FRIDAY EVENING: Her Decision
The words reverberated in his ears. Sara Howard, please do me the honor of marrying me.
I must be out of my mind! John thought as the words played over and over. When he and Sara walked into the salon after dinner, he had no plans to propose. Frankly, after having his proposals turned down twice by Sara, he had sworn to himself that he would never propose again. He loved her but didn't think that he could take the heartbreak of rejection again. But now he had done it.
Sara Howard, please do me the honor of marrying me
Whether he meant to ask her or not, it was done now. John raised Sara's hand to his lips and kissed it. His eyes shone with tears. He didn't know what he would do if she declined for a third time.
"You don't have to answer me right now," he added softly, hoping to delay the answer that he feared was inevitable. "I know that I've given you a lot to think about. We can take this slowly but please, don't shut me out. Friend or lover or wife. It's your choice and no matter what you choose, I will always love you."
John kissed Sara's hand a second time and then held it against his cheek for a long moment before setting it back in her lap and letting go. Sara sat still as a stone, barely breathing. Her eyes focused on the hand that John had held only a second earlier.
John stood slowly, as if spent, and crossed the fireplace to his favorite chair. He sat staring at the fire, elbows on the arms of the chair and fingers tented in front of his face. The silence was maddening, broken only by the snapping and popping of the fire. He wished she would speak. Say something, anything. It didn't matter. She could scream at him or tell him she needed to leave or reject him outright. Absolutely anything that would break this unbearable silence.
Unable to stand it a moment longer, John stood and walked to the fireplace. He took the poker and rearranged the remaining logs unnecessarily. The fire was waning. If they were going to sit in the salon much longer he would need to stoke it. Instead, he drew out his pocket watch, something that had become a sort of nervous habit, and checked the time.
"It's getting late," John said as he returned the poker to its holder. He sighed sadly and began to cross the room. "I'll ring the footman and have him drive you home."
Sara stood as well and reached for his arm. He stopped instantly as if struck and gazed down at her.
"Don't ring for the footman yet. Not before you go upstairs and get that ring," she said softly while returning his intense gaze.
John stared, unblinking, hoping that he had heard her correctly. "Sara," he breathed. "Do you mean this? Are you accepting my proposal of marriage?"
She could no longer suppress her smile. "I am. I would be honored to become Mrs. John Schuyler Moore."
John swept her up into his arms, lifting her off of the floor and turning them around in circles. Both of them at first laughing and then falling into a long kiss. Dizzy and exhausted, John collapsed onto the loveseat with Sara on his lap, his arms tight around her.
"Oh, Sara!" John said pressing a tender kiss to her temple. "I didn't expect a decision tonight. I was just hoping that you wouldn't reject me entirely. I was afraid that I'd gone too far when I suggested that you become my mistress."
"It was a bold suggestion," Sara told him as she stroked his cheek. He took her hand and pressed her palm to his lips as Sara continued. "The truth is that asking me to become your mistress was what got my attention."
"Really? I thought you were insulted."
"I was but it also made me think. I know how much you dislike the practice of aristocratic men keeping mistresses. I knew when you married Violet that even though you didn't love her that you would never dishonor her by taking a mistress. Violet and Mr. Hearst knew it, too. That's why they were willing to go to the extreme of trapping you into marriage with a pregnancy. The fact that you were willing to compromise your own ideals in order to keep me in your life got my attention."
Sara sighed and leaned her head against John's chest. She was silent for a long time as she felt the steady beat of his heart and wished that she could fall asleep here, in his arms, listening to its cadence. "But that wasn't the only reason," Sara explained. Her words were punctuated by a barely perceptible sob.
John pulled her closer tucking her head under his chin. "You don't need to tell me. Your reasons are your own. This should be a happy moment. Let's not dwell on anything that makes either of us sad."
"I'm not sad," she returned. "How could I be sad when I'm in your arms? I'm crying because I realize how many mistakes I've made."
"Nothing that can't be rectified," John assured her. He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes for emphasis. "We've all made mistakes, Sara. Look at me. I've made more bad choices in my life than good ones. Regret is pointless. The best you can do is move on and make better choices in the future."
"You're a good man, John Moore. You're too hard on yourself."
"And you aren't?" John retorted.
