisted, her free hand coming up to lay upon his own at her cheek. She leaned even further, the warmth of her skin a balm for his sore heart. “You are not and never have been a coward, Georgie.”
Just hearing his childhood nickname from her lips made everything else fade into insignificance.
“Can you ever forgive me?” she asked, her lip trembling once more.
“There has never been anything to forgive,” George insisted, taking his hand from her face to grip hers.
Holding them both in his, he lowered them to her lap, his body urging him to inch closer.
He was barely able to remain still as he added, “At least on my part. But you must forgive me for being too stubborn and too blind to see what has been right in front of me all this time.”
Her smile spread from ear to ear, her perfect pearly teeth shining with radiance as she said, “I suppose, you always have been a stubborn old goat, just like your father.”
George cringed only half as badly as he might once have done for being likened to his father. He shrugged and admitted, “I probably deserve that one.”
Cecelia’s fingers gently caressed his palm in affection as she nodded in agreement.
He felt an unbelievable urge to give into the child still living within him, to gently pull at a loose curl of her hair and then tickle her until she begged him to stop.
Instead, he blurted the words, “Will you marry me?”
They blinked together as if they were both as stunned as the other.
“Are … are you quite certain you wish to ask me that?” she asked, looking as if she knew him well enough to know that he had never really considered marriage with any real seriousness.
Clutching her hands ever tighter, he said, “I have never been more certain of anything in my life.”
The fear George felt at that moment was stronger and more heart-stopping than the moments before he received a scolding from his father, even more fear-inducing than his thoughts before he had been carted off to France, even more than the split second when he had feared he had accidentally pushed Fitzwilliam over the bridge railing.
And as her smile seemed to widen, growing so radiant it was almost blinding, George was certain that she knew his fear, certain that she was about to take great pleasure in whatever came from her lips.
“Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes!”
Her answer lit up the entire room with such luminescence that George was forced to blink the shock away, every sense stunned by it as she threw herself at him, her arms wrapped so tightly around his neck that if he had been breathing, he would have choked.
Only when he wrapped his own arms around her and felt the solidness of her small frame against him did he allow himself to breathe a huge sigh of relief.
“There now,” she said, as she pulled back just enough to look at him, her arms still around his neck, “that wasn’t truly so hard, was it?”
With a playful sneer, George nuzzled his nose against hers, shaking his head. “You are perhaps the most infuriating woman I have ever met.”
Her mouth opened wide in shock, though her eyes glinted with playfulness as he lifted a hand to brush a loose black curl from her face.
“But you are most definitely the most beautiful woman, too,” he admitted, and against his better judgement, he allowed his gaze to fall upon her plump lips.
Only then did he realize that he was leaning in.
And to his relief and astonishment, so was she.
It was a kiss that lasted only a moment, but it was the most passionate, head-spinning of them all. All of the affection, truth, and longing of the last several years bundled up into what felt like the most astonishing few seconds of his life.
And when he pulled back, he found he was even more unable to breathe.
“Congratulations!”
The exclamation came as such a surprise that both George and Cecelia burst from their seats, their arms flailing as the drawing room doors were flung open and Mary and Catherine reeled into the room.
They came at George and Cecelia like a pair of bulls in a china shop, so excited that they knocked the two of them back down onto the couch. All four of them laughed heartily as they landed in a pile of limbs.
Over her sisters’ heads, George looked to Cecelia, still laughing, and when their gazes met, they only laughed harder together until the two sisters began to wriggle, frantically trying to find their feet again.
“Ouch! Watch where you put your elbow!” Catherine exclaimed.
“You watch where you put your elbow!” Mary countered.
“That is quite enough of that now, girls!” Lady Westmere’s tone was only half-scolding as she swept into the room, a maid behind her carrying more than tea this time.
Cecelia looked to George as if questioning how her family had known. He shrugged and said, “Your family is very perceptive.”
“We were listening by the door,” Catherine whispered into his ear, and George laughed all over again.
Cecelia’s scowl at her sister suggested she had heard her.
A playful clip around the ear made Catherine squeal as Cecelia demanded, “Hasn’t mother told you a thousand times it is rude to eavesdrop?”
“Come! Up with you all,” Lady Westmere insisted. “We must celebrate. Mary, make yourself useful and pour everyone a glass!”
“But what about—” Mary began, but their mother glowered at her.
“The maids have more important things to be getting on with than pouring your drinks for you,” her mother insisted, clapping her hands to hurry her daughter along.
Mary dipped a curtsey to her mother, as if to placate her, before she hurried to the tray where the maid had placed it on a nearby table.
“A bottle of our finest champagne,” Lady Westmere explained as Mary carefully shared out the glasses. She looked to Cecelia as she added, “One that your father insisted we save for this very moment.”
There was an edge of sorrow to her voice, and George inched closer to Cecelia, laying a comforting hand upon the small of her back.
The tears in her eyes still remained from his proposal, though George suspected that after their conversation on the bridge, they were likely far more than that now.
She glanced at him as if she, too, remembered.
“I do so wish he could have been here to see this,” she admitted aloud, and George braced himself, fearful that the widow and his younger children might have some kind of horrifying reaction to her words.
Yet, instead, they bowed their heads and said, “As do we.”
Feeling as if he knew exactly what might help the situation, George raised the glass that Mary had given him and said,
“To your father, and your husband, may he be with us in memory and may we carry him in our hearts and in our thoughts daily. He was a good and kind man, a man who made all of this possible in his last will and testament, and to him I shall forever be grateful for being part of the marriage that brought my beloved Cecelia to me.”
“Oh, Georgie,” Cecelia gasped, and the tears started to roll down her cheeks all over again as she leaned into him, wrapping her arm around his waist in the process.
“I shall raise my glass to those fine words, George,” Lady Westmere said, “or must I now call you son?”
George offered a half-smile as he responded, “You may call me whatever you wish in the privacy of family, My Lady, just as long as it is not Your Grace.”
At that, Cecelia pushed up onto her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips. Where ordinarily Lady Westmere might have offered a terrible scowling, she merely clucked her tongue against her teeth.
“It is lucky for you both that I have always liked you,” Lady Westmere said, eyeing him as if she held great affection for him yet would burn him alive were he to harm even a single hair upon Cecelia’s head.
“The feeling is mutual, My Lady.”
“Mother, please!” she insisted before she raised her glass and cheered, “To my beloved Jeremy and to the beautiful couple he has brought together!”