Chapter 18
Eighteen
GEOFFREY
“Stay,” I said quietly.
Harper looked at me without speaking, a question in her eyes.
“Not because my family finds you useful. Not because the psalter remains unpredictable. Stay because you choose this place.” My voice broke. “Choose me.”
Something vulnerable flickered briefly across her expression so quickly I almost missed it.
“Geoffrey—”
“Plight your troth to me. I have love you since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
There. Spoken plainly at last. The words settled between us with startling certainty. I had negotiated military disputes with less clarity.
Harper stared at me. “That,” she said carefully, “may be the most Geoffrey de Warenne proposal imaginable.”
My thumb moved unconsciously against the inside of her wrist.
“Was it terrible?”
Her mouth curved as she shook her head. “Yes,” she whispered.
The word struck me harder than expected.
“Yes as in—”
“Yes as in yes.” Her voice steadied slightly. “Yes as in chosen deliberately. I love you Geoffrey de Warenne.”
Chosen. Something in my chest gave way quietly at that word. Deliberately.
Harper lifted one hand slowly against my chest, her fingers curling lightly into the wool of my tunic.
I looked down at her for one moment and understood with sudden terrifying clarity that restraint had failed long ago.
The kiss happened because neither of us moved away.
Because her hand remained against my chest. Because she tilted her face upward slightly and I realized I knew the exact expression she wore immediately before saying something brave.
Because I had wanted her for longer than I had allowed myself to admit. I kissed her carefully at first. Reverently. Her breath caught softly against my mouth, and the sound was like a blade sliding cleanly between my ribs.
Merde.
Harper’s fingers tightened against my chest as though steadying herself. My free hand rose instinctively to her waist, drawing her closer with slow deliberate pressure until the space between us disappeared entirely.
The world narrowed sharply to the rushes beneath my boots. The tapestries on the walls. Harper warm against me, lips softer than the finest silk.
Nothing else remained.
She kissed me back with a softness that undid me far more thoroughly than passion could have managed.
I deepened the kiss before I could stop myself.
Carefully controlled restraint shattered all at once into something deeper.
Hungrier. Discipline collapsing beneath the simple unbearable reality of touching her.
Harper made a small startled sound against my mouth that nearly finished whatever remained of my self-control.
I pulled back first. Not far. Just enough to breathe.
Harper looked equally ruined by the experience, which I found delightfully encouraging.
I rested my forehead lightly against hers.
“Chosen deliberately,” I repeated softly.
Harper smiled then, small and luminous and entirely my undoing.
And for the first time in my life, I found myself profoundly grateful that strategy had finally failed me.
* * *
HARPER
The morning after Geoffrey de Warenne proposed marriage to me, I found myself standing alone in the chapel pretending to study a tapestry so I wouldn’t have to fully process the fact that a medieval nobleman had proposed to me.
Cold morning light filtered through the narrow chapel windows, turning the stone floors pale silver beneath my shoes.
The dark green wool gown Agnes had insisted suited me best felt heavy against my skin, the fitted sleeves slowly becoming familiar after a lifetime of modern fabrics, zippers, and elastic waistbands.
Fine gold embroidery curved around the cuffs in twisting vines and leaves, the thread catching candlelight every time I moved.
My veil had already begun slipping backward despite Agnes pinning it with determined optimism earlier that morning, and loose strands of dark hair kept escaping around my temples every time I touched them nervously.
Which, unfortunately, was often.
The tapestry in question hung beside the choir stalls along the north wall, faded in places from centuries of candle smoke and damp.
At first glance it appeared to depict a noble hunting party.
Closer inspection suggested at least three entirely different artistic agendas had collided during its construction.
One section featured mounted riders pursuing a stag.
Another seemed deeply committed to rendering trees at approximately cathedral scale.
Near the lower border, someone had embroidered a dog whose proportions implied either profound symbolic meaning or a complete collapse in medieval spatial reasoning.
I stared at it with intense scholarly concentration. This was, admittedly, easier than thinking about Geoffrey’s mouth. Or him saying plight your troth to me in the same calm voice most men reserved for discussing grain inventories.
