Page 90 of Ordered Home for the Holidays
Alice, never one to wait for ceremony, piped up, “Is it the watch chain, Your Grace?”
A snort of laughter rang out from Susie. The dowager’s lips compressed, trying not to smile.
Victor shook his head, managing the gravitas of a man delivering both an edict and a punchline. “Not the chain, though it is dearly valued.” He looked straight at Pearl, and for a moment, she felt the room recede until nothing was left but the heat of his gaze and the thunder of her own pulse.
“I have asked your mother to marry me, and—” Here Victor faltered, just enough to be human, “to my everlasting astonishment, she has agreed.”
There was a heartbeat’s silence, a negative space in which Pearl felt her breath catch, her blood flood hot to her cheeks, every nerve ending aware of itself in the sudden hush.
Then the girls shrieked.
They were on her in a flash, arms flung about her neck, Alice’s puzzle box clattering to the floor in the melee. Susie, usually so composed, dissolved into a storm of delighted tears, her book abandoned as she burrowed her face into Pearl’s shoulder. The sound of their laughter, their overlapping questions filled the room to bursting.
Victor, for his part, stood back, hands clasped behind his back, his usual reserve melted into something like awe.
The dowager rose and crossed the rug with surprising speed, her eyes suspiciously bright as she clasped Pearl’s hands in her own. “My dear, you have made this old fortress a home again. I could not be happier for you or for him.”
Pearl, overwhelmed, could only nod, the words stuck behind the knot in her throat.
The girls, not to be outdone, seized Victor by the arm and dragged him into their orbit. Alice held his hand with both of hers, chattering about the wedding. Susie, more tentative, simply looked at him with an appraising, almost adult gaze, then nodded to herself, as if confirming a long-held hypothesis.
Victor crouched to their level, and Pearl watched as his face, so often shielded by sarcasm and calculation, softened, became boyish. He let Alice climb onto his knee, let Susie fuss with his cravat, and answered their questions with the patience of a saint.
“I think,” he said after a while, “that any wedding which includes two such formidable young ladies must be a celebration to end all celebrations.”
Alice beamed, while Susie, ever the strategist, asked, “Will there be a chess match?”
Victor grinned. “There will be a tournament, and I expect to lose disgracefully.”
The dowager, meanwhile, returned to the settee, dabbing her eyes and muttering, “I do so love a good resolution.”
Pearl sat amidst the paper and ribbon, her chest so tight with joy she thought she might shatter. She looked across the room at Victor, who met her gaze with an intimacy that needed no words.
For the first time since Percy’s death—perhaps for the first time ever—she felt not just relief or obligation, but a pure, incandescent happiness. She let her laughter ring out, let the warmth and noise and hope of the moment fill every empty corner inside her.
The girls, finally sated, collapsed in a heap at her feet, plotting the future in rapid, overlapping voices. Pearl stroked their hair, marveling at their confidence in the world’s benevolence.
She glanced at Victor, who still watched her, and in his eyes she saw not the man of iron and caution, but the man she had chosen. The man who, against all odds, had chosen her back.
***
Victor waited until the girls were occupied again, Alice organizing her puzzle box, Susie absorbed by the illustrations of her book, before he made his way to where his mother sat. The dowager looked not like a matriarch, but like a queen at peace, her face framed by a halo of white hair and the faint sheen of victory.
He hesitated, his movements unhurried, almost reverential. He kneeled beside her chair, as he hadn’t done since boyhood, and took her hands in both of his. The gesture was unpracticed, his hands large and blunt against her fine, birdlike bones. “Mother,” he said, and stopped, the words more difficult than expected.
She looked at him with that infuriating blend of scrutiny and love, the one he had spent a lifetime trying to outmaneuver. “Yes, dear?”
He smiled a quick, crooked smile. “You were right.”
The dowager’s eyes sparkled. “Of course I was. About what, precisely?”
Victor exhaled, the weight of the admission lightening his shoulders. “About bringing them here. About everything, really.” He glanced across the room, at the sight of the girls and their mother, at the way Pearl’s hair caught the light, the easy angle of her laugh. “I never would have had the chance—never would have allowed myself the chance—if you hadn’t… intervened.”
She squeezed his hands, her grip surprisingly strong. “You’re a good man, Victor. But you can be a stubborn one.” Her thumb stroked the back of his hand, gentle as a lullaby. “Iwanted you to be happy. Even if it meant upending my entire household for Christmastide.”
He made a noise, a scoff or a laugh, it was hard to say. “I was happy, in my own way.”
She didn’t release his hands. “You were content. There’s a difference.”
