Chapter Seven
On Christmas Eve, Pearl made her way to the drawing room, parcels stacked in her arms. The gifts were wrapped in paper, each trimmed with meticulous gold ribbon.
Two for the girls—Alice’s lumpy and nearly coming apart at the corners, Susie’s perfectly squared—and another for the dowager, whose taste for extravagance was legendary and whose appetite for gratitude even more so.
The last was a slim, improbably heavy box, wound with a simple band of white silk.
She could see Victor already, backlit and unmoving in a brown leather chair by the fire.
His gaze was fixed not on the flames or the baubles or the glittering tree, but straight ahead—at nothing, or perhaps at her.
In the shadows, his outline seemed carved from marble, the lines of his body tensed as if waiting for the next disaster.
The glass in his hand caught the light. The brandy inside it barely moved.
Pearl kneeled next to the tree, arranging the parcels with the precision of a jeweler.
She set Alice’s in the foreground, Susie’s just behind, the dowager’s at a slight tilt to display its absurd bow.
The last package she nestled just within reach of the fireside chair.
Victor tracked the movement with a flick of his eyes.
She sat back on her heels, studying the tree.
“The Abbey’s never had this much activity in December.”
Pearl smiled. “The girls have been enjoying themselves. They’ve never seen so much snow.”
“They’re good girls. Strong. Not easily cowed.”
“Like their father,” she whispered.
Victor shook his head. “Like you.”
“I brought you a gift.” Pearl nodded at the white-silk package, her hands suddenly restless in her lap. “It’s not much. But it felt wrong not to.”
He looked at the box as if it might detonate. “I don’t need gifts,” he said, the words flat but not unkind. His knuckles whitened where they gripped the armrest.
She shrugged. “No one ever does.”
Victor stood abruptly. For a moment, she thought he might leave—she half-hoped he would, if only to spare her the embarrassment of the moment. Instead, he paced to the window, then back to the fire, his shoes tapping on the floor.
He stopped directly in front of her, the fire painting his face in sharp relief. He looked older in this light, but not diminished. Distilled, perhaps, like the liquor he pretended not to savor.
He spoke without preamble. “I’m not good at this,” he said, gesturing to the room, to the tree. “Tradition. Ceremony. I’ve spent most of my life making sure I’d never have to stand in rooms like this and say things that can’t be unsaid.”
Pearl felt her heart thrum, a fragile and traitorous bird. “You don’t have to,” she began, but he cut her off with a raised hand.
“I do.” His voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut through the warmth like a blade. “I’ve rehearsed every speech in the arsenal, and none of them fit. So I’ll say it plainly.”
He dropped to one knee, a movement so sudden and unpracticed it almost toppled him into the hearth. He steadied himself with a hand on the rug, then looked up at her, eyes unwavering.
“Pearl, you are the only gift I want. Marry me.” The words hung there, enormous and impossible.
Pearl inhaled so sharply it stung her throat. Her hands began to tremble—first at the fingertips, then through the wrists, until she had to clutch them together to keep from shattering. Her vision blurred, then sharpened again. The room seemed both impossibly large and suffocatingly small.
She searched his face for doubt, for irony, for any hint that this was a dare or a joke. There was none.
The fire hissed. Somewhere, a clock ticked down the last moments before midnight. The space between them was filled with every unsaid thing they’d carried since that summer twenty years ago.
“I—” she began, but the words failed.
She pressed her palm to her mouth, as if to hold in all the wild, reckless yes that threatened to escape. Her eyes burned, and she hated herself for it, but she would not look away. She would not look away.
Victor reached for her hand, his own trembling. He took it as one might lift a wounded bird—slow, reverent, careful not to squeeze too hard. His thumb stroked the back of her knuckles, a silent apology for all the years between now and the last time he dared to touch her.
“Say you will,” he said, his voice fraying at the edges. “Say it, and I’ll never ask you for anything else.”
Pearl wanted to laugh, or cry, or both. Instead, she squeezed his hand hard enough to hurt. “Ask me again,” she whispered, the words raw and new.
Victor swallowed. “Marry me. Please.”
She closed her eyes, letting the answer well up from the place where she’d kept it hidden all these months. “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, Victor. Yes.”
