minutes. There’s a car rug, too, if you’re chilly.’
Richard helped her into the vehicle and it was indeed as warm as toast. Bella relaxed a little.
‘Where are we going?’
‘There’s a painting hut on the hill. It’s really good for looking at the stars.’
She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Are you winding me up again?’
‘I want to be alone with you without some member of staff, or courtier, or bloody nosy member of my family getting in the way,’ he said with sudden violence. ‘It seems like for ever since we had some privacy.’
‘I know.’
The painting hut was a small single-storey stone building. It might have started life as a shepherd’s cottage but now it had expanses of glass set into the walls and the roof. More important, there was smoke coming out of its chimney.
There were vehicle tracks leading up to it and Richard stayed in them, so that the off-roader swayed and bumped but did not slide on the midnight ice that was forming over the impacted snow.
‘In, quickly,’ he said when they got there.
The place was not locked. It too was as cosy as could be, with a wood-burning stove glowing in the hearth.
But Bella did not look at the stove. She gazed at the stars. Walls and roof had been carefully replaced by glass, so no matter which way you looked, you saw only the night sky. It was like being suspended in space. The stars were so close you felt you could touch them, and the moon had a frosty halo.
‘It’s amazing,’ said Bella, awed.
‘Yes. I come here to think. I always have. I was up here this afternoon before I came to meet you. And that’s when I realised I had to bring you here.’
‘So I’m here. And?’
He drew a deep breath and turned to face her. In the moonlight, he looked handsome and passionate and deeply serious. But his voice was level.
‘Bella, it’s been three months. I know I’ve already told you that I knew the moment I saw you … you must have thought that was crazy … but I did. I can’t explain it. I saw you, with your feet in the air, covered in bits of ivy, and it was like everything in me clicked into the right place at that moment. I know I thought: so she’s the one. That’ll be all right then.’ He stopped talking and she saw him swallow.
‘Only, of course, it isn’t. Anyone who marries me, marries the job, the family, the protocol.’ He almost spat the last word.
‘I think that’s always true though, isn’t it? I mean, if you marry a doctor, you end up answering the phone to an emergency in the middle of the night.’
What am I babbling about? thought Bella. I’m being proposed to, for God’s sake. Shut up, Bella Greenwood. She closed her lips firmly, and waited.
Richard said, ‘And then there’s the public.’
She nodded.
‘Bella, I know you don’t want to be in the spotlight. We tried to keep out of it, both of us, didn’t we? But you see – it can’t be done, or not for long. You’ve been brilliant, all the time, funny and tolerant and kind and … oh, all the things I knew you’d be, the moment I fell in love with you. But—’
But? BUT? Hey, am I getting my marching orders, not a proposal at all?
He said very quietly, ‘Bella, I love you. I want to marry you. But what you see is what you get. The job is me. I can’t not be what I am. If you can’t take that … and I won’t blame you. Honestly, I won’t. But if you can’t … then please, will you tell me now? And we can say goodbye tomorrow, with no hard feelings.’
She almost bounced with indignation. ‘No hard feelings? Are you out of your mind? Don’t I get a chance to say yes before you write my refusal speech for me?’
He stared at her in the starlit dark. ‘What?’
She calmed down somewhat. ‘Ask me to marry you. Go on. Just ask.’
For a moment he looked almost frantic. ‘Bella, I—’ Then, typically, he drew a long breath and was calm again. It came out with the precision of a shopping list, and about as much emotion. ‘I love you. I want to be with you. I want to make you happy. Please, will you be my wife?’
She had known what she was going to say; had known for days, been certain. Yet suddenly, all her doubts rose