Like No Other

The Chapter 32: The Wedding

Stefan hesitated, his own feelings so overpowering that he was unable to determine whether to embark on the passionate speech he'd