Instinctively, she raised her free hand to the pendant at her throat, her fingers stroking the cool metal as she attempted to compose herself.
“You know,” George said, watching her fingers for a few seconds before he wiped away her tears with his thumb, “I think that all those years ago, when I gave you that pendant, I was really giving you this.”
He raised her hand and pressed her palm over his heart, the gesture causing Cecelia to sob even harder. “Oh, Georgie!”
“Cece,” George returned with affection, brushing her hair back once more to kiss her with a thousand unspoken words of affection.
Chapter 30
The sway of the ship drew Cecelia closer beneath George’s arm as he held her, standing upon the deck as they looked out over the white cliffs of Dover. With the gulls flying in a powder blue sky overhead, the wind caressing loose strands of Cecelia’s dark hair across his cheeks, George breathed deeply the sea air with the realization that there was nowhere else on Earth he would rather be.
For the three months they had travelled: from Dover to France, from France to Austria, Austria to Italy, Italy to Spain, and finally Spain to Portugal before making the return journey via ship to England.
And what a journey it had been, gone in the blink of an eye, but with so many precious memories that he was certain would remain with him for the rest of his life.
“It feels good to be home,” Cecelia said, nuzzling into him, her arm wrapped affectionately around his waist. The way she played with the gold-threaded hem of his britches, as she so often did, made him smile as he remembered how she had once told him that it was because she simply loved to be close to him, because she simply loved to be in contact with him.
“It certainly does,” he agreed, breathing a sigh of relief as he remembered the last time he had come home on a ship.
Then, the day had been miserable. The weather had been poor, a storm having passed in the night, with drizzle still pouring. It had been frigidly cold, so cold that his hands and feet were numb, and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t stop his teeth from chattering.
But the worst part of it all had been the moaning and the cries he had heard from below deck all the while they sailed. The sounds of injured and dying men, some of them who would never set foot on English soil again.
England had looked like a bleak and bitter place back then, a place that he knew held only duty, responsibility, and theconstant reminder that no matter what he did – fighting for his country included – it was never good enough.
He looked upon his homeland now with entirely new eyes, not returning as the battle-weary soldier about to pick up his father’s title, but as the newlywed husband who intended to create the perfect wife for his new bride to show her just how much he truly loved having her by his side.
Placing her palm upon his chest, she looked up at him, her large blue-green eyes reminding him of the crystal-clear shores they had just left as she said, “Are you certain? We can always charter another ship out again?”
George tickled her playfully as he said, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Keeping me away from all my duties and responsibilities back home.”
He pulled her around to face him, gripping her hips with both his hands until she pressed her body against his, their frames fitting together as if they had been moulded from the same clay.
“If it means getting to keep you entirely to myself,” Cecelia said, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck, “then yes, and I shall not be sorry for saying it.”
She pushed up on the tips of her toes at the very same moment he leaned down, nuzzling his nose against hers, and she smiled at him before giving him a quick peck on the cheek.
“Though, I know I must reconcile myself to the knowledge that I shall soon be inundated with questions from my positively peevish sisters on which country was the best and which they should visit first when they are on their own honeymoons,” she said, twisting in his arms and clasping her hands over his at her waist to look out over the bay the ship was beginning to sail into.
“Don’t forget your mother insisting to know whether you have done your wifely duty correctly, or not,” George said, squeezing her hips.
Cecelia clucked her tongue against her teeth. “If you mention anything towards her on that, I swear, I shall strike you with the hardest thing I can find and make sure you never know the answer to that question or not either.”
George feigned offence at that, gasping in her ear before he nuzzled his face into the side of her neck and whispered, “You wouldn’t truly hurt me, would you?”
“How could I?” she demanded, and George’s insides flipped as she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Then you shall never get to meet this little one, shall you?”
The way she moved his hands to her lower abdomen, her words, made George’s heart skip a beat. He was almost certain that all the colour had drained from his face, not out of fear but shock at what he suspected she was telling him.
What if he was wrong? What if, in his hope of their starting a family together, he had misinterpreted her words?
He struggled to loosen the clenching of his jaw enough to ask, “Do you mean what I believe you to mean?”
Cecelia half twisted in his arms to look him directly in the eye as she said, “Yes, Georgie, I do.”
Still unsure, he gulped. “I … I need to hear you say it.”
Cecelia laid her hand upon his heart once more as she said, “I may well be carrying the next heir of Cumberland.”
