Page 83 of Remember When

“Mr. Hoover must have lit a fire in the sitting room,” she said. “Shall we go in, Matthew? It is chilly standing here.”

Strangely, she felt a bit nervous.

“I hope he has also lit one in our bedchamber,” he said.

And a bit breathless too.

They had made love awkwardly, somewhat painfully, altogether wonderfully beside their tree on the night of their betrothal. They had not made love since. It was amazing how little opportunity everyday life offered a well-bred lady and an honorable man who respected her reputation.

She wondered if their butler/gardener/handyman would have thought of warming the bedchamber in the middle of the afternoon. Or if Mrs. Hoover had. Or Millicent.

The front door opened even as they reached the two steps leading up to it. Mr. Hoover, very stiff and formal in a black and white uniform worthy of any butler, held it for them and bowed. Mrs. Hoover stood beaming behind him, and Millicent, almost smiling, beside her.

“Welcome home, ma’am, sir,” the butler said, indicating the small porch in which he stood as though it were the vast hall of a mansion.

Clarissa smiled at him and at the two women.

“Thank you, Mr. Hoover,” Matthew said. “But stand back, please. I need a little more room.”

And quite unexpectedly, he turned to sweep Clarissa up in his arms. She shrieked as he climbed the steps with her and carried her over the threshold of the cottage before setting her feet on the floor.

Their new home. The new chapter in their lives, which had begun so gloriously today.

Millicent, she noticed, was fully smiling now.

“There is a fire in the sitting room and in the main bedchamber, sir,” Mrs. Hoover said. “There is extra coal beside the hearth in both rooms if you should need it. Will you be requiring a tray of tea and freshly baked scones immediately, ma’am?”

“No,” Clarissa and Matthew said together.

“Perhaps later,” Clarissa said. “I can smell them now, and they smell delicious. I will have no need of you for a while, Millicent. Why do you not have tea with your brother and sister-in-law?”

The three servants needed no further persuasion. They disappeared back in the direction of the kitchen, and Clarissa turned to Matthew, who took her in his arms.

“I am going to like them,” he said. “They understand a thing or two. Perhaps we had better go up and see if that fire needs tending to.”

“I am quite sure it does,” she said.

He smiled at her before kissing her nose. “Red,” he said. “Like our front door.”

“Why does no one else’s nose turn red at the mere suggestion of cold weather?” she asked.

“Perhaps because you are unique,” he said. “And uniquely beautiful. And uniquely my wife.”

“At last,” she said with a sigh. “At long, long last, Matthew.”

“At last,” he agreed, turning her toward the staircase and their room beneath the thatched roof.