108. An Archangel Called Ivan (17 page)

*

It was almost two weeks later that Ivan suggested that they should think about announcing their marriage in the newspapers.

“Must we really?” Arliva asked. “It’s so marvellous being alone with you. Riding your magnificent horses in the morning, swimming in the lake, and oh, darling Ivan, I adore you making love to me.”

“Which I will continue to do for the rest of my life,” Ivan promised. “I think, my beloved, that people are beginning to gossip locally and that means that the news will soon reach London.”

He paused before he added,

“On the whole it will be more dignified for us to announce our wedding than to have some newspaper or nosey parker spying us out and telling the world in their language what we should say to them in a more dignified fashion.”

“Of course you are right,” Arliva agreed. “You are always right and how could I ever disagree with anything you want to do, my glorious Archangel.”

Ivan laughed.

“I expect that you will sooner or later. But at the moment you are the most perfect wife who I believed only existed in my dreams.”

“I want to be the most perfect wife for you,” Arliva whispered. “And, darling Ivan, because we have had to fight to be together, I think the fact that you climbed up the outside of Sturton Castle to save me from a fate worse than death will always be something very precious to me.”

“Of course it will. In fact I will always remember how you looked at me in the Chapel and said, ‘save me, save me,’ and I knew I had to do it.”

“We have been very very lucky,” Arliva told him. “I am sure it was my prayers that brought you to me and made everything work out so perfectly.”

“Of course it was,” Ivan answered. “And we must bring up our children to pray just as you have prayed and to fight as we have fought for what is really worth having.”

“The first people I will tell that we are married are the children and Lord Wilson,” Arliva said. “I know they will be thrilled and I am not worried about them because, once the place is normal and the locals are mixing with the children and asking them to their houses, they will never be lonely or forgotten again.”

She had told Ivan exactly what she had done and he thought it was very clever of her.

“You are right to tell them. They must be the first to know that we are married and we will expect them to come and stay with us when we give a party.”

Arliva kissed his cheek.

“You are always so kind and understanding, Ivan. I was afraid that you might think other people’s children a bore.”

“If they are anything to do with you, then, just as I will think about our own children, they are perfect and I particularly want to encounter them,” Ivan replied.

Arliva put her head on his shoulder.

“I think, darling, that we will soon be having a baby of our own.”

“Do you think that is true?” he asked.

She gave a little nod.

“Oh, my beloved,” he said. “I can think of nothing more wonderful than having your children as my children and making them as happy as we are.”

“We will certainly do that,” Arliva whispered. “As we have both travelled so much and realise it has made us interesting to each other so that neither of us can possibly be bored. So we will make our children travel too and they will learn things as I learnt them because as you know it makes all the difference when they are grown up.”

“If the girl is as beautiful as you and the boy is as clever as we both are,” Ivan said, “I am sure that we will have a very busy and at times a very difficult life in front of us.”

“But a very exciting one, Archangel Ivan, and one that is full of love.”

He bent forward and kissed her.

“I adore and worship you, my Arliva,” he sighed. “I thank God every day that you are mine.”

*

That night when he came from his room to hers, Arliva was in bed.

She held out her arms.

“Every time you come here to me,” she said, “it is so exciting and wonderful that I feel nothing else matters but that we are together.”

“Two people who are one. I am quite certain, my precious, that we have been together in other lives before this. If we do come back to this particular world, we will find each other again.”

“That is what everyone wants,” Arliva answered, “and what real love means.”

“I have learnt that from you and it is true.”

He kissed her as he finished speaking.

Then there was no need for words.

As he held her close in his arms, she felt as if he carried her up into the sky.

She knew that the God she had prayed to and who had brought them together was leading them in through the Gates of Heaven to a happiness that was beyond words.

It was Love.

The Love that is real and comes from God and is part of God and it was theirs to Eternity.

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