“We found it,” Gwendolyn breathed.
Jackson nodded. “In a… food hamper.”
“Doesn’t matter where—we found it!” Gwendolyn gripped his forearm with both hands and let her joy ring into the sky. “We found it!”
He knelt, replaced the paper in the folio, placed the folio back in the basket, and closed it. “Safe now. I’m not letting a rogue wind get at it after all this.” Even after standing, he could not take his eyes off it.
Gwendolyn stood next to him, tugged at his sleeve. “What are you thinking?”
“That he could have chosen a better title. Confound it, Gweny, that’s a mouthful.”
She laughed. “Why a picnic basket, do you think?”
“I… I can’t say. I—oh. It was with him when they crashed. It must have been. My mother believed in always traveling with provisions, and my father liked, as we well know, to keep his work secret. He must have used the bottom compartment of the hamper to hide his work as they traveled.”
“Ingenious. What now?”
“Now we read it, prepare it for publication. He would have wanted that. Maybe we should change the title.”
She bounced her shoulder off his. “Oh, no. Do not do that. I rather like it. It says exactly what it is, tells readers what to expect.” And life was not always that way.
He kissed the top of her head. “If you like it, we’ll keep it.” He huffed a laugh. “How extraordinary. I never expected to find it today. We must celebrate. I feel wiggly.”
“Jackson—”
“No, Gweny. I must do it.”
“Do what?”
His grin grew wild, and he jumped to his feet, threw his hands in the air, and whooped a celebration as he ran down the beach. She left the fort with a laugh, holding tight to bonnet and following after him with the widest smile she’d every worn. Pure joy. She’d never felt anything like it. He turned around, yelling victory at the sea, the sky, then returned to her, picked her up, and spun her around. He lowered her back to the ground slowly, stopping his spin as their bodies met, their lips found one another, tasting of salt and sea air.
When neither could breathe, he broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. “We did it. We found it.”
“Luck,” she laughed.
“Doesn’t matter. We have it.” He tangled their hands together. “Let’s go home.”
Home. His and hers the same?
They retrieved the basket and the manuscript and made their way back to the coach. By the time they reached it, her joy had flattened, seeped into the sandy stones beneath her feet. They’d completed their mission. What now? The question that would not quiet down inside. She’d been determined to leave him mere days ago. Henry had written to friends to find her new work.
But she couldn’t now. She couldn’t leave the happiest bit of her life behind, leave the man who made her laugh, who made her heart soar. What good was all the work she’d been doing if not to stay, to take a future she’d never thought was for her?
There was the marquess, the content of that ruined letter, his unknown threats and demands. But she’d written to him, warned him off. And Jackson’s words that night in the garden had made her feel safe. She’d written Marianne, asking her to be careful, and he’d written to Max, asking him for a guard or two for her oldest friend. She would be fine. All would be fine, and everyone safe, and Gwendolyn would not have to run an inch away from Jackson’s side.
Shecouldmake a home.
They settled into the coach, and she pulled her notebook from her satchel and flipped to a page near the end, after a journey of blank pages, hidden—a portrait of Seastorm. Not stylized as a fairy tale but as it was. Lovely and waiting for its master to return.
He had, and he would stay.
Would she?
Beside her, Jackson had gone stiff, one finger tapping incessantly on the top of the leather folio he held on his lap. Something bothered him.
With a need that surged up in her faster than a fire sprayed with spirits, she turned, clutched Jackson’s head, and brought his lips down to meet hers.
The finger had stopped tapping, but he pulled away, looked down at her with eyes brimming with the agitation that had sent his fingers flying moments before. “Will you leave now? We’ve found the manuscript. Will you leave?”
