Elizabeth wasn't certain if it was the rhythmic movement of the train or the gentle light that was coming through the window that first woke her, but as her eyes opened slowly, it all came back to her.

Nathan.

She was facing away from the window, and his arm was under her head as he slept on his back. After they had figured out, hilariously, that there was no possible way Nathan was going to fit his full length in the bunk, they'd pulled down both mattresses from the beds and laid them side by side on the floor. The mattresses barely fit, but they were surprisingly roomy and comfortable.

Elizabeth sighed softly in her happiness. The light from the window was on Nathan's face, which was turned slightly toward her. She gazed in wonder at him, so open and vulnerable in sleep. This man she'd seen ride into danger without a thought for himself was at such complete peace that he seemed almost to be smiling in his sleep.

Feeling a light blush steal across her cheeks, Elizabeth smiled, too. No one could have explained it to her, and any description certainly couldn't capture the communion, the feeling of not knowing where you begin and where the other person ends, the faith and the trust of giving yourself completely to someone. This love had to be God's plan, Elizabeth thought. They'd both known from the beginning that it was beyond their creation.

She didn't want to wake him but it was nearly impossible not to touch him. Reaching out her hand, Elizabeth laid it lightly on the soft, dark hairs of his chest, now with reddish-gold highlights in the diffused morning sun. She watched her hand rise and fall with his breath, the sound coming softly next to her ear through his slightly parted lips.

The sunlight also caught the gold of her wedding ring. The one that matched Nathan's perfectly, that he and Hickam had conspired to buy in Benson Hills while she and Rebecca were struggling with buttons.

Buttons. Elizabeth's smile went ever wider as she remembered. She knew some of them had rolled on to the floor and she and Nathan would need to do a thorough search once they'd moved the mattresses back. She wanted to return Abigail's dress in the same condition in which she'd gotten it. Though, as she remembered Abigail's soft laugh when she'd talked about the buttons, Elizabeth imagined they might have been sewn on more than once.

Moving her hand from Nathan's chest, Elizabeth touched the stubble of beard on his chin, wondering what it would be like to watch him shave, and this time, Nathan did stir. Without opening his eyes, he rolled over and pulled her to him, cradling her against his shoulder and murmuring into her tousled hair.

"Good morning," he said, his voice low and rough from sleep. "I thought I might have dreamed you, but you're still here." He was so warm, Elizabeth had the fleeting thought that she would never be cold at night again as long as he was lying beside her. She let her lips graze the skin of his chest that lay below the lines of his shirts, the part that seldom saw the sun, smooth, lightly muscled, still with the faint fragrance of soap and leather, and... Nathan.

"I love you," she said softly, without removing her lips from his skin.

He pulled her even closer to him, and she felt him take a deep breath. She knew he was trying to find the right words, and finally, in a voice slow and easy with sleep, he said. "I wish I was a poet, like Emerson or Keats. I can't do justice to what I feel right now, what I felt yesterday when you said 'I do' ... last night... I don't know, it was like it all fell into place, everything, my life up to now..." Another deep breath and a light laugh as he gave up trying. "I love you, too."

"Well, if it helps, I think you're a poet," Elizabeth said, pulling back to look at him. The almost transparent blue of his eyes in the light from the window and the way he was looking at her caused Elizabeth to need a quick dose of oxygen. With his finger, he touched the hollow in her neck that was created by her sudden intake of breath.

"I like it when you do that." He raised an eyebrow and gazed at her, his crooked smile blossoming. "I take your breath away..." Then he laughed and held her closer, and she laughed too. It was as if their joy simply couldn't be contained.

Nathan rolled back and ran his fingers through his hair, fully opening his eyes and gazing around their small cabin. "This was a good idea you had, Mrs. Grant. The mattresses on the floor? I think I would have lost all feeling in my feet if we'd tried to stay up there," he said, raising his eyebrows toward the now-bare bunks. "Leave it to a teacher to figure something like that out."

Elizabeth leaned over and kissed the skin on his shoulder, murmuring, "I think we both figured it out."

Nathan propped himself up on his elbow and smiled at her. "Yes, we did." He reached out and lifted a long curl, watching the sunlight bounce off of the strands. "I wish you could wear your hair this way all the time."

Elizabeth laughed. "Oh, I think the widows would have something to say about that..."

Nathan buried his hand in her hair, and gently moved toward her, placing his lips on her cheek. "You are so beautiful, 'Lizbeth..."

Putting her arms around his neck, she whispered, "I feel beautiful with you..." Nathan kissed her softly, and then pulled away, frowning a little. He looked out of the window.

"Does it feel like we're slowing down?" he asked.

"It does," Elizabeth said. She sat up with the sheet around her and looked out. They hadn't drawn the curtains, and she saw a large sign reading REGINA STATION, and then, to her horror, people.

Nathan saw them too. He grabbed the blanket around him and was up in a split-second to close the curtains. He sat on the bench and looked at Elizabeth and both of them burst out laughing.

"That was almost extremely embarrassing," Elizabeth said.

"So we clearly don't have everything figured out..." Nathan said, leaning back.

"Turn around," Elizabeth said, twirling her finger just in case he misunderstood.

"Turn...? Why?" Then he realized that she probably wanted to dress and wasn't quite ready for that level of familiarity. Nathan said quickly, "Oh... okay..." He turned to the wall, and smiled. "We are married, you know..." He could hear her going through bags and rustling clothing while she spoke.

"Yes, we've been married all of..." She realized she had no idea what time it was, and said, "...what does your watch say?"

"It doesn't say anything, it can't talk..." Nathan said, chuckling.

Elizabeth laughed despite her best efforts to hold it in, and then turned to him. "There's going to come a time when Allie won't laugh at those jokes anymore, you know," she said, trying to keep the laughter out of her own voice.

"But you always will," he said, smiling.

"Probably," Elizabeth said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. She then spoke very precisely. "Can you please tell me what the time is on your watch?"

"Ah, yes," Nathan said, reaching down to get it. "It's 11:30."

"Oh, goodness! We've slept half the day away," Elizabeth said.

"Sorry to correct you, but we weren't sleeping..." Nathan said, still facing the wall.

Laughing again, Elizabeth said, "Fine. It's late." She turned around to face him and said, "And now you get dressed, because I need your help."

Nathan turned around, and an involuntary intake of breath surprised him. After what they'd shared last night, how could it be that seeing Elizabeth with her hair cascading around her shoulders and in nothing but her pantaloons and corset felt almost more intimate? "Help..." he said, repeating what she'd said, but making it sound more like he was the one who needed assistance.

Elizabeth turned around and showed him the laces of her corset, hanging loose. "Help," she said, looking over her shoulder and smiling. Truth was, she was enjoying this immensely. Seeing Nathan this perplexed was highly entertaining.

Then she saw it in his eyes. The Mountie. A problem to be solved. A challenge. He was already looking at the corset and calculating his moves. Elizabeth laughed and turned around. "Get dressed first. You'll need both hands free."

Nathan pulled on his trousers quickly and walked toward her.

"I can do this," he said firmly, more to himself than to his wife.

"I am a Mountie, after all."

By the time they had dressed and freshened up, the train was pulling away from the Regina Station. They were both famished.

Rebecca had kindly packed some bread, cheese and apples into Elizabeth's bag, along with some fancy chocolates and a small bottle of wine. Elizabeth had discovered the very welcome surprise picnic in the middle of the night, and they'd quickly finished it all off.

An extremely momentous day and no supper had caught up with them, and they'd spread the food out and had sat cross-legged on the mattresses with only the light of the moon coming through the window. And they'd talked. About the house on the meadow, about Allie, about what awaited them in Hamilton, about anything and everything.

And when they'd finally brushed the breadcrumbs from the mattresses and lay back down into each other's arms, they'd made love again, already beginning to know each other's rhythms and feeling a joyous sense of familiarity. And then they'd fallen asleep.

But now, just past noon, they were starving, and didn't want to wait until the porter was able to pick up their order and bring lunch to the cabin. And also, Nathan and Elizabeth were both generally outdoor people. Much as they loved their little room, they wanted to explore, to look through multiple windows and get to know the life of their home for the next three days.

The Club Car, which housed the dining room, was elegant. Small tables lined both sides, each one under a window. Pure white tablecloths, silver place settings, and crisply-folded forest green linen napkins decorated the tables, and each one had a small lamp to the side.

A waiter, all in black except for his impossibly clean white apron, showed them to a table and they sat gazing at each other for a moment, before they both shook their heads and laughed softly. "This is something," Nathan said. "Now I know why it's so expensive... and why my mother said it was completely worth it."

Elizabeth frowned. "But you can afford it...?" she said tentatively.

Nathan took her hands across the table and smiled. "Yes. We can afford it."

"We," she said, her eyes soft. "I like how that sounds."

From the other side of the dining room, Clara gazed at the newlyweds, trying not to stare. But they were almost magnetic in their happiness, and she couldn't help letting her imagination run a little wild as she tried to fill in their story. Of course they were both beautiful, and even more now than when she'd seen them yesterday on the platform. Clara smiled, remembering her own wedding night.

Clara looked down and stirred a teaspoon of sugar into the fine china teacup in front of her. She'd made good money at the Miner's Supply and had saved almost all of it for the six months since Peter had died. This was her one luxury. A sleeping cabin would have cost far too much, but an elegant lunch every day for three days felt almost necessary after sleeping upright in her seat and washing and dressing in the small water closets provided on board the train.

Putting down her teaspoon, Clara stole another glance at The Bride, as she had continued to call her. She was holding her husband's hand across the table, and she had the beatific look of a woman who had been loved well. Clara smiled and felt a blush run across her cheeks.

Even after they were married, she and Peter only had their Friday nights together. Seven of them. Ninety-eight hours, as Clara had calculated once, and for some of those hours, sleep had been inevitable. They'd tried to stay up all night when they were together, but sometimes the comfort of each other's arms and the exhaustion of days filled with hard work had gotten the better of them, and they'd awakened with the sun, rested but regretting the lost time.

The Bride laughed and Clara looked up again. She couldn't help smiling herself, and at that moment their eyes met across the car. For some reason, neither could look away. The Groom was watching out the window as the Saskatchewan farms rolled by, and he was talking as he gestured with his fork. The Bride was listening, but as she looked at Clara she tilted her head a bit and nodded. The look said it so clearly. This is waiting for you. Be patient and you'll find it too.

Just then, The Groom had noticed, and had turned slightly, following his wife's sightline. He looked at Clara and raised his eyebrows with an easy smile, then he turned back and continued his story.

Up until this moment, Clara hadn't felt self-conscious about traveling across Canada alone. But now she had to look away toward the window. The reflection she saw there allowed Clara to see herself through the couple's eyes, and there it was. The sadness, the longing, the lightly veiled anger, and the constant battle to accept and move through grief. Clara had wanted to decipher the story of the newlyweds, and in her transparency, had revealed herself to them.

She felt the beginnings of tears sting her eyes. This new start wasn't an adventure at all. It was an escape. An attempt to run away from a life she felt was too tied to Peter. But in her heart, Clara felt the truth of what Confucius had written. "Wherever you go, there you are."

She couldn't leave Peter behind. He was with her. And until she found a way to make peace with that, she would always be running.

"If we see her tomorrow, we should ask her to have lunch with us," Elizabeth said quietly.

Nathan smiled at her, his eyes soft. "You have the sweetest heart. Here we are on our honeymoon and you're worrying about a girl across the dining car."

Raising her eyebrows, Elizabeth said, "It's precisely because we're on our honeymoon that I'm worried about her. It feels almost selfish to be this happy..." She laughed softly, "Incandescently happy, as Lizzie Bennet would say. Now I truly know what that word means." She lifted Nathan's hand up to her lips without taking her eyes off of his. She felt her breath coming faster as she saw the look there, and a smile began.

"Have we seen enough of the world for a little while?" Nathan said, his voice soft and low. "Shall we go back to our tiny cave and... nap?" His crooked smile and slightly raised eyebrow made Elizabeth's heart beat a little faster.

"Nap...?" she whispered skeptically.

"Or something..." Nathan said, pushing back his chair. "We'll think of something."