He exhaled, a shudder that ran the length of his body. He stood, pulling her up with him, their hands still joined. For a moment, they simply stared at each other, the weight of the moment holding them motionless.
Then she laughed—a high, unguarded sound—and flung her arms around his neck, the years of caution dissolving in a rush of joy and terror. He caught her, solid and certain, and buried his face in her hair.
The fire blazed, the tree shimmered, and the world outside the Abbey, outside this room, ceased to exist.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Victor’s arms were a band around her, every muscle pulled taut against the possibility of waking to find it all undone.
He drew back just enough to look at her and noticed the tears trailing over the flush of her cheeks. He thumbed one away, carefully, almost reverently. “I am sorry,” he said, the words clumsy in his mouth. “I shouldn’t have—”
Pearl shook her head, reckless with relief. “Don’t. I have wanted—” Her voice failed, then returned, steadier. “I have wanted this for so long. But it always seemed…” She trailed off, a laugh and a sob tangled in her throat. “Impossible.”
He made a sound, a strangled exhale, half curse, half prayer.
He took both of her hands in his, pressing them to his heart.
“It never was, Pearl. Not for a single day.” The truth of it nearly staggered him.
“I loved you. Long before Percy. Long after. I watched you choose him, and I thought… God, I thought it was the right thing to do. For both of us.”
Pearl looked down at their hands, her lashes dark with tears. “It was right, then. Percy was… safe. He made the world seem bearable.” She paused, searching his face for permission to go on. “When he died, I swore—I told myself I would never feel that kind of pain again. Never love. Never—”
“Never be vulnerable,” Victor finished, softer.
She nodded. “I thought I could be a good mother, a good widow, and that would be enough. But you…” She let out a breath, trembling. “You made it all come alive again. I hated you for that. I wanted to hate you for that.”
He smiled, small and sad. “You did a poor job of it.”
“So did you.” She touched his face, tracing the line of his cheekbone, the silver at his temple. “Why did you wait so long?”
He shook his head. “I thought you hated me. Or worse, pitied me.”
“Never.”
He let the silence gather. The only sounds were the hiss of the fire and the thud of his heart, loud enough to echo.
“I wanted to tell you how I felt. At the ball that night. The summer before he proposed. I tried—God knows I tried. But you were so—” He broke off, searching for the word, then settled on, “luminous. I thought you deserved someone less… broken.”
Pearl’s laughter was watery but true. “I was never luminous. I was scared out of my mind. You made me want things I didn’t have words for.”
He stared at her, incredulous, the burden of a decade’s misunderstanding falling away in increments. “I’m an idiot. I’m a bigger fool than Percy ever was. I wanted to speak to you sooner, but you were in mourning. How could I intrude on that?”
She laughed then, full-throated and reckless. “You are a fool. But I’m no better.” She drew him close, her lips brushing his temple. “I want to be with you, to be your wife. I want—” Her voice faltered, then found its footing. “I want to love you as I realize I always have.”
He closed the gap between them in a single, desperate motion, his mouth finding hers with a hunger that was almost savage.
The first kiss was awkward, a collision of teeth and breathlessness, but the second was deliberate, a slow claiming, the careful unwinding of years of restraint.
His hands cupped her jaw, thumbs stroking the delicate hinge beneath her ears.
She leaned into him, fingers twisting in the wool of his coat.
He deepened the kiss, and she answered with a growl that vibrated through both of them, a resonance that made the air around them shimmer.
When at last they broke apart, both were panting, faces inches apart. The fire threw their shadows across the paneled walls, two figures locked together, indistinguishable, caught in the act of becoming one.
Pearl touched her lips, eyes wide in wonder. “So that’s what it’s meant to feel like,” she whispered.
He pressed his forehead to hers. “It’s only the beginning.”
A log collapsed in the grate, sending a brief flurry of sparks up the flue. Neither spoke. There was nothing left to say.
Victor reached for her again, this time with both arms, and held her until the trembling ceased.
In that moment, Pearl realized she wasn’t afraid. Not anymore. She met his gaze, unwavering, and saw in it all the years they’d lost and all the years still waiting. She smiled, fierce and true. “Let’s not waste another moment.”
He nodded, lips finding hers again, and together they let the night have them, all the old ghosts banished, all the darkness outshone by the simple fact of their shared, impossible happiness.