choice.
I lifted my face, needing his eyes and his steadiness, needing him to know that if it was a choice, I’d already made it.
“I love you, Thomas. I think I loved you when you were simply words on a page, a face in an old photo. When my grandfather showed me your picture and said your name, I felt something. Something shifted inside me.”
Thomas didn’t interrupt or profess his own love. He just listened, staring down at me, his gaze soft, his mouth softer, his touch against my back the softest of all. But I needed something to hold on to, and I curled my hands into his shirt the way I’d clung to the tree. His skin was warm from dancing, and his heart drummed beneath my clenched fists, reminding me that in that moment, he was mine.
“Then the words on the page and the face in the photos became a man. Real. Tangible. Perfect.” I swallowed, trying not to cry. “I fell so fast, so hard, and so completely. Not because love is blind, but because . . . it’s not. Love isn’t blind, it’s blinding. Glaring. I looked at you, and from the very first day, I knew you. Your faith and your friendship, your goodness and your devotion. I saw it all, and I fell so hard. And the feeling continues to grow. My love is so big and full and brimming that I can’t breathe around it. It’s terrifying to love so much, knowing how fragile our existence really is. You’re going to have to hold on to me, or I’ll burst . . . or maybe I’ll just float away. Up into the sky, out into the lough.”
I felt a tremor run through him from his gentle hands to his forgiving eyes, and then his lips were smiling and pressed to mine, once, twice, and again. His sigh tickled my tongue, and my grasping hands flattened against him, yielding. Then he was murmuring into my seeking lips, kissing me even as he spoke.
“Marry me, Anne. I’ll shackle you to me so you can’t float away, so we won’t ever have to be apart. Plus, it’s time you had a new name. It’s damn confusing to keep calling you Anne Gallagher.”
Of all the things I’d thought he’d suggest, marriage was not one of them. I pulled back, my jaw slack, and I laughed in disbelief. For a moment, I forgot about Thomas’s lips and searched his eyes instead. They were pale and guileless beneath the sheltering boughs and the light of the winter moon.
“Anne Smith is almost as ordinary as Thomas Smith,” he murmured. “But when you’re a time-traveling countess, the name isn’t all that important.” His teasing tone was at odds with his very serious proposition.
“Can we do that? Can we really get married?” I breathed.
“Who’s to stop us?”
“I can’t prove that I’m . . . me.”
“Who needs proof? I know. You know. God knows.” Thomas kissed my forehead, my nose, and each cheek before pausing at my mouth, waiting for me to answer.
“But . . . what will people say?” What would Brigid say?
“I hope they will congratulate us.” He pressed a kiss to my upper lip, then to the lower one, tugging it softly, urging me to follow his lead.
“What will Michael say?” I panted, pulling back so I could converse. I could picture Michael Collins congratulating Thomas while he whispered warnings in my ears.
“Mick will say something rough and irreverent, I’m sure. And then he’ll burst into noisy tears because he loves as intensely as he hates.”
“What—” I began again.
“Anne.” Thomas pressed his thumbs to my lips, cradling my face and quieting my stream of questions. “I love you. Desperately. I want to bind us together in every way possible. Today, tomorrow, and for every day after that. Do you want to marry me or not?”
There was nothing I wanted more in the world. Not a single, solitary thing.
I nodded, smiling against the pads of his thumbs, submitting completely. He moved his hands, replacing them with his mouth once more.
For a moment, I reveled in the possibility of permanence, in the clean, all-consuming taste of him. Promise sang between us, and I let myself hum along.
Then the wind shifted and the moonlight winked; a branch cracked and a match flickered. A tendril of cigarette smoke hung in the air, alerting us that we were not alone seconds before a voice rose out of the darkness.
“So it’s true, eh? You two. Mother