Page 87 of His Dark Heart
“Papa!”
“Hello, Grace,” He closed the distance between the door and her mama and lifted her into the air. She giggled. “Hello, my Elizabeth.”
“Hello, my William.”
Grace wrinkled her nose at the tenderness between her parents. She pretended their affection was abhorrent behaviour, but secretly, she would say to herself that this inimitable regard was magnificent. Her nurse, an ancient woman called Hill, had told her stories about her parents' struggle to find each other. Grace loved stories of any kind, but she especially loved fairy stories, and her parents' courtship sounded very much like a fairy story with magic and adventure and romance.
Grace, who had been returned to the floor, paid attention as her mother and father, the Crown Prince and Princess of Pemberley, lost themselves in each other. They had since she was born, last, mind you, after Noel and Thomas and Margaret. She smiled.
As she picked up one of her mother’s charcoals, Grace’s head tilted in thought while her parents strolled away, hands clasped. The inspiration was enough, and she started to sketch.
Said she,“And they lived happily ever after.”
