In the Lion's Den

An Unorthodox Proposal

When Bess suggested going to Gretna Green, Simon's heart started to race.

He couldn't quite believe that she was serious.

Mere minutes ago she had pulled him out of one of his darkest moments, and now?

Now she smirked at him in the most endearing way and proposed something that he would never have dreamt to ask of her - at least not in the situation they were in right now.

"Simon, you look at me as if a pig had just sprouted wings and flown away..."

"Maybe it has...", he replied, in equal parts astonished and amazed.

"Look, Simon, it would solve your problem, wouldn't it? If you are married by tomorrow, they can't force you to wed Marianne. And they will never look for us in Scotland."

Her reply made perfect sense.

But he was not sure if he wanted her to marry him just because it made perfect sense.

Just because it would solve his problem.

First, he had to make sure he had understood her right though.

"Elizabeth Melinda Crawford, is this a proposal?"

He had always thought that women wanted grandiose romantic gestures for a marriage proposal.

To be honest, he had thought in detail about what he would do and say, should the right moment ever come.

Even though he had not quite believed it would.
And now Bess was taking matters in her own hand.

It was just like her to do this.

"Call it what you will, Marcus Simon Brandon, but if we are going to get there, we have to start out now. You can get on your knees with a ring and everything later, if you must."

And she gestured to him to finally help her on her horse.

So he did, holding her waist for much longer than anyone would deem proper.

"I certainly will", he replied with a smirk.

Then he mounted his own horse and they set off, riding next to one another in silence.

Marshes and fields rushed through Simon's field of vision, and plans and dreams and objections rushed through his mind.

Finally, he gathered the courage to say: "Bess, I'm sorry to disappoint you. This might have worked out a hundred years ago in a Jane Austen novel, but it won't now, you know."

He had read them all, as a boy, when he had found them in his late mother's room.

Ordinarily, he had preferred reading books on travel and adventure and sleuthing, but reading Jane Austen and the annotations his mother had left on the side in her neat writing style had made him feel near to her in a way even the one picture he had of his parents could not.

"Whyever not?" Bess asked, disrupting his thoughts.

"They have different laws in Scotland now. We would have to stay there for three weeks before we could get married."

"How do you know such things, Simon?"

He smiled sadly.

"I obsessively researched marriage law when I tried to find out how to void the contract."

He didn't tell her that he had researched that certain piece of knowledge much, much earlier, when at the back of his mind he had hoped that maybe, one day, they could have done just what they tried to do now.