A Midnight Clear (11 page)

Then Suzanne said, “I think he actually loves you.”

“That might not be enough.”

It had never occurred to her that she might fall in love and find it insufficient. Wasn’t love transformative? Powerful? Revolutionary? The only thing it was transforming was her heart, which was being rent in two.

A door closed downstairs and then Father came up the stairs. In an absolutely shocking move, he sat down next to Suzanne and Frances. “That boy is crazy about you.”

Suzanne nodded, unperturbed by Father sitting on the ground and offering advice about romantic entanglements. “She doesn’t think that’s enough.”

“Might not be enough,” Frances corrected.

“Do you want me to tell him to leave?” Father asked. “You could think on it overnight.”

“No.” Frances shook her head. “He’s here now. I have to talk to him.” She chewed on one of her cuticles. “I don’t know. When he was at dinner last week, I thought I could say yes. I thought I could live this life, but only because it was Joe. But this reminds me he’s not in control. He can’t promise he’ll be home.”

“Then it’s no?” Suzanne asked, her brows pulled together in concern.

Frances pressed her hand to her belly. Her body did
not
like the idea it was no. Couldn’t she and Joe step back from the edge and be friends, like he’d suggested before? Couldn’t they walk around Annapolis and ride motorcycles and not plan a future together right this second?

And then her body—and Joe—got a strange ally. “I’m not so sure,” her father said. “People get hit by buses crossing the street. Or drop dead of heart attacks.”

“That may be, but aviators and sailors face more risk and you know it,” Frances said.

Father shrugged. “Yes, but you have to love the life, you have to understand and respect the service. And you do. You do every day.”

“But I don’t want to have to… for forever.”

“Then you’re going to send him away?” Suzanne said.

Frances wanted to shout,
Why do you keep saying that?
But the answer was that Suzanne was pointing out the logical conclusion. If Frances went downstairs and told Joe she’d been mistaken and she couldn’t marry him, then she would never see him again. It wouldn’t be fair to him.

If she asked him to be her friend, he would. He would do anything for her. But she also knew it would hurt him, and she never wanted to hurt Joe.

She looked back and forth between her sister and her father. “This is impossible.”

She’d been so sure her answer was no. But that was the shock of him not showing up—she wanted to believe in him, in them, so much. Her certainty was fading now into a morass and she had no idea how to cross it.

But cross it she had to.

She stood and embraced them both. She pulled the curlers from her hair and handed them to Suzanne. Then she cinched her robe more tightly around her waist and went down to find Joe—still unsure of what she was going to say.

When she opened the parlor door, he was standing by the partially-decorated tree with a glass of scotch in hand.

“Frances!” He set the glass down and crossed to her, eating up the space between them. “I am sorry I missed our date. Your father told me he told you where I was. I hate that I left you waiting—”

She put up a hand and he went silent.
 
His eyes were trained on her, looking, she guessed, for some sign of what her answer would be. But of course she didn’t know yet what it was.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” she said at last. “I was so worried.” Both of those things were absolutely true.

He softened an inch. “I knew you would be, but we weren’t in any real danger. It was only a cracked mast and—”

“Have you called your parents?”

“Not yet. I’m headed home in a few days and since the Academy knew we were fine, they never alerted them, and so they weren’t worried.”

She gasped. “They don’t know? They don’t know you could have been lost, that you acted heroically?”

“You think it was heroic?” His smile was shy.

“Yes. You could have waited for a tow, made it someone else’s problem, but you were decisive and showed great leadership and—”

“I’m so glad you understand.”

“But, Joe… I—I think you’re going to be a great officer.”

He understood the shift in her tone. His eyes were wary. He looked like he had the day she’d told him she didn’t want to be a Navy wife.

“But?” he said softly.

“When you came to dinner last week, I thought I could say yes to what you want, that you could promise me to be there and my feelings would be enough. But they’re not.”

Joe took another step toward her. “How do you feel?”

Oh. Right. She’d said that, hadn’t she? She looked at the floor. She looked at the tree. Then she looked at him. “I love you.”

A smile cracked his face—his dirty, unshaven face—and pure happiness came out. He dropped to both of his knees and pulled a box out of his pocket. “Then marry me.”

“What?”

This came out sharper and louder than she’d intended. And when the door to the parlor opened and her father and Suzanne spilled into the room, the effect magnified.

“What in the Sam Hill are you doing, son?” her father boomed. “You’re proposing to my daughter without asking me first?”

“I’m asking Frances,” Joe replied patiently. “Or I would be if you’d be quiet.”

Suzanne gave Frances a saucy look, one that clearly enjoyed how Joe had no trouble standing up to their father and thought that was a wonderful quality in a would-be spouse.

Spouse. Right! Joe was proposing.

She looked down at him, into those brown eyes filled with gentle promises and she forgot everything else.

“Sweetheart, I can’t promise I’ll come home. I was wrong to before. I can’t abandon the commitment I’ve made to the Navy. But I can tell you I love you. And I know when two people love each other they ought to be together. Not because it’ll be easy, but because not being together would be too hard. What we have is special, special enough that I hope we get to share it for a hundred years, a thousand. But I want that time with you, however long or short it is, because you’re the love of my life. And I’m the love of yours.”

