“I must tell you about our family. About Payden and our parents. It is not right keeping it all from you.”
“Tell me anything or nothing or everything about the Thompsons, Elspeth. It will not change my feelings for you.”
“Actually, we’re not the Thompsons. We’re the MacTavishes.”
“So I’m hoping to marry Elspeth MacTavish?” He smiled. “Is she as lovely as Elspeth Thompson?”
She smiled and leaned against him and then turned to stare out into the trees near the buggy, absently watching a young boy with a stick batting at stones and grass as he walked. “You see, Alexander . . .” she began.
She told him the whole story, starting in Scotland, the illegitimate man, Plowman, at the core of the violence, her parents’ murder, New York harbor, and a Philadelphia destination under the cover of night. Her brother was part of the Scottish aristocracy, he knew from James’s confession, but he hadn’t known that James was a cousin. Payden MacTavish was a wealthy young man, an aristocrat, who would be admitted to the most exclusive society in England and Scotland. And Elspeth was the sister of an earl.
“I wanted to tell you everything. I wanted you to know everything about our family. There may be troubles in the future for us, and I don’t really know what that means other than Payden will assume his properties, and his official title, at some point, and I may be involved in some way. I will never desert them if I am needed.”
He picked up her hand and held it between his two, rubbing lightly. “Why are you telling me this? I admit I was curious, but these family secrets are yours; they are your family’s. I would never press you for an explanation or expect you to abandon your family.”
“I thought you should know.” She looked up at him shyly from under her lashes. “I thought you should know before I said yes.”
His heart thumped wildly in his chest, and he could barely speak. “Said yes? As in, yes to my proposal?”
She nodded. “If you still want to marry me after hearing all of this family tragedy, then my answer is yes,” she whispered.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her soundly, even as another carriage rolled by.
“I have a ring at home. I’d like to go there first and get it. I’d like you to wear it when we go to my mother and father’s for dinner. I want everyone there to know that you are mine.”
“I would like that very much,” she said and tilted her head, resting her cheek on his shoulder.
Chapter 21
Elspeth turned in the open carriage to wave at her family after the wedding and the wedding breakfast that had been held at the Penn’s View Hotel on Front Street. There had been nearly seventy guests for the reception, which was quite enough for her, although she’d offered repeatedly to have something larger to accommodate his family’s association with prominent businesspeople and government acquaintances. But he had told her that just his family and hers and some close friends and neighbors would be exactly what he’d hoped for.
She’d changed for the last time in her old room with Kirsty’s help, out of her beaded cream-colored silk wedding dress, and dressed in her smart new traveling outfit of lilac-colored linen with white collar and cuffs and covered buttons down the front. She’d pinned on her matching linen hat with a broad brim and a dyed feather that hung attractively down the back of her neck. They were on their way to the train station to travel to New Jersey, where the Pendergast family had a seaside home in the town of Cape May. They were to stay there and honeymoon for two weeks.
She was so excited she could hardly sit still, but there was her family on the steps and in the doorway of her home at 75 Locust Street. They were waving and smiling and throwing kisses, and Aunt Murdoch was dabbing her eyes. The only one not there was Muireall. But she would not shed any tears on this, the most exciting and romantic day of her life, even if it hurt just a wee bit to not see her eldest sister there with the rest of the family, even if Muireall had held her in a long wordless embrace before she left the house. She was married. She loved her husband, and she would be his wife in more than name only before the day was out.
They would arrive at a station in New Jersey three hours, then less than an hour by carriage to the sea, and staff would be there to transport them and their luggage. She’d not been out of the city of Philadelphia since she arrived there from New York City at the age of nine.
Alexander was terrified. Completely petrified and nearly immobile with fear. Would she be frightened of him when the time came for their wedding night? He didn’t know. She certainly acted much like the young woman he’d known before her kidnapping, but who was to say how a woman would feel after suffering under the hands of those men, those monsters? He’d gone to great lengths to make their arrival at the ocean house joyful and relaxed, allowing the servants to fuss over them, as the day had been long, although both of them had napped in the privacy of their train car, Elspeth with her head laying his shoulder and her hand wrapped tightly around his upper arm.
After they’d eaten a scrumptious dinner and drank champagne, they’d taken a slow walk on the sand, Elspeth marveling at the ocean. She was down on her haunches now, her arms wrapped around her knees.
“It is vast,” she said. “And we are not.”
He sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him, his hands propped behind him, his fingers tunneling in the warm sand that was now, undoubtedly, in every crevice of his clothing.
“True on both counts.”
She looked at him. “It is reassuring to accept that we are such a small part of such a vast world. That every eye is not on each of our movements and errors, and even triumphs.”
“But we each can have a righteous impact. We can correct a wrong. We can raise honest and loving children. We can appreciate art and the progress of inventors and hear beautiful music. You have had such an impact on me,” he said.
She smiled at him and turned to look at the ocean again. She sat quietly for some time. “Aunt Murdoch did not give me any particulars about tonight, about what will happen later. She told me that there will be times in my marriage where you will need me, need me desperately, perhaps, and I may have to support you and just love you.” She turned to look at him with a broad smile. “She told me she would not give any ridiculous advice, as she could hardly remember what happened in the marriage bed, it was so long ago.”
Alexander did not move a muscle. He may have been blushing, unfortunately, imagining her aunt saying something as outrageous as that. He continued to stare at her as she bent toward him.
“She told me to let you be my guide. To follow your lead. She was certain that you loved me beyond measure and that it would mostly come naturally anyway. She said Eve had produced Cain and Abel with no dutiful instructions from some old woman to either she or Adam. She told me to trust you.”
He continued to stare at her, unsure of himself, praying that he could make her happy. The sun was going down behind them, and the housekeeper had told him there would only be one staff member in the house for that evening, a groom who had apartments over the stables. They would be alone in the house. Totally alone with the vast and rolling sea.
She stood, shook her skirts, and stared down at him. “Will you make love to me, Alexander?”