Lachlan, in his fifties, silver at his temple with tortoiseshell glasses reflecting the candles. Beatrice, with her thick chestnut hair tied in a low bun at the nape of her neck, her hands clasped in her lap.
“It’s not that complicated,” he said, his voice tightening. “It’s a yes or a no. Really, that’s all it is.”
She held his gaze; his beautiful gaze she had come to love so much—the green eyes rimmed in blue, almond shaped with thick black eyelashes; usually gentle and teasing at the same time. But now serious.
He was right; it wasn’t that complicated.
For the second time within a single minute, he lifted the blue velvet box for her to see. It was open and inside rested a two-carat solitaire round diamond surrounded by sapphires, her birthstone. Lachlan didn’t miss a beat. He never had and probably never would. He loved her as deeply as she could dare ask. And she loved him. His shoulders a shelf for her to rest upon; his laugh a symphony, and his voice deep enough to make people turn when he spoke. Yet he wasn’t a pushover—this ask, for the second time, was as good as his heart exposed.
But marriage? My God. Not again. The first had lasted fifteen years; years that Beatrice had believed were true and real, but that marriage had been over for ten years now. Why would she do that again?
“Will you, Beatrice, marry me? Yes or no.”
Other patrons of the candlelit restaurant were beginning to stare, whisper quietly, maybe prepare to clap in an outburst when she assented.
How easy it would be to say yes. But the word stuck in her throat, or somewhere even deeper than her throat for that matter. She leaned across the table and placed her hand over the box, shut it, and held his hand under hers. Annoyance rose like smoke—why did he have to do this in public where it would now shame them both? But she wouldn’t show irritation; he was trying to be romantic.
“Lachlan, I don’t want to say no. It’s the wrong answer. But I can’t say yes either. I don’t know why. I beg you to understand.”
“I think I understand.” He stood and his face burned red with embarrassment. She wanted to fix it for him, to say yes and get it over with, to lessen his despair.
He turned and walked out of the restaurant, deliberately, with wide strides, his long legs taking him to the door within seconds. He was a proud man, and there was no way he would sit there in humiliation—he’d left his full champagne glass on the table, yet had taken the velvet box, tucked it in his pocket. The hushed voices around Beatrice rose; they sounded to her like buzzing cicadas on a summer night—if cicadas could be judgmental and appalled, that is.
Beatrice sat still and quiet, trying to catch her breath while the crème brûlée turned soggy where she’d stuck her fork in it right before Lachlan had slipped the box from his coat jacket. She took a long sip of her champagne he’d ordered (that should have been a hint; he only orders wine, and red at that) and sat back to catch her breath.
What the hell was wrong with her?
Why would the word “yes” not rise to her tongue? There were many reasons, she knew. A good marriage gone bad. Or to quote Dorothy Parker, she’d put all her eggs in one bastard, in a marriage she’d thought was good but turned out to be a sham. She’d come to terms with that years ago. She’d wept on a stranger’s couch in therapy and had eventually found her way through the pain and the lies and the deceit. It’d been ten years; a decade since her marriage to Tom had ended. He could not be the reason she didn’t want to marry again. He couldn’t hurt her anymore. She wouldn’t allow it.
She’d found her way. She’d built a life handcrafted of her own making. But the truth was this: saying no to Lachlan might mean she would lose him. And she loved him. She loved their life together. He had his house and she had hers only two blocks away in downtown Savannah where the cobblestone streets echoed with their two hundred years, where the gas lanterns flickered at night, and the jeweled emerald park squares with their statues and monuments allowed reprieve. From Lachlan’s small roof patio, past the steeple of the Cathedral of St. John