Sara allowed herself a wry smile. "I'm starting to realize that." She reached for her brandy snifter. The amber liquid remained largely untouched. She swirled the glass beneath her nose and inhaled deeply before sipping then held it out to John. "Loving cup?" she queried.
He took the snifter and smiled warmly at her. "For always, I hope," he said before taking a larger drink than she had. With his thumb he wiped away a few tears that still glistened on her cheeks. "So tell me why you finally decided to accept my proposal."
Sara took the brandy glass back from him and drank the final swallow before she spoke. "For my whole life I've known that I'm more like my mother than my father. He was a kind and gentle soul but he wasn't strong enough for this world. That's why he took his own life. My mother was the strength in the family and I saw that same strength in myself. But where I hope that I was wrong was in believing that just because I inherited her strength, that I had also inherited her cold and manipulating personality. I feared hurting others the way she did. I feared it so much that I decided that I couldn't have relationships. I told myself that if I stayed distant, I couldn't hurt people that I cared about. I decided that I couldn't be a good mother because my own mother wasn't. It never occurred to me that maybe I inherited some good qualities from my father. I hope that's true. I hope that I inherited some of his love and kindness," Sara said, hopefully.
"The woman that sat on the nursery floor a couple of hours ago playing with Jack and Annie is full of love. You would make your father proud, Sara. He would be proud to see that love, but he would also be proud of your strength. You're right. He wasn't strong and he knew it. I think that's why he married your mother. He recognized her strength and he knew she was strong enough to take care of him. Unfortunately, he didn't realize what a hateful woman she could be." John took her chin in his hand and turned her face up to his. "You aren't your mother, Sara," he said forcefully. "I couldn't love your mother. I could never love anyone that was as mean and spiteful."
"Are you sure that you know me, John? What if I turn into that as I get older?"
John smiled and shook his head. He spoke gently and with conviction. "I won't permit it! If I see any evidence of her wickedness peeking out from your beautiful eyes, I will tell you. We'll face it together. You know, I worry just as much about turning out like my father as you do about becoming your mother. My father wasn't a nice man. I'm counting on you to keep me from turning into him. Don't you see it, Sara? We need each other. We will make this work because we understand each other. We understand each other's fears and dreams," he told her.
"I love you, John Moore," Sara whispered. Her eyes once again filled with tears as she put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled his face to her own.
They kissed for a long time, tenderly and slowly. Sara remembered the last time they kissed like this and she longed for it to end the same way. She wanted to be with him again. She wanted him to love her that way again. She was remembering how good it felt when she realized that John was pulling away.
"It's late, my love. I'm going to go upstairs to get that ring and propose to you properly. And then, it's going to take every bit of my resolve, but I'm going to have the footman take you home."
"I don't want to go home, John. I've stayed here before," she reminded him.
"I know that. And you're not going to stay here again until we're married. Sara, as beautiful as that night was, it was a chance we should never have taken. We could have been caught or you could have become pregnant.
"I'm willing to take that risk, John."
He took her hands in his own. "But I'm not."
Still sitting astride his lap, Sara leaned into him and kissed his neck. The shift in her posture pressed her thigh insistently against him. John closed his eyes. He inhaled deeply and let his head fall back against the leather upholstery. A quiet groan escaped his lips.
"John, you want me as much as I want you," Sara said in a husky, seductive whisper.
Her words seemed to bring him back to consciousness. He put his hands on her waist and moved her from his lap so that she was sitting next to him on the loveseat. "Of course I want you! This isn't simply a matter of want, Sara. I want you every moment of every day. Yes, I want you right now. I want you very badly. I would give anything to wake up in your arms tomorrow morning, but if you are seen leaving the home of a recently widowed man early in the morning, you will be labeled a fallen woman or a gold digger. It's not true and I don't want people saying that about the woman I love."
"You're a hypocrite, John!" Sara told him. "You said an hour ago that you were a walking scandal and that you didn't care a whit about your reputation."
"I said that I didn't care about my reputation. I never said that I didn't care about yours," he returned. "I've managed to make a mess of my own life and I'm trying to correct that. Having you spend the night won't hurt my reputation. It will hurt yours. If a woman leaves my house in the morning, people will shrug and say, 'boys will be boys.' You, on the other hand, will be scorned. That's not right but it is true. I don't want that for you."
"A little while ago you asked me to be your mistress. You didn't seem very concerned about my reputation then!" Sara retorted.
