Epiphany #6
She could hear the tightness in his voice and recognized it for what it was. “You really don’t want to go. You set your heart on staying.”
He nodded. “I’ve worked a dairy farm. I went to college. I took a desk job in a city. And there’s no place I’ve been that felt more perfect for me.”
So she hadn’t just imagined it. Hank did belong here too. Her body had begun to tremble. He reached down for the rug and put it back over her, assuming she must be cold, but she pushed it aside and took his hands.
“No, Hank, listen. We’re staying. We’re both staying. What are the odds of that? It’s not coincidence. It’s a . . . a—”
“A sign?” he said.
“It’s a frickin’ Christmas miracle!”
As he absorbed her meaning, she could see his core softening, his heart relaxing.
His whole body was an exhale. They looked at each other and began to laugh.
They laughed hard enough that their bodies shifted into it, bending toward each other, leaning together, her shoulder pressed to his, their heads touching.
His arms lifted to surround her. Wanting to be even closer, she wrapped her arms around his chest, and soon they were holding each other so tightly, she was amazed she could breathe.
But she did. She breathed deeply, as if for the first time in years. Breathed him in. Breathed in hope.
Why not a do-over?
Her mind rapidly started to answer that question, and every scenario it concocted was a disaster.
“I don’t know,” said Kestrel, her head tucked into his neck. “I had an epiphany! And my epiphany was to stay here and give you up.”
“Well, my epiphany was that I also wanted to stay. But even before that epiphany, I’ve known that the only person I want to share my life with is you.”
“I’m scared,” said Kestrel. She held a hand on her belly, where that frightened feeling shook like a bunny rabbit. She felt like prey, and the old instinct to run made her limbs shake even harder.
But she was also tired of being afraid. She’d spent so much energy running and not caring about what she left behind because it hurt too much to mourn.
She had taken a leap of faith and chosen Austenland over Hank.
And now it seemed that by choosing Austenland, she had chosen Hank.
If she’d known first that he was staying, or vice versa, they might have always wondered if they’d stayed for the other instead of for themselves.
Had she actually trusted her gut, and for once her gut had worked?
Maybe she really was ready to start phase two, where she planted roots somewhere. With someone. And when problems rose up, she’d deal with them. They’d deal with them together. And just keep growing together. Was such a thing possible for someone like her?
Hank held her hand with his own, and he lifted it to his lips. “I’m scared too. But I’m ready. This time, it’s time.”
“Time is a weird word, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s short and common, but if you say it over and over, it stops meaning anything.”
“Time,” he said. He kissed her knuckles, and then he kissed her palm. “Time, time, time.”
Love is love, but relationships are timing.
The physics of it were mind-boggling to Kestrel.
As unlikely as the big bang or life from mud.
Everything had to be perfectly so at exactly the right time.
Kestrel seemed to vibrate from the tips of her hair down to her toenails as she felt the truth—now was the time. Finally, now.
“I missed you so much,” Hank whispered, and his hand on her back pressed harder as if to delight in the beating of her heart. “Oh, Kes, I missed you like I’d miss breathing.”
A miracle, she decided. Two of them in the same place feeling the same thing at the same time. The hard parts and the good parts had conspired together to create this moment—the yearning, the loving, the heartache, the despair. It really was all pudding, love.
“Yes,” she said. It felt so good, she said it again. “Yes.”
Unable to resist for another moment, she climbed onto him, straddling his lap, and arranged the blanket over them both, and Mary Francis pulled them sedately along the snowy path between trees while they kept each other warm.
There was no hurry at all, no place to be but together.
She held his face and kissed him. He ran his hands over her body with wonder, with awe at the feel of her.
“Hey, tonight after the crew hangout in the kitchen, do you want to go to the library with me?” she asked.
He smiled, as if uncertain what she meant but liking her enthusiasm. “In the mood to read?”
“Very much in the mood for something. You see, I had this dream I want to explore. I’m a coy Regency maiden alone in the library, and a devastatingly handsome gentleman enters—it has to be the right gentleman, of course, a man I trust and adore, but in the scenario, oh my, is he ever a rogue.”
“You mean he seduces you?” Hank’s eyes were wide, taking in this scenario with reverent interest.
Kestrel leaned into the tone of a Regency romance audio-book narrator.
“His touch on my skin sends fire through me, igniting a part of me I didn’t know was there.
He presses my body against the wall, and through his breeches I can feel the hardness of his manhood.
As his kisses move down my neck to my throat, his hand lifts the hem of my skirt, brushing the back of my knee and rising higher and higher . . .”
Even though it was an open sleigh, the blanket provided some cover as they discussed in great detail the library fantasy. The negotiations required the stripping of shirt and breeches as well as a dress and, with a rip of Velcro, a corset. Handily, there were no cumbersome drawers.
With nothing between her bare skin and the cold air except a blanket, Kestrel was naturally forced to wrap her arms and legs around Hank to keep warm.
Quickly she heated to a fever as her body became desperate for more of him.
She kissed him harder, relishing the feel of his hands over her skin, the eagerness in his breath.
She hoped they were deep in the woods by now with no one close enough to overhear but quickly lost any worries and all thoughts except Yes and Hank and Happy Christmas.
If Mary Francis guessed what shenanigans were occurring in the sleigh, she made no judgments as she pulled them through the frosted winter garden.
There were many rooms in Pembrook Park. More than twenty-five, in fact. In between dog walks and Charades, balls and promenades, teatimes and dinnertimes, there would be time for an all-work man and woman to find themselves alone and unchaperoned in each and every one.