Frances inhaled. It was true. It was true. She knew it in the way she knew gravity was real or the dawn would come. She didn’t know a time when she hadn’t known it. Joe loved her.

Joe shifted on his knees. “I know I’m asking you to sacrifice too. And I know this might not be the life you wanted. But it’s what we both seem called to do. And I’ll make the good days so good for you.”

Frances knew she was blushing wildly. Joe didn’t help matters when he squeezed her hands to confirm her assumption.

“Say yes, Frances Dumfries. Let me spend all the days I can making you happy.”

Frances’s heart was knocking against the front of her chest. Her hands, which Joe was still gripping, were frozen and molten at once.

Across the room, she could hear Suzanne whisper, “That was pretty good.”

To which father replied, “He still didn’t ask my permission.”

“But he asked mine,” she told her family, who dutifully went silent. She looked down at Joe. Patient, lovely, kind Joe who she loved to distraction, who wanted to make her happy, and who would be committed to his family, even if he was in the Navy.

She couldn’t send him away. She couldn’t stop seeing him. She would put up with the uncertainty and the danger and the service if it meant she got the rest.

“Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you. I’ll be your Navy wife—”

Joe was on his feet in a flash, putting a ring on her finger before she even had the chance to look at it. “I don’t want you to be my Navy wife. I want you to be my wife.”

“Well, now I don’t know why I hesitated.”

And with that, just like Benedict with Beatrice, he stopped her mouth with a kiss—right in front of Father.

After the kiss, they all had a celebratory drink, even Suzanne, and Father even gave them some time alone.

“Let me put up a few more ornaments,” Frances said, “so we can feel like it’s a proper Christmas. The tree looks so bare.”

“Not on your life. I only have a few minutes with you and I have other things in mind. Plug in the lights and get over here.”

She and Joe nestled in front of the sparkling tree—and it was actually sort of pretty, even without tinsel and the rest of it.

When his breath evened out, she wondered if he’d drifted off to sleep. She whispered, “You coming home was a miracle.”

“No it wasn’t. It was hard work and leadership.”

He’d been playing at humble only until she’d agreed to marry him, hadn’t he? In retribution, she pinched him.

He pulled her almost into his lap, his hands skimming over her, gently squeezing and tickling every bit of her.

Frances laughed and then inhaled sharply. She was going to share a bed with Joe. She was going to have his children. Even now, with him braced over her, laughing in the most open, relaxed manner, a dizzy shiver went through her.

Of course she’d said yes. There simply wasn’t any other possible answer when he was asking.

At last he stopped tickling her and their breathing went back to normal, but she stayed in his lap. Father would have a fit if he came in, but he was warm and she fit against him perfectly.

“You accepting me was the miracle,” he whispered after a bit.

“I don’t know how to refuse you. When will we be married?” she asked, playing with the ring he’d put on her finger.

Joe started kissing every strand of her hair, but paused long enough to say, “I was thinking over the summer. After graduation, of course, but so we can spend some time in Maine before I’m posted.”

She looked up at him. “Did you really decide you wanted to marry me the instant you saw me?”

“Yes. I told my roommate that night.”

She smiled, knowing it was vain, but all she said was, “What a silly notion.”

“Oh no, it was the most sensible thought I’ve ever had.”

Frances hoped they could spend the rest of their lives testing the theory.

“You may kiss the bride.”

At the chaplain’s suggestion, amidst the cheers of what seemed like the entire Naval Academy, Joe tossed back Frances’s veil and planted his lips on hers. Respectfully, since they were in a church, but with a hint of what she could expect this wedding night.

The wedding night…

Joe broke off the kiss before he could go too far down that path and gazed down at his blushing bride, who was also grinning from ear-to-ear. She was a vision in deep ivory, lace covering her shoulders and arms, seed pearls studding the blonde curls pinned atop her head.

He rubbed his thumb over the thin gold band he’d just placed on her finger, his own ring a reassuring weight on his hand. “Enjoying yourself?” he said to her, too low for the chaplain to hear.

“Yes.” Pitched only for him. Even in the middle of hundreds of guests assembled in the Naval Academy chapel, this moment was painfully, pleasurably intimate.
 

But for now—“Ready to face them all?”

She settled her face into more dignified lines. “I am.”

They turned as one to face the congregation. The chaplain boomed, “I present to you Ensign and Mrs. Joseph Reynolds.”

The cheers surrounded them, wrapped them in the warmth of everyone’s regard. He tightened his hand on hers, feeling as if his face might split with his smile. They marched down the aisle stride for stride.
 

They reached the chapel doors and came out into the July sunshine, the Yard glowing green before them. He squeezed her hand once more and the smile she gave him was dazzling.
His wife.
He could hardly believe it, even now.
 

The ushers were lined up and waiting for them. The admiral, as the ranking officer, commanded, “Draw swords.”

Eight blades flashed as they were unsheathed, and then chimed against each other as the men formed the arch. Joe led his bride through them, past his brother officers as they saluted him and Frances on this special day. As they reached the last set of ushers, the officers lowered their swords to halt them.
 

“Welcome aboard, Ensign and Mrs. Reynolds,” Steven announced, barely suppressing his grin.

The swords lifted once more and they stepped through, into the crowd of guests still cheering for them. Joe knew that no matter what the future brought, they would face it—together.