Or the fact that I had said yes immediately.
Chosen deliberately.
My fingers brushed unconsciously against my own wrist, remembering the rough warmth of Geoffrey’s hand there the evening before.
The slow movement of his thumb against my skin.
The careful restraint that had vanished the moment he kissed me.
That part alone could probably sustain several years of emotional instability.
But somehow it wasn’t even the kiss currently dismantling me from the inside out. It was what came afterward.
The way he’d looked at me.
Like something extraordinary had happened to him personally and he still wasn’t entirely certain he deserved it.
I pressed both hands against my cheeks. “This is fine,” I informed the tapestry. “Everything is completely fine.”
The tapestry, lacking both conversational ability and emotional investment, declined to respond.
I turned my attention back toward the embroidery with the determination of a woman attempting to survive her own feelings through textile analysis. And honestly? It worked a little.
The repairs fascinated me once I began noticing them properly. Threads from different decades. Different hands. Tiny sections carefully reinforced long after the original weaving had begun unraveling. Women I would never know preserving something because someone had decided it mattered.
I loved that about medieval objects. That history was never static preservation. It was maintenance. Constant care. People choosing over and over again to keep something alive. The thought landed softly somewhere in my chest. Because maybe love looked like that too.
Not merely grand declarations in a hall decorated for Christmas with picture postcard snow outside, though Geoffrey had managed that portion with frankly irritating effectiveness.
Maybe it was the smaller things afterward. The staying. The daily choosing and the willingness to keep repairing what mattered.
Outside the chapel windows I could hear the castle waking around me. Horses in the bailey. Distant voices. The clatter of someone carrying wood across stone.
And somehow, impossibly, I belonged inside those sounds now.
Back in the spring, I had been cataloguing manuscripts in a climate-controlled conservation lab while drinking overpriced coffee from a paper cup.
Now I was engaged to a devastatingly handsome medieval nobleman with battle-callused hands and eyes the exact grey-blue of storm clouds over the Thames.
Life came at you fast.
I smiled helplessly at the tapestry.
“You would think,” I murmured, “that eight hundred years of historical scholarship would better prepare someone for accidentally falling in love with a thirteenth-century war strategist.”
“You are speaking to the wall again.”
I startled hard enough to nearly become permanently embedded in four hundred pounds of medieval embroidery.
Father William stood near the chapel entrance holding a candle and looking profoundly unsurprised by my existence.
Morning light caught along the folds of his black Benedictine habit as he crossed the threshold, the heavy wool robe brushing softly against the stone floor.
A white linen under-tunic showed faintly at the collar and sleeves, and a worn rope belt circled his waist beside a leather satchel overflowing with loose parchment.
His tonsure had surrendered additional territory overnight, exposing more silver-grey scalp beneath the candlelight.
“I was conducting scholarly analysis,” I informed him.
“Of course.”
“There are at least three restoration periods visible in this section alone.”
“And this required talking aloud?”
“Yes.”
Father William considered this gravely.
“I have decided,” he announced, “that whatever century produced you was probably extremely exhausting.”
He crossed toward the altar while I returned, at least superficially, to examining the tapestry. My pulse had finally begun settling back into normal human function again.
Until the psalter started glowing. Not subtly. Not the faint shimmer from before. This was brighter. Stronger. Gold illumination pulsing beneath the vellum pages in steady rhythmic waves that lit the chapel with unsettling clarity.
Father William stopped immediately.
“No,” he said firmly to the manuscript. “Absolutely not. It is far too early in the day for this.”
The glow intensified as I crossed the chapel slowly toward the lectern, every instinct sharpening at once. The air itself felt strange now. Charged. Like pressure gathering before a storm.
The psalter pulsed again. And this time I felt it.
Come back.
My breath caught softly.
Come back if you wish. The path is open.
Father William looked between me and the manuscript with deep theological suspicion.
“You’re making that face again.”
“What face?”
“The deeply concerning one.”
I stepped closer.
The manuscript had not brought me here merely to witness history. Somehow, impossibly, it had brought me here for Geoffrey. And now that I had helped him and his family, I wondered if the psalter believed its purpose fulfilled.