the girl cried, halting where she was, skirt full of bloom, and pointing forward at the long lane coming down towards the house.
Margaret turned and shielded her eyes. She recognised the horse at once, and the straight-backed figure sitting atop it. Poppy must have recognised him too, for she cried out, “Soldier man!” and began jumping up and down with delight. “He came back!”
Margaret found that, after all the hours she had spent thinking about what she would do in this exact instance, she had absolutely no power to speak or move. She stayed rooted to the ground, wanting desperately to be near him but afraid to presume, wanting to say everything on her heart but wanting to hear his first.
He stopped his horse across the garden from where she stood and slipped off the back and to the ground. She expected the Nigel she had grown up with – quiet and shy and careful – to come over and broach the subject of romance again. Perhaps she expected him to speak politely of their prospects or to say that he had received her letter. What she had not expected was what actually happened – he started walking towards her, his eyes on her face, an intensity in every feature, and he did not stop.
She stayed rooted in place, and when he was mere feet away she attempted to speak. “Nigel, I’m so sorry –”
But she didn’t have a chance to finish. In a moment his arms were around her waist and his lips were on hers. The kiss was sweet and gentle, the first overture of its kind that he had ever made, but she tasted in it all the desire of the years that he had kept to himself. When he pulled away at last, she realised she was crying.
“You received my letter,” she said breathlessly.
“I did.” He looked towards the house, his hand still on her waist. “Your father may be less inclined to agree after a show like this.” He turned his eyes to hers, laughter and joy mingled there. “Tell me that you mean everything you wrote in that letter.”
She put her hands up to his face, her fingers tracing gently along his handsome jaw. “I mean it,” she said softly.
He released her waist and, in one fluid movement, dropped to one knee and seized her hand. “Maggie,” he said quietly, his eyes locked on hers, “I love you with every fibre of my being. I have loved you for years, and I fought against it at every turn. I did not think myself to be deserving of your love – even now I do not think myself deserving – but I continued to hold on to my love for you. It sustained me in the years that I was gone. It sustained me the first time I saw you again…” he broke down, his voice hoarse. “I wanted you so much, and I thought you were beyond me.”
She shook her head, but he pressed on before she could interject. “You have borne your troubles here so well. I left and you were the kind of beautiful girl that haunts a man’s dreams, but I returned and you were a woman of wisdom and kindness beyond what I could imagine. I want to spend forever with you. I should never have left. I should never have stopped fighting for you. Will you marry me, Maggie?”
She nodded, the tears coming thick and fast. She thought it a strange sort of preposterous that he considered her so much above his current station, when she thought him to be so superior to all men in her acquaintance. But she hadn’t the words to contradict him. She was just so happy to be hearing the declarations of his heart and to know that what she had hoped for had come to pass at last.
“I will of course marry you,” she said. He rose and embraced her again, and in the silence shared between them she felt a little tug at her skirts and remembered that they were not alone. She looked down, and Poppy stood with a hand on Nigel’s knee and another on Margaret’s skirts.
“Are you kissing her?” Poppy asked, wrinkling her forehead in confusion. Doubtless she had never seen a couple kiss, only read about it in her books. Margaret broke free from Nigel and knelt down so she was level with the child.
“I am going to marry the soldier, Poppy.”
“Wait.” Nigel knelt down as well, reaching