She turned about. Heavens, it was quiet. There were ruts on the main road, but they looked old, as though they’d been made long ago. It didn’t seem as though the road was often used.
She didn’t know where she was. Only if she were to describe heaven, it would look a good deal like this. Pink and white blossoms ruffling in the trees; tiny star-shaped yellow and white flowers trimming the hedgerows. Thumb-sized birds with peeping calls darting between the greenery.
A sky like a sheet of blue china.
Above her, a single cloud, like a dollop of cream, spreading softly.
The warmth.
The quiet.
The quiet was a caress.
She worried that in quiet moments, she was always going to be bound to weep, because quiet moments made her soft.
Quiet moments belonged to James.
She hated to interrupt the quiet, but it needed to be said.
“But Mr. Malloy, are you certain this is the way to Dover?”
“Well, that’s the other thing, Miss Wylde.” He removed his cap to scratch his head. “I thought so, but I may have taken a wrong turn a few miles back. I’ll just have a look at me map, won’t I?”
He reached into his coat and retrieved what looked like a sheet of parchment folded in thirds. He fanned it open.
“Well, I’ve a map right here, but it’s in another language. I must have brought the wrong one. I canna make no sense of it, Miss. Would you have a look?”
She took it from him, gingerly. Her heart lurched in dread. Honestly, she could do with one or two uneventful hours in her life. A bit of a pause between caprices of fate.
She heaved a sigh, unfolded it, and had a look.
“Oh dear! Mr. Malloy! This isn’t even a map! It’s a . . . it’s a . . .”
She stopped breathing.
Goose bumps spangled her arms.
It was a deed.
She stared at it.
“Oh . . . my . . . God,” she breathed.
DEED OF GIFT
To Miss Mariana Wylde
the property henceforth known as Piccole Nuvole
By James Duncan Blackmore, Duke of Valkirk
Piccole Nuvole.
Little clouds.
“What on . . . what is . . . I don’t under . . .”
She slowly lifted her head to find Mr. Malloy grinning at her. And then he stepped to the left.
To reveal, standing on the path before her, the Duke of Valkirk.
She stared. What bliss to see him in the sunlight.
For the time it took a bird to trill the first few notes of an aria, they feasted their eyes upon each other.
“Would you be so kind as to go for a walk with me, Mariana?” His voice was a little gruff.
He extended his arm.
It was a long moment before she could speak.
“I would be so kind.” Her own voice was a mere thread.
She looped her arm through his.
And for a time—minutes, hours, days, epochs? They strolled without a word. Outside of time. Side by side. Along a pathway lined in a picturesque, ancient stone wall, wildflowers taking anarchic advantage of the gaps in the stone to bob over the path.
If she had actually died out there on the road inside the hack, she was satisfied with how eternity was progressing. If she was dreaming, she would happily never wake. She would also have enjoyed the feel of his warm naked skin pressed against hers, but she would settle for this peace, this velvety contentment, the floating along on this day while her old nemesis, hope, bore her along on wings. As long as he was here.
He’d remembered about the musicians and Mr. Malloy. He’d ordered aristocrats to her event. She knew somehow he had done it.
She didn’t know what was happening now. Or why, in her other trembling hand, she held a deed to a property that he seemed to have given to her.
But she would learn in due time, and something told her she now had all the time in the world.
He stopped when they came to a little wooden fence. Beyond it, pasture lands were heaped like soft, green blankets as far as her eye could see.
And scattered over them were enchanting, fluffy white sheep with sweet, long faces and ears that flickered at the sound of their approach.
She slipped her arm from his and moved along the fence. Her heart kicked inside her like a jackrabbit.
“I bought the property back from my son,” he told her simply, quietly. “And I’m giving it to you. This land and everything on it should provide safety and shelter and an income for you and your mother if you choose to bring her to live with you. It’s yours. If you want it.”
He took a long breath and slowly released it.
“Or it can be ours . . . if you want me.”
Her lungs stilled.
Her heart felt tight, like a bud. It yearned to unfurl.
She was not yet brave enough to let it. He had more to say, and she would need to hear it first.
They regarded each other in silence across a little distance. She was envious of the breeze that lifted his hair. She wanted to be touching him, too.
“I know I’ve bungled things badly.” His voice was graveled. His breath came a little short, with nerves. With newness. “I’ve hurt you, and somehow in my selfishness, I’ve made you feel cheap, when you are . . .” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You are so indescribably precious to me. Mariana, I knew I loved you before I ever touched you. I was afraid to call it that. All I knew was that I was happy. And something in me couldn’t believe I would ever be allowed to keep that kind of love.”
His beautiful face, saying these astonishing things, suddenly swam before her. She pushed the tears away with her fingertips.
“Am I bungling this?” he asked urgently. “I’ve no experience at this, Mariana.”
She shook her head slowly.
“All I know is that I would rather die than hurt you ever again. All I want to do is show you how much I love you. If you would be so kind as to marry me, it would be the greatest honor of my life.”
Her knees were about to give way, and he knew. He was there at once, arms around her, holding her up. She held his face in her hands, then looped her arms around his neck, met his lips with hers.
But only lightly, at first.
She had already told him with her body and with her eyes. But now, with a blessed new freedom to say whatever she liked and whatever she felt, she could say it aloud.
“I love you, too.” Those words felt like a language she’d never stop learning.
His arms tightened around her. “And you will be my wife?”
“Oh, yes,” she said softly. “Thank you. I think I will be so kind.”
They commenced to slowly kiss each other senseless.
And when they finally took a moment to breathe, they turned to admire the green pasture and their woolly occupants. And their future.
“The sheep look like little clouds,” she told him.
“Le pecore sono nostre,” he said. “The sheep are ours.”
Epilogue
Because the Archbishop of Canterbury, like everyone else, was in awe of the Duke of Valkirk and felt he owed him a debt of gratitude, a special license was at once granted. Mariana and James were married promptly by the local vicar, modestly and quietly beneath a bower of blossoms on a farm in Sussex. In attendance was nearly everyone who presently lived at The Grand Palace on the Thames and Valkirk’s son, Arthur, and his wife, Lady Cathryn, and some observant sheep.