Epilogue 1
Six years after Thomas Parodi found Caroline Bingley crying upon a beach, he led her along the shore and said nothing at all for a full ten minutes. This was unusual enough to make Caroline suspicious.
The morning had dawned bright and brilliantly clear, the sort of winter day that made the whole world seem cut from glass, all sharp edges and flashing light.
The sky was a hard, cloudless blue and the sunlight gleamed upon the water so fiercely that Caroline was obliged to narrow her eyes whenever she looked towards the horizon.
The cold had a clean bite to it, and the wind carried the sharp scent of salt as it lifted the ribbons of her bonnet behind her.
Thomas had scarcely spoken since they left his parents’ house. Caroline glanced at him curiously as they walked. "Are you unwell, Thomas?"
Thomas shook his head. "No. I am only a little preoccupied."
Caroline studied him for another long moment. "Have I offended your mother?"
That brought his head around sharply. "No. Why should you think that?"
"Because she has been very kind to me, and I should hate to have said something thoughtless."
Thomas' expression softened. "My mother adores you. She has informed me several times that you are far too elegant and lovely for the likes of us, though she is concerned that no one is feeding you properly in London. She thinks you much too thin."
Mrs Parodi had spent most of the previous afternoon attempting to feed Caroline.
Pies, pastries, biscuits and all manner of excellent food were placed before her at alarmingly regular intervals.
Caroline learned quickly that the safest course was to accept whatever appeared before her and trust Thomas to remove anything she could not finish.
Mr Parodi had watched the proceedings with deep amusement.
He was a broad, handsome man whose dark hair had silvered at the temples and whose English became increasingly Italian whenever he was excited.
This happened often. He spoke with his entire body, gesturing enthusiastically, and had greeted Caroline as though Thomas had returned from London with a long-lost daughter.
By the end of their first dinner, Mr Parodi had informed Caroline, with a conspiratorial wink, that she was far too beautiful for his son.
Mrs Parodi clucked at him, pressed another slice of pie upon Caroline and told Thomas not to look so alarmed, since they had no intention of frightening away the first sensible woman who had ever shown an interest in him.
Caroline had never felt less frightened in her life.
She had worried before meeting them. Thomas' father might have remembered the wealthy Bingley family with bitterness, while his mother might easily have thought Caroline too grand or too accustomed to luxury for the life Thomas could presently offer. They had received her into their modest house with such kindness that it had made her want to weep. The parlour curtains were faded, the furniture sturdy rather than fashionable and the dining table had plainly been made by Mr Parodi’s own hands, but Caroline would not have changed a thing.
The whole house carried the comfort of people who had loved one another within it for years, something no amount of silk or gilding could have improved.
It was the type of home she wanted to create with Thomas one day.
Thomas drew her from her thoughts. "You are smiling."
"I was thinking of your father."
"I am certain he would steal you from me if he had half a chance."
She laughed up at him. "A man who can build a lady a fine piece of furniture is not to be sniffed at, Dr Parodi."
Thomas caught her around the waist and turned her towards him, drawing another peal of laughter from her. He pulled her close until his mouth brushed her ear.
"But can he mend a broken arm or soothe a megrim, my love?"
Caroline laughed, and the sound carried away across the bright shore. Thomas smiled too, but his hand tightened slightly where her fingers rested upon his arm. The movement was small, though Caroline noticed it.
It was very different from the bitter, windswept day upon which they first met, though Caroline could still see the uncertain girl she had been, stumbling along the shore with tears upon her face and her hair falling from its pins.
Nor was Thomas the long-limbed cabinetmaker’s son who had sat beside her and spoken with fierce conviction of becoming a physician.
He had done it. His London practice had opened two months earlier in a respectable set of rooms. They were neither large nor grand, but they were bright, well-ordered and already busy enough that Thomas sometimes arrived at the Hursts’ townhouse very late and very apologetic.
Their courtship had been gentle in a way their first love had never been permitted to be.
Caroline remained with Louisa and Hurst, while Thomas called regularly and joined them for quiet dinners whenever his work allowed.
They walked in the parks with Martha or Louisa at a discreet distance, visited bookshops and took tea in small rooms not frequented by the fashionable set.
She helped him choose practical furnishings for his consulting rooms and was overjoyed by every small victory as his burgeoning practice grew.
He had allowed her time to know the man he had become.
He never assumed that the promises they made so long ago entitled him to anything from her now.
He courted her carefully, asked her opinions and listened to the answers, even when she disagreed with him at length.
Somewhere among those ordinary days, Caroline had fallen even more in love with him.
Thomas turned from the water and guided her towards the shelter of the cliff. The broad rock waited where it always had, warmed a little by the winter sun.
Caroline looked from it to Thomas. "I wondered whether we might come here."
"So did I."
"Though I had expected you to be rather more conversational once we arrived."
He released her arm and stood before her. The sun caught warmly in his amber eyes, but there was an uncertainty in his expression she had not seen since the morning of their first kiss.
Her amusement faded. "Thomas?"
"I had intended to wait until the practice was more firmly established."
Caroline stared at him. "Why?"
"Because I told you once that I would return when I was able to support you properly."
She folded her arms. "Do not tell me that you have brought me all the way along this beach to announce that I must wait another five years."
He cleared his throat and she noticed he was rocking from foot to foot. She had seen him in almost every mood but never this. Was he anxious? It was so unlike his usual level countenance that she almost laughed aloud. "No," he said after the silence between them had stretched.
"Good. Because I have become considerably less patient with age."
That brought a smile to his face at last, though it did not quite disperse the nervousness in his expression.
Instead, Thomas drew a breath and slipped a hand inside his coat.
When he brought it out again, he was holding a small wooden box, simple but beautifully made, the grain of the wood was polished to a mirror shine and their initials were engraved in the lid.
"My father made this," he said.
"Thomas," Caroline breathed, her voice almost a whisper.
He stood there looking at her for what felt like an age, as if gathering his courage for what must come next.
Then he opened the box. Inside lay a ring.
At its centre was a piece of green sea glass that had been cut and polished like a precious jewel, its surface catching the winter light with a soft green fire.
Smaller pieces of pale blue and cloudy white sea glass surrounded it, each one shaped and set into the delicate gold band like a cluster of diamonds.
The whole seemed to catch and hold the colours of the shore itself.
It was not fashionable in any way. No fine lady in London would have declared it elegant.
But to Caroline, it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Her breath caught in her throat. "I do not know what to say."
"The first piece I sent you after you left Scarborough," he said, indicating the centre stone. "Martha gave it back to me several weeks ago along with a few others from the collection."
Caroline looked up, her eyes wide. "She told me it had been misplaced while packing." A watery laugh escaped her, though tears had already begun to gather in her eyes. "That woman has spent years lecturing me on the evils of deception."
He took the ring from the box, and before Caroline had fully recovered herself, he went down on one knee before her.
For a moment she could do nothing but stare.
The sunlight lay across his dark hair, the sea flashed behind him and the wind stirred his coat, but all she could truly see was Thomas, looking up at her with love so open and certain that it seemed to strip away the years between them.
He had knelt nowhere grander than this wild stretch of beach, with the cries of gulls above them and the salt wind around them, and yet Caroline thought no ballroom in London had ever witnessed anything half so fine.
"Six years ago," he said, "I sat beside you upon that rock and fell in love.
At the time, I had nothing to offer you beyond my intentions, and even those must have seemed very poor things beside everything your family expected for you.
I told myself that I could not ask you to share my life until I had made something of myself, until I could return with every part of our future properly secured and place it before you. "