was real. Real and here and ready for her. Waiting.
Dropping the letter to her lap, her hands lifted, sliding along the line of his jaw to cup his face. “And you have always been my happiness.”
A smile broke wide on his face, so foreign, but so familiar for it was the same smile she remembered from their youth. Innocence and hope at its core, but now laced with heartache and recognition of all the suffering the world could devise.
His left hand moved to clamp the back of her hand on his face and he turned to kiss her palm, his look piercing her. “So we can wait for the banns, or we can wait for Des to arrange a special license for us—he already asked me if he should start arranging it.”
Her chest flooded with something so unfamiliar—pure happiness—that she almost didn’t recognize it.
She nodded. “I think…I think I would like to have you as my husband sooner rather than later.”
Love, so unmistakable in his dark hazel eyes, stole her breath away. “I was hoping you would say that.”
{ Epilogue }
Stepping off the end of the dock, Laney’s foot landed on solid ground, mucky though it was, and Wes had never been happier to see such a sight. The solid, unmoving ground had to help—help his wife steady herself for he didn’t think he could stand another minute of looking at the sweat on her brow, her sunken cheeks, and the grey pallor that had been permanent on her face since they’d boarded the Firehawk to travel to America.
A carriage rolled in front of them—far too close, almost clipping their toes—and he jabbed his arm in front of Laney, pulling her into him to shield her.
He looked out at the scene in front of them.
Madness. Pure madness.
People, carts, horses, sailors, carriages, wagons—all falling madcap over each other without direction.
Worse than London—far worse.
What had he done? New York? What had he been thinking?
When he’d come into this port years ago, it hadn’t been like this.
Or had it?
Maybe he hadn’t noticed because he hadn’t had Laney and the babe she was growing inside her belly to protect. He’d just moved through the crowds without thought.
His arm tightened around her just as another black carriage cut in front of them. Only this one stopped directly before them.
The carriage door swung partially open, hitting his shoulder.
“Move back a step, man,” the driver barked from his high perch.
With a glare to the driver, Wes shuffled him and Laney back a step, mostly so their toes weren’t sliced off when the carriage moved onward.
“Weston, dear Weston—it is you, isn’t it?” A cane hit the inside of the door, knocking it wide open and a tiny grey-haired lady shuffled along the bench, leaning forward. The widest smile cut across the layers of wrinkles along her cheeks. “It is you. I knew it. Posh on Freddy up there. He didn’t think it was you, but I was sure it was—your head towers over the others.”
His grandmother.
Her gloved hand went onto the layers of white ruffles lining her chest, her laugh managing to pierce through the sounds around them. “Your size, it still tickles me so. You. Your father. Such big, big men. I never thought my Henrietta would like such size. But she did. Precocious girl that she was, of course she did—how could she not?”
Her hand beckoned them forward. “Come, come, get in before you two get trampled.”
The driver wasn’t moving from his perch so Wes yanked the steps to the carriage as the man already in the coach shifted to sit next to his grandmother. Wes ushered Laney up into the carriage, shoved the steps in and hopped into the interior, sliding into the seat next to Laney.
A jerk, and the carriage moved, weaving through the mess of humanity outside the carriage.
“Cousin, good of you to make it to the states again.” With a good-natured smile his cousin, Lance, inclined his head to Wes’s grandmother. “Grandmother has been crawling out of her skin these last weeks waiting for your ship.”
Wes shook his head and looked to his grandmother. “You didn’t need to meet us here.”
“Nonsense. Any grandson is met by family. A distant relation—ehhh. We’d send a coach.” She lifted her shoulders. “But a grandson. A grandson we meet. That is our way—that you slipped into New York last time unannounced and just showed up at my door still sits in my craw.” Her crooked finger lifted, pointing at him. “I still haven’t forgiven you for