"That's right. If you had agreed to that proposition, you would have done so knowing what it would do to your reputation. And if you were my mistress, you wouldn't be seen in my house. We'd have a love nest. Do I need to remind you that you didn't accept that proposition? You accepted my proposal of marriage. Besides," he continued taking her in his arms again and speaking more gently. "I don't want to wake up in the morning and have to rush you out a back door. We did that once and I didn't enjoy it. I want to know that when we're together, it's on our terms. We can wake up slowly and enjoy ourselves."
Sara exhaled slowly and nodded. "I know that you're right but at this moment the only place I want to be is in your arms. I love you so much. We're going to have to wait for months, John. We can't even be seen in public together for another few months."
John nodded his agreement. "I'm going to give you an engagement ring right now, but you can't wear it publically for several months. I'm thinking we can start being seen together at Christmas parties. That will be almost six months after Violet's death. We can get engaged by February. People will expect me to remarry quickly since I have small children to be cared for. We can plan a small wedding in April. Laszlo and Karen will be here in April and Laszlo can be my best man."
"I hate that we have to pretend. Society be damned. I want the world to know that I love you."
"Right now all that matters is that we know." He kissed her again. "Now I'm going to go upstairs, get your ring and make this official."
Sara watched John leave the room. She couldn't believe this was happening. When she came to dinner just a few hours earlier she told herself that she was doing it to prove that she and John could just be friends. Now she was giving her heart to him. How had it all changed? Her mind swirled. It was a dizzying swirl but it felt good. She realized that she was happy. For the first time in a long time she was really happy. Yes, she had been proud of her efforts with the detective agency. She was pleased when she solved a case. She felt a certain joy when she was with the children at the Kreizler Institute. But all of that was different from being happy.
John's footfalls sounded on the stairs. Sara found herself giddy with anticipation as he entered the room with a smile as bright as she had ever seen crossing his face. Again, he dropped to one knee.
"John," Sara laughed. "You already did that. You don't have to propose again!"
John became serious. "Yes, I do. This time I have the ring and I want to do it right." He cleared this throat nervously. "Miss Sara Howard, I kneel before you humbled by the fact that such an intelligent and beautiful and ambitious woman could love me. I'm not sure that I'm worthy of that love, but I will do everything in my power to honor you. I love you and will never intentionally do anything to hurt or embarrass you. I only wish that your father were here so that I could ask him for you hand in marriage. As he is not, I will ask you. Sara, will you marry me?"
With those words he carefully slipped his grandmother's engagement ring on the third finger of Sara's left hand. He stared up at her expectantly and Sara realized that he was waiting for an answer. Her lower lip quivered as she tried to speak. Slowly she nodded and finally whispered, "Yes! I will!" She nodded emphatically. "Oh, John, you've made me so happy. I only hope that I can make you happy and that you'll never look back and regret this moment."
John stood and drew her close. "Never," he said confidently. "I will never regret this moment."
They stood that way, Sara's head against John's chest, arms wound tightly around each other, for a long time. It felt good. Their shared warmth was comforting. It was John who started to withdraw. He took a gold chain from his pocket and handed it to Sara.
"Here," he said. "This is from one of my grandmother's necklaces. Put the ring on it and wear it around your neck, close to year heart. That way you're always reminded of our love but our secret will be safe."
Sara took the fine braided chain. "It's beautiful," she said as she took the engagement ring and threaded it on the chain.
John took it from her hands and secured the clasp at the base of her neck. Sara tucked it under her bodice. "I won't take it off. Not until you put it on my finger again."
"And you promise that you will say 'yes' again?" John queried.
"Ask me a thousand more times and I will say 'yes' to every one of those proposals. I'm sorry that it took me so long to realize what you mean to me and that living without you simply isn't living at all."
After a final flurry of kisses, John rang the footman and escorted Sara to the carriage. He stood watching the rig depart until he could no longer see it making its way along the cobblestone and the horses' hooves were no longer audible. His heart felt lighter than it had in years. His beautiful children slept peacefully in their cribs and the only woman he had ever loved had finally agreed to be his wife. What more could he possibly want from life?
Sorry that I made you wait so long for that ending. I kept changing my mind on how I really wanted it to end. The happy ending won out! Thanks for reading and I'd really appreciate it if you could just take a second and review.