Dear Henry,
I have played Herr Spohr’s music all night. My heart is as weak as it has ever been, or maybe it is stronger than it has ever been. I hardly know. I only know that my will has weakened with wanting you, my heart longs for you, and if I truly had wings at this moment, I would use them only to fly to wherever you are. I know that I doubted the persistence of love, but I am beginning to doubt my own wisdom. My love for you will not die. It will not falter. It will not leave me alone. If anything, my longing for you grows with each passing day. My emptiness without you grows. And I doubt my experience with love. I wonder if my parents ever knew what it was to love. I wonder if I was wrong about the possibility of becoming them. And for the first time in my life, I— The sound of a blackbird’s whistle pierced my thoughts. I froze, wait-ing to hear it again. The whistle of homecoming. Had I just imagined it?
A soft meow pulled my attention away from my letter. I sat up and looked in amazement as a grey cat ran into the room, sliding across the tile floor to rub its head against my leg.
I reached down to stroke its head and saw a flash of white on its chest.
“Cora?” I asked, unbelieving.
A soft rap sounded at the door. I lifted my head and could not com-prehend what I was seeing. It was Henry, looking more handsome than ever and more tanned than I had ever seen him, and surely his shoulders had gotten stronger too. He was not moving—just standing there and staring at me as if I were water in a desert.
Then Henry stepped into the room and said, “I have brought you 272
your heart.” He gestured toward Cora. “And I have come to tell you that something has changed.”
I stared at him, not really believing he was actually standing there.
Surely this was a figment of my imagination—a product of too much Romantic music and too little sleep.
He walked toward me, moving slowly, carefully, as if I were a wild thing he was afraid would fly away if startled. “You said, at Blackmoore . . .
You said that you would make the same decision, every time, unless something changed.” He was standing right in front of me now. “Something has changed, Kate. I have refused my mother’s plan for my life.”
Now I could see the details of his face—his clear grey eyes, the faint streak of freckles across his tanned cheeks. He looked as if he had spent months aboard a ship, in the sun, and I finally believed it was real. I finally believed he was real. I could not breathe.
“I have told Juliet that I will not marry her. I realized that I couldn’t marry her. After you left, I tried to think of my life with her with any de-gree of hope or happiness, and I couldn’t. I realized—” He raked a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed. My heart melted at the sight. How many times had I watched him do that very thing? “I realized, darling, that Juliet would have been my cage, and I could not make myself do it.
She understood. She was quite generous, actually. She said she supposed that I had loved you all along, which was absolutely true.”
He knelt in front of me. My face flushed, and my hands trembled, and my hope lifted again and again, but I beat it down, not daring to truly believe yet that my dreams were coming true. But then Henry said, “I have left Blackmoore in the keeping of my brother George, and I have taken a position with the East India Company. I have traveled halfway around the world to find you . . . to show you that I will never resent you for robbing me of my home, because I have given it up freely. Now I have nothing left for you to rob me of, except my heart, but you have long been guilty of that already.” His mouth twisted in a half-smile, and I saw in his grey eyes an ache of hope and dread and fear and love all mixed 273
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together with so much light that my heart cracked in two. I covered my face with my hands, overcome.
“Kate,” he said in a husky voice, “I am here to ask you one more time if you will spend your life with me. We can be adventurers together. I have followed you this far, my darling girl, and I will follow you wherever you choose to go next. I will love you no matter what happens in the future.
You know me. You know I am capable of being just as stubborn as you. I have given up my home to be with you. And so I ask you to give up your fears to be with me, to believe me, to trust me, to . . .” his voice broke “ . . . to love me, as I love you.”
My shoulders shook.
“Kate . . . are you laughing? Kate, if you’re laughing again, I swear—”
I dropped my hands, showing him my tear-streaked face, and reached for him, and fell into his arms. It felt like home. It felt like the surest home I had ever, or would ever, know. We clung to each other as if we were drowning, and we were the only ones who could save each other.
And then he kissed me, all over my tear-streaked face, my lips, my hair, and I hoped he would never, ever stop. And finally, when I had to pull away to catch my breath, I looked into his eyes, and I said, “I have to tell you something, Henry.”
“You—” I started but had to pause to wipe my nose on my sleeve.
“You are not The Giver of My Heart’s Desire, Henry Delafield.”
He threw his head back and laughed.
“No, listen,” I held his face in my hands. His eyes were soft and lit up, and his gaze roamed all over my face, with such adoration I felt caressed.
He tipped his head toward me and brushed his lips against my cheek.
“I’m listening,” he murmured, and he cupped my face in his hands.
His thumb stroked my cheek, drying my tears.
“You are not The Giver of My Heart’s Desire.” I took a deep breath and smiled as I said, “You are my heart’s desire.”
“Oh, Kate,” he murmured, bending his head to mine. “You are a Romantic, after all.”
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Chapter 40
Five years later
“What do you see ahead of us, love?”
Olivia rested her head on her father’s shoulder. “Only water, Papa.”
“Look again, darling. Do you see the land? Like a shadow in the distance?”
I leaned close, so that her soft, rounded cheek brushed mine, and I pointed to the land rising from the ocean. “Look there. And just wait. It will grow clearer, and then you will see a village full of red-roofed houses, and on a cliff high above the sea, you will see a large house. And do you remember what that is?”
She nodded and blinked her dark-lashed eyes. She had the grey eyes of her father and her great-grandfather.
“What is it?” Henry asked, smiling down at her and at me.
“It’s home.”
The End