How could he have been so stupid as not to have seen it? How could he have thought he couldn’t love?
Here she was. Miraculously here. His wonderful, wonderful bride. His wife!
‘Penny-Rose…’ His voice came out a haggard whisper, and she came straight to the worst conclusion possible.
‘Oh, Alastair. Alastair…’ It was a whisper of distress and absolute, desolate loss, and she buried her head in her hands and closed her eyes. ‘Oh, no.’
He couldn’t bear it. It took half a second to cross the room, kneel before her and take those beloved hands in his. To drag her fingers away from her tear-drenched eyes and make her look at him.
‘No. Penny-Rose, no! She’s alive. She’s OK…’ As she still looked at him with the remains of horror, he finally made himself smile. ‘Sweetheart, I didn’t mean to look dreadful. It’s just because I haven’t shaved and haven’t slept. But she’s recovering. They’ve operated and they’ve repaired the damage. She’s woken, she’s spoken to me and I’ve left her to sleep.’
She stared up at him, torn between disbelief and hope. Her eyes were vast pools of exhausted misery. Weariness had put her almost past hope.
But, finally, hope won.
‘You mean…she’ll live?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘As sure as I can be. I wouldn’t have left her otherwise.’
‘Oh, Alastair.’
It was too much. She put her arms around his neck, buried her face in his shoulder and burst into tears.
He didn’t let her stay there. Not for long anyway.
For maybe a minute he let her weep, while wonder faded and her touch seeped into his soul. She was real. She was here.
She was his.
And he could wait no longer. He put her back from him, looked at her drowning face and smiled down into her eyes with a smile that held infinite tenderness, infinite wonder-and infinite love.
‘My Penny-Rose,’ he said softly. ‘My love.’
And his mouth found hers, and he kissed her with a passion that threatened to last for ever.
It was a kiss that made a marriage-a marriage that was from this moment forward.
‘How did you get here?’
Neither of them knew how long it took before words were possible between them, but when they were, everything that needed to be said somehow already had been. The kiss had said it all. Penny-Rose was in her husband’s arms and it would take the strength of giants to tear her away. ‘How on earth did you do it?’
‘Magic.’ She smiled, and he chuckled.
‘I know. More of the fairy godmother stuff. But seriously…’
‘Seriously, the resort manager realised how much I wanted to go so he contacted your recluse with the helicopter and used all his charm to persuade him to take me as well. Of course, we didn’t make it to Suva in time for your flight, so I caught a flight back to Sydney, then flew to Singapore and on to Paris. I must have landed only about five or six hours after you.’
He stared at her in astonishment. ‘You must be exhausted.’
‘No more than you.’ She was snuggled into him, settled and happy. Happy wasn’t a big enough word. Ecstatic!
‘But why did you come? You wanted the holiday so much.’
‘Do you think I wanted a holiday more than being here…with you?’ She was indignant. ‘And with Marguerite. If anything had happened to Marguerite and I hadn’t been here…’
‘For me?’
Penny-Rose looked up at him, her face deadly serious. ‘For you,’ she agreed. But…Alastair, I love your mother.’
‘It’s your speciality,’ he said softly. ‘Giving and giving and giving.’
That puzzled her. ‘I don’t have anything to give.’
‘And I do?’ His voice was incredulous-angry even. ‘Money, riches, power-sure, I have all of those things. I have so much to give. Just not the thing that counts. Love.’
‘But you can’t-’
‘I couldn’t.’ He kissed her again, because he couldn’t bear not to. Heavens, she still tasted like the sea. It’d be the salt of her tears, he knew, but the smell of her, the feel of her…
She was like the sea and the sky and the heavens all rolled into one.
How had he ever thought he could put her away from him after a year? How had he ever thought he could keep himself from her for a year?
‘I can love now,’ he said, and all the joy of the morning was in his voice. ‘I’ve learned. I’ve had the very best of teachers. Oh, Rose…my Penny-Rose…’
Her face clouded, just a little, at the memories the name brought back. ‘Penny-Rose?’
‘I’ve been really stupid,’ he told her. ‘Trying to make you into something that you weren’t. But Penny-Rose is how I first saw you. Dressed in those damned overalls, filthy, yet laughing at us, letting us know your values weren’t ours. Telling me that a marriage without love was stupid.’ He pulled her tightly against him. ‘So Rose is a princess. My Princess Rose. But Penny-Rose is the woman I love more than life itself.’
She looked up into his eyes for a long, long moment. And then she sighed with pure happiness.
‘Penny-Rose it is,’ she said softly. ‘I’ll go for Penny-Rose any day.’
‘You mean you’d rather be the woman I love than a princess?’
‘I’d rather be the woman you love than anything in the world.’
‘Then so be it,’ he said exultantly. ‘From this day forth. Because that’s exactly what you are.’
And he gathered her against him and kissed her-for a very, very long time.
EPILOGUE
MY WEDDING day. My proper wedding day. A ceremony just for us-with the priest and Alastair and me and Leo. Because we want it to be a proper wedding, there’ll be Marguerite and our cameraman to act as witnesses, but there’ll be no one else.
A true and legal wedding… It’s funny how I’m more nervous now than I was at the big one.
There’ll be no velvet coats for Leo today. Or any fancy wedding gowns. We’re wearing jeans and bare toes on a beach in the South of France. Where no one knows us. Where we can take each other as we mean to have each other-in the privacy of ourselves.
Just us.
For now and for ever.
‘Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live for ever according to God’s law in the Holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour and keep her in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?’
‘I do,’ said Alastair.
‘And you, Penny-Rose. Wilt thou have this man…?’
‘I do,’ said Penny-Rose.
‘Amen to that,’ said Marguerite. Completely recovered, she stood with pride as their witness and she couldn’t stop smiling.
‘Woof,’ said Leo.
‘Bless you both,’ said their lone cameraman-the man they’d asked to record this event for their great-grandchildren. ‘May you be as happy and successful as you’ve made me.’
And that was the way it was.
Marion Lennox
Marion Lennox was born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on-mostly because the cows weren’t interested in her stories!
In her nonwriting life Marion cares (haphazardly) for her husband, teenagers, dogs, cats, chickens and anyone else who lines up at her dinner table. She fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost). She also travels, which she finds seriously addictive.
As a teenager Marion was told she’d never get anywhere reading romance. Now romance is the basis of her stories. Her stories allow her to travel, and if ever there was an advertisement for following your dream, she’d be it!
