My Last Duchess, стр. 73
And all the more suffocating for being always in the arms of a person who loved her.
Dimly, Philippa became aware that she was swaying, her heart clenched at the thought of the life that lay ahead of her. FatherRiggs squealed something, began fanning her with his hat.
Rodney pulled her to his chest, smashing her nose into his coat. She smelled starched linen and sweat. She was held therefor several moments, lights playing behind her closed eyes, like the dappled sunlight on the vicar’s cassock. Her heart wasbeating in her ears as loudly as if a hunting party was pounding through the forest.
No . . .
It wasn’t her heart.
She pulled away sharply and turned to see a great party, all on horseback, slow to a walk at the beginning of High Street.They were gaily dressed in the brilliant embroidery and silks of nobility. There were grooms in scarlet livery, and even acoach following, its scarlet trim glittering in the sunlight.
“Lord Almighty,” Rodney muttered beside her.
The horses pranced down the street, their riders smiling and nodding to the villagers trotting from the cobbler and the smithy.
“It’s better than the fair!” she heard someone say shrilly.
But Philippa’s eyes were fixed on the rider in front, a man who was not wearing the exuberant embroidery of his royal brothernor the scarlet livery of the groomsmen. Nor was he wearing shining armor.
He was riding a snowy white horse. His costume was one her own father would have chosen: a dark, dark green coat with a snowyneckcloth. It was not ostentatious, but it proclaimed the wearer a gentleman.
Perhaps, even, a member of the gentry.
Perhaps, even, connected to a royal family, albeit a non-English royal family.
She stepped out from the shadow of the oak, her arm sliding from Rodney’s hand.
As Wick’s horse paced toward her, Philippa didn’t even smile. Her heart was too full for that: full of song and laughter andthe love that would sustain her to the end of her life.
And Wick didn’t smile either. He was as grave as a king as he brought his mount to a trot, leaned down at just the right moment,swept out an arm, pulled her onto his saddle—and then galloped straight down the street and out of Little Ha’penny.
When they reached the edge of the town, alone now, since the royal party had stayed in Little Ha’penny, the better to dazzlethe villagers, Wick jumped from the horse again and reached up.
She fell into his arms with a sob of pure joy.
Wick dropped to his knees there, in the dust of the road. “Miss Philippa Damson, would you do me the very great honor of becomingmy wife?”
“Wick, oh, Wick,” Philippa said, reaching out a shaking hand to bring him back to his feet.
But he waited. Had there been an observer standing in the ditch, that observer might have found his face impassive, unreadable.But to Philippa, his eyes spoke of deep love, a fierce passion, and just the tiniest amount of uncertainty.
She fell to her knees and wound her arms around his neck. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come!”
His arms were warm and strong about her. He kissed her ear and whispered something, but she was sobbing too hard to comprehend.At last he tenderly picked her up and carried her into a field of buttercups, well away from the road. There he sat her downand began kissing every part of her face he could reach until she simply had to stop crying.
When he reached her mouth, he kissed her until her breath was quick, not with sobs but with a quite different emotion.
Finally, he pulled back and said, “May I ask you again?”
“Of course I will marry you,” she said, turning to catch his mouth again. “Yes, yes, yes!”
“My name,” he said, sometime later, “is Jonas. Jonas Berwick.”
“My husband,” Philippa said with great delight, “is a man named Jonas Berwick.”
He shook his head.
“No?”
“He’s a future doctor named Jonas Berwick. And he owns an estate called Yarrow House, which was the gift of his brother.”
Philippa swallowed. “Oh, Wick.”
“Jonas,” he said. “Wick was a majordomo at a castle once upon a time. Jonas is a gentleman of unknown birth but obvious gentility,who lives in England with his entirely English and altogether beautiful wife. He is apparently connected to a royal family,but because they are from a strange and small country, no one pays much attention to that.”
Tears were again sliding down her face, not from fear but from the deepest happiness.
“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you so much, Philippa, my future wife. The imprint of you is on my heart and will be therethe day I die.”
“You sound like a doctor, diagramming your body,” she whispered back.
“I think you will not complain when I diagram your body,” he said, soft and low. The flame rose between them instantly, and when Jonas rolled his future wife over, sinking intoa patch of buttercups so they couldn’t be seen from the road, indeed there were no complaints.
Epilogue
Several months later
Wick looked down at his bride with a surge of joy that came to him every time he saw her face.
Philippa was supine on their bed. They had retired to their bedchamber after luncheon, and now she lay in a patch of sunlight,her cheeks pink and her chest still heaving.
“I like our house,” he said, picking up a few strands of silky hair and curling them around his finger. “I like this bed.I’m sorry we’re leaving for Edinburgh.”
“I’m not sorry,” Philippa said, squinting at him. “You’re driving our poor butler out of his mind. I know you were an astonishingly competent majordomo, Jonas, but you can’t expect the poor man to ascend to your heights.”
“All I asked was that the silver be thoroughly polished on a regular basis.”
Philippa closed her eyes. “I cannot imagine how you did all that you claim a butler should manage in one day, and neithercan poor Ribble.