Cecelia squealed with joy as she nestled back down into his arms, beneath the blanket, the cracking of the whip signalling their departure.
“I still cannot quite bring myself to believe it,” George whispered to her as they were carried forth towards the manor once more. “How did I ever get so lucky?”
Her cheeks warmed by his words, Cecelia turned her face up to look at him and offered a smile. “I suppose it has a great deal to do with just how lucky I have been.”
He smiled with amusement, cupping her cheek once more, and when his thumb gently stroked her cheekbone, she shivered with delight.
Their gazes locked, and though they said nothing, a thousand words passed between them, all filled with love, affection, and their promise that they would cherish each other always.
***
Just when Cecelia thought that the day couldn’t get any better, she found herself sitting at the head table beside her husband, the room thrumming with activity.
She watched, blissfully happy as Mary and Walter sat close by, their affection for one another quite obvious in their obliviousness of everything else around them.
And while they chattered away in their little bubble, Catherine appeared to be having the time of her life entertaining their guests with her impressions of members of theton, some of them in attendance and all too happy to laugh away with her.
The spirits in the room were so high that Cecelia barely touched a drop of the champagne in her glass. She was already intoxicated by the sheer wonder of the day, her head spinning with it all, and yet, she wished it might never end.
If only she might halt time to remain suspended there forever, to feel this happy, this light, and this carefree for the rest of her days.
She was almost certain that nothing at all could possibly ruin this day. And as time passed, she became profoundly aware of one certainty: she had been a fool to ever try to find any of this with anyone else.
Their friendship, it turned out, was the perfect foundation for the life they were about to spend with each other. Having survived the storms of youth and war, they had come back to each other as they had always meant to. And suddenly, all the hardships and heartache of the past several years began to melt away.
When George suddenly rose from his seat and offered her his hand, she almost jumped right out of her own.
“It's time,” he told her, his smile so brilliant that Cecelia had to return it with one of her own.
As she placed her hand in his, she felt the warmth of his palm against hers, and it sent a violent rush up into her chest, making her weak at the knees.
It was only his grip on her, urging her out of her seat, that allowed her to stand.
“Will you still not tell me where we are going?” Cecelia whispered as George led her from the room, followed by yet more cheering and applause.
“Must you really always insist that I ruin every surprise?” George demanded, his fingers squeezing hers.
Cecelia nudged him with her shoulder. “It is so difficult not to when you make every surprise feel like a damning secret.”
George chuckled and took a moment to brush back a loose lock of her black hair before he asked, “Do you remember when we were children and you spent hours and hours trying to convince your father to let you join him on one of his business tours because I was always invited and you weren’t?”
Cecelia’s heart skipped a beat, and all she was able to do was nod, fearful that if she spoke her words of hope, she might be wrong.
“Well, let us just say that I have booked us a tour of our own,” George told her, and Cecelia blinked in astonishment.
“I … I thought perhaps we might just take our honeymoon in Cornwall,” she admitted, blushing when she saw George roll his eyes.
“How could you think so small?” he demanded playfully.
It wasn’t until they were back in the barouche that George finally said, “I will give you one clue and tell you that we will begin the tour in Dover before we set sail.”
Cecelia blinked at him in surprise. Somehow, she felt as though that could only mean one thing. “You … you wish to take me to France?”
George gripped her hand, and the continued cheering of their friends and family started to fade as the horses pulled them away from her childhood home.
George nodded, his hand squeezing hers as he explained, “It was there that I first found my courage. It was there that I survived the years of the war in the hopes that I might one day make it back to you. It is there that I wish to start making new memories, happier memories, with my beautiful wife.”
His words struck her so emotionally in the chest that she couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks.
