Page 78 of The Battle of the Bookshops
Roman put his hand over Jules’s to get her attention and whispered in her ear. “Pretend you need the loo. I’ll meet you in the hall. Got it?”
Roman slipped out, closely followed by Jules, and they reunited, giggling, outside.
Terry the Taxi was waiting at the entrance.
“Had a good night?” he asked cheerfully as he pulled away, scattering gravel, before heading back to Portneath. Jules, not wanting to leave Aunt Flo alone, had persuaded Roman to join her in the flat, but when the car reached the top of the high street, Jules, fatigue forgotten, tapped Terry on the shoulder.
“Just drop us here, thanks,” she said.
Roman raised his eyebrows in inquiry as Terry pulled away without them.
“There’s something I want to see,” Jules explained, pulling him in the direction of the church at the top of the hill.
The gateway to the churchyard was lit by a streetlamp, but oncethey were on the path leading through the churchyard, Roman had to get out the flashlight on his phone.
“What exactly are we doing in a churchyard in the middle of the night?” he inquired mildly. “Have we taken up ghostbusting?”
“It’s here,” said Jules, pulling him a little closer by the hand. “Just here at the end of the row.” She scanned the stones set into the ground, and there, at the end, as the vicar had promised, was a new stone. The edges of the turf it was set into were crisply cut, not fuzzy like the rest. Here, on the south side of the church, by the path where the churchgoers walked, where it would be in the sunshine and not the shadows, there was a simple slate memorial stone:
In memory of Bridget Capelthorne
1621–1685
A woman who lived, as she died, in service to her community.
“That’s beautiful,” said Roman, taking off his jacket and slipping it onto her shoulders. “It’s about time.”
Jules nodded dumbly. “I thought I’d be remembering Aunt Flo,” she said, remembering Flo’s heart attack with a shudder.
“One day you will,” said Roman, his arm across her shoulders. “But not yet. And when it happens, I’ll be there for you.”
Without discussion, they walked together to the end of the churchyard to sit on the Montbeau tomb—their special spot—looking at Portneath stretching away below them to the sea. It was incredible to think that America was the next piece of land. The cobalt sky was clear and pierced with stars. Jules tilted her head back to look at them. How amazing to think there might be hundreds—thousands—of people in America looking at the same stars.
“Will you go back to New York?” she asked, her heart thumping so loud she imagined he could hear it.
“I will, if you come with me?” he said, pulling her against his side. She could feel the warmth from his body. “Let’s just go,” he said urgently. “Why not? New York is perfect in the autumn. I want to take you to my apartment, it’s in a Brooklyn brownstone. When I’m not working, we can sit on the stoop and watch the world go by. And we can walk in Central Park on frosty mornings—see the leaves change—the colors are incredible. And there’s a tiny bakery on the way where they make the best cinnamon buns you’ve ever tasted, huge and still warm from the oven. And there’s this guy who does coffee from his little camper van in the park...
“And I want to show you the bookshops! America’s got some of the best bookshops in the world. There’s the Strand, and the Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue... In fact, once we are married, I want our honeymoon to be a world tour of the most incredible bookshops ever. Shakespeare and Company—as if we even need an excuse to go to Paris—”
“And we can spend time in Hay-on-Wye,” Jules chimed in. “And, of course, London bookshops aremyspecialist subject. “Daunt Books and Goldsboro, for a start... Hang on, did you say ‘once we are married’?”
“Oops,” he said, a lazy smile rendered not quite convincing by a tiny tremor at the corner of his mouth. “Well...?”
Jules gazed into his eyes, noticing in the dim light how his pupils had expanded into bottomless black pools.
“Of course,” she said, moving in for a kiss. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Montbeau-Capelthorne,” mused Roman, sometime later.
“Or Capelthorne-Montbeau,” suggested Jules, with just a hint of steel.
“Can you imagine our families together at the wedding?” Roman winced. “Sheesh. We might need to get bouncers in.”
“We could just do it really, really quietly?”
“You and me, on a beach in Bali?”
“That might not be fair,” admitted Jules reluctantly. “Mum has her moments, I know, but she’s been planning my wedding day all my life.”
