Amelia sighed, pushed back her chair—and froze as she caught sight of him.
Her entire face lit as if she were mirroring his warmth. “Grayson.” She stood. “I thought you wouldn’t be back for months!”
He didn’t know if she hurled herself across the room or if he raced to meet her. He just knew that in one second, they were apart; in the next blink of an eye, she was in his arms. He pulled her in, breathing in the scent of her hair—sunshine and sweetness with notes of India ink and turpentine. He would find out what she was doing soon enough, he suspected.
“Grayson.” She whispered in his ear. “You’re back.”
He pulled away an arm’s length. “I am. Amelia, I’ve been working on the thing you asked of me.”
She looked at him, her eyes wide.
“Happiness doesn’t last,” he told her. “It comes and goes, but that just makes the moments when it arrives more valuable. Before I could find it, I had to go through all the other things I hadn’t let myself feel.”
“Grayson.” She took his hands.
“And once I let myself feel…” He inhaled and looked at her. “Once I let myself feel everything, I came to a realization.”
He had thought of this moment often on his return journey. What he would say. How she would respond. He took a deep breath.
“Amelia, you should know. I will never take up residence in one place. I will spend the next decades of my life expanding the telegraphic network. I don’t want children of my own. The concept of ‘settling down’—it’s not in my blood. I’m not much of a catch, but—”
She tilted her head, frowning. “Oh. Speaking of which, I’ve been working on a mechanical method to transcribe telegraphic messages. It doesn’t work yet—”
He let out a noise of exasperation.
Her nose wrinkled. “What?”
“‘Speaking of which,’” he echoed back at her. “How is that related to what I was saying?”
“Um.” She looked up, tapping her lips with a finger. “They were both in my head at the same time.”
“Amelia, I love you, but I am trying to ask you to marry me.”
She looked even more perplexed at this. “Really? And that’s how you start? What happened to ‘I am so attractive; all the women want me?’”
“It seemed gauche to mention other women at the time.”
“‘Not much of a catch.’” She shook her head. “Boo. It should be more along the lines of ‘Look, Amelia, what other man will make you feel like this?’”
“Well. There is that.”
“You should lead with your strengths. ‘Amelia, what other man will give you a telegraphic network?’”
“That is true. I do have a telegraphic network.”
“You could have said, ‘Amelia, you may have noticed that neither of us particularly want children. Do you not find that convenient?’”
“I do find it convenient.”
She glared up at him. “The Taotai of Shanghai got ‘I’m Grayson Hunter, and I’m going to irrevocably alter the shape of Chinese communication’ for a proposal, and you just wanted him for a telegraph. Where is my aggressive proposal? Deliver it, if you please.”
“Here.” He pulled the ring he’d had commissioned in San Francisco out of his pocket. The metal was gold and shiny, but the stone…well. Its luster came from polishing, as much as one could polish a fossil.
She blinked. Reached out. Touched the dull gray triangle that had been carved and smoothed underneath to fit her finger.
“Is that…is that made with a megalodon tooth?” Her voice was shaking.
“Of course it is.” Grayson shook his head. “Was I supposed to ask you to marry me with anything else? It was hard enough finding a megalodon tooth small enough to fit the bill. A megalodon vertebrae would have been approximately the size of your head. How were you supposed to carry that around?”
She looked up at him.
“You could have not involved megalodons at all.”
Grayson gave her a look. “This ring means that I love you. I couldn’t have used anything else.”
“Well then.” She held out her hand. “It’s a good thing I love you, too. Put it on.”
Epilogue
Being introduced to Grayson’s parents ended up being less nerve-racking than Amelia had thought. She managed to curtsy properly, and once they’d settled in, she gave his parents a sampling of teas that she’d picked out in Shanghai. When she handed over the blue-and-white china tea set that Auntie Zhu had helped her pick out, she didn’t trip or break anything.
They’d promised everyone to attend a lengthier celebration in the evening—“Don’t worry,” Grayson had told Amelia, “they won’t expect you to remember anyone’s name, and you’ll know Zed already”—but for that afternoon, they were ensconced in a room with Grayson’s mother and father and his brother, Adrian, and Adrian’s wife, Camilla.
“You know,” Camilla had said, “Grayson has never told us how you met.”
“Oh.” Amelia glanced at Grayson, then smiled. “The first time I met him, he was very direct. He told me he was looking for a man, and then ten minutes later, he said something like, ‘It’s you. I’m looking for you.’ I would have left with him on the spot.”
“I think you did not,” Grayson reminded her. “I had to do a great deal of convincing. It took me two entire days.”
“He’s very convincing, our Grayson.” Adrian gave Grayson a look. “Well done.”
“The second time we met,” Amelia said, “I proceeded to embarrass myself by talking about megalodons.”
“That’s hardly embarrassing. Who doesn’t want to talk about megalodons?” Asked Grayson’s father.
“There are some people.” Amelia glanced upward. “Some hundred million or so. Grayson was very encouraging.” She smiled at him.
Grayson just shrugged. “She was very encourageable.”
“And now we’re here.” She was aware that she had skipped quite a bit in that retelling. “I’m a little nervous.”
“My dear.” Grayson’s mother set a hand over Amelia’s. “I haven’t seen Grayson smile like this in half a dozen years. It’s normal to be nervous in new situations; I won’t tell you that you must stop. But I promise you, you have nothing to worry about. We already love you.” She reached out with her other hand, reaching for Grayson across from her. “We love you both. With our whole hearts.”
The camphor trees along the docks in Liyang were still green in December. The weather had turned to mild briskness, and the last few dark-black camphor berries were littered underfoot as Grayson stepped off the junk, leaving a faint medicinal smell all around them.
Grayson should not have been nervous. During his last visit here, people had been friendly enough. But it was one thing to arrive as a stranger with an Englishified Chinese woman as a mere associate. It was quite another to go back to the place that had decided Amelia should marry the district magistrate’s son. Amelia was the daughter who had returned to the village; now he was taking her away again.