“What if you don’t have to choose, Psyche? Paint Tavistock’s portrait, do sketches of the climbing boys. Follow where your talent and your heart lead you. Say yes toyourjoy.”
She burrowed closer. “You are part of my joy, Michael. I wanted to be safe in my disguises, as Jacob’s wife, as Henderson, as the widow in a household where I have all the privacy in the world. If I marry you, I will not have the same sort of safety, but I will have love, and that’s… better.” Better for her art, better for her heart.
Life with Michael and the children would not be easy, but it would be vibrant and joyous and loving.
“And the children?” Michael asked, turning Psyche under his arm and leading her back to the bench.
“I don’t know Thaddeus, but Bea is lovely.”
“You wouldn’t mind raising somebody else’s children?”
This mattered to Michael more than Psyche had realized. “Do you mind raising other people’s children, Michael?”
“I don’t think of Thad and Bea as belonging to anybody but me, but if I have my way, I will raise many such offspring. I cannot presume, though, that my aspirations will necessarily fit… That is, you matter to me, Psyche. I love you, and you are my heart, but the children are my heart too.”
And he did not mean only Thad and Bea. Psyche sank onto the bench and, by virtue of tugging on Michael’s hand, bid him to sit beside her.
“Michael, you did presume. You presumed to know my ambitions—the next Sir Joshua, Gainsborough in petticoats, et cetera—when I wasn’t Henderson in a top hat. You were for the Church, I was laying siege to the Royal Academy. But what you do is art, and what I create is art. Both have an impact. Please… make great art with me. You ask me what I want: I want to be Mrs. Michael Delancey, because all the other parts of me—Henderson, Gainsborough, the shop-window prints—will find a home in the personage of your wife.”
Michael looped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. “I want to be Mr. Psyche Fremont more desperately than you can possibly know. Please say we can be married.”
Psyche wiped something hot and wet from her cheek. “You won’t mind if I continue to wear my top hat to the occasional class?”
“I will love you in your top hat, and if we should make another sortie to St. Giles, you’ll be safer in that top hat anyway.”
“Will you love me if my next series of prints portrays London’s beggars?”
“Will you promise to make those works as compelling as your flower girls?”
“Michael, will you love me if I can never paint again, never have children, and never make you a proper preacher’s wife?”
He kissed her temple. “What are you going on about? I will never be a preacher, not in the sense you mean. Have you met Lord Shreve? He wants to combine something of the foundling home with something of the Magdalen houses. He has money and determination, and he wants me to throw in with him. I have Mrs. Buckthorn to thank for the introduction.”
“Shreve is very determined, Michael. You and he have that in common. You’re done with the Church?”
“As an employee, I am, and maybe you are done with Henderson. I would be endlessly proud to find myself married to the artist who created the flower girls, but if Henderson is still serving a purpose, I will be endlessly proud to have his company as well.”
Jacob would be pleased, also amused. “We will not be a conventional couple.” But they would be happy, at least much of the time. Also exhausted, frustrated, and maybe short of coin. What did any of that matter?
“We also won’t have a conventional family, but we will have love, Psyche, and I cannot think of a greater foundation from which to go forward in this life.”
Michael kissed her cheek, and Psyche rested her head on his shoulder, and in the greening branches high above, the courting robins chirruped the arrival of spring.
