Page 56 of A Lady's Wicked Revenge
A sick look crossed Colin’s face. He looked out the window at the colourful foliage that stubbornly hung onto the scraggly branches of some of the few London trees. Diana felt her heart twist into a knot at the sight of his distress.
“The last two weeks without you have been … very difficult for me, Diana,” he spoke distantly. “In fact, I should say it’s been the first-most difficult thing in my life.”
There it is,Diana thought.
“I cannot imagine how it can be that awful. After all, you’ve already spent more than five-and-twenty years without me,” she quipped, hoping to coax Colin’s smile back onto his handsome face. She immediately regretted the impulse when she saw how pained he looked.
“Please, Diana. Let me speak my piece,” he said in a serious voice that was utterly alien to her. She nodded, but the suffering on his features was enough to make her want to cry out.
Will I ever see that charming, carefree Colin again?Diana thought, swallowing something that felt like broken glass.The man I grew to know in the Leeson gardens was so confident, so sure of himself …
After several long moments of staring down at his hands, Colin said in a soft voice, “In truth, I can barely remember what life felt like in those five-and-twenty years. Even in my memory, the world seems … cold, colourless, empty. There have been times these last two weeks when I desperately wished I could go back to that existence, barren though it now seems to me.”
Then he looked at Diana, his eyes glistening with tears even as his strong jaw was set firmly, his jiggling leg now still. “But that is an idle fantasy, a child’s fantasy. And even if what I now intend to do is as silly as any storybook romance, I know that I must try, as not trying might be the death of me.”
Colin stretched out a hand across the table, and without even considering what she was doing, Diana put her own hand atop his. He clutched it tightly, squeezing life into her with the merest touch of his skin.
“Diana …” He paused to take a breath. She could see his heart beating in his temples, his throat bobbing with emotion. “I cannot imagine going on living without you. If there is any chance, no matter how remote, that you might—”
“Yes.”
His eyes shot up to her, wide with surprise.
“Yes, you dolt, I’ll marry you.” Diana laughed. The words flowed through her like warm light, refilling her with all the happiness that had been missing. And as she saw the purest, most beautiful smile return to Colin’s lips, she felt herself grow even more full of happiness, so much so that she wondered if she might burst.
Then he swept her up into his arms with all the art and elegance of a storybook prince, and as their lips met in a glorious confluence, Diana wondered no more.
Epilogue
The wedding came not more than two weeks after this proposal when the countryside was in the full flower of autumn’s red-orange glow.
Diana was reasonably sure she had Victoria Arnold to thank for the haste of their engagement. From her little bedroom, she had overheard Mister Arnold pleading for a longer wait for the sake of propriety, but evidently, his wife had made her decision. So two weeks it was.
Two weeks that felt longer than two years, to be sure. But they had come and gone, and now, so had the wedding.
As Diana sat in the carriage that lurched and jumped down the London streets, she could not help reflecting on the strangeness of the wedding. For most of her life, it had been a vague, ill-defined certainty in her future; for the months that she had been all but promised to Gerard Dunn, it had been an object of dread that hurried to her all too quickly; since Colin had proposed to her, it could not come quickly enough.
Now, and forevermore, it would exist only in her past, in the distant and exotic country of memory. And though it had just taken place before her very eyes, she felt almost unsure whether or not it had really happened.
Oh, she had no shortage of memories of the event, of course, ones she knew she would cherish for the rest of her days. Diana remembered how Victoria Arnold, of all people, had cried long and loud throughout the ceremony and had nearly beaten poor Mister Arnold over the head when he tried to shush her. She remembered how surprised she was to see Adam Radcliffe shyly invite Leah Reid to dance and how even more shocking it had been to see Leah happily accept this invitation.
She remembered how gracious Gerard Dunn had been when he congratulated the couple, and she remembered that she meant to thank Colin for insisting on inviting him to the event. She remembered how she had shaken and fretted all the while, enough so that she was unsure she had said more than two words the whole day—though, naturally, these two words were not lacking in import. Most of all, she remembered how impossibly handsome Colin had appeared
But as she ran these recollections through her mind over and over while the Leeson carriage conveyed them to their new home, Diana could not help feeling wistful that the day was over … nearly, at least. For all her life, her wedding had been only a potential in the future, and now it was in the past, no less unreal for the fact that it had truly happened.
Everything feels so unreal these days,she thought with a troubled sigh.
But then she was happily pulled back into the present by the merest touch of Colin’s hand on hers. She looked up into those piercing green eyes and saw a perfect reflection of herself glinting in the lamplight, just above the same self-assured smile she had fallen in love with over and over again.
“Surely married life cannot be quite that distressing to you, my love?” Colin asked, leaning in close and nearly whispering it in her ear. “Though from the complaints I have heard from everyone but the Arnolds, that might be more common than we realised.” The sensation of his breath against her skin set her to giggling, her inner parts awash in an intoxicating rush of desire.
“Why are you whispering?” Diana whispered back to him. “There’s only you and I here in the carriage.”
Colin made a face as though he were sincerely considering the question. Diana watched his finger rub against his strong chin and could not help imagining the sensations of that organ against other, unexplored places.
“I suppose I have simply grown used to sneaking around with you,” he declared in another breathy whisper. “Unless my darling bride would prefer I be bolder, less constrained in sharing my love for you?”
Diana leaned her head against his shoulder, enjoying the feeling of close contact that she had not been able to stop thinking of for the previous four weeks. All the uncertainty plaguing her was now gone in an instant—this moment, this unquestionable presence, was truer than anything she had ever known. She was here, and so was Colin, and that was beautiful enough to bring tears to her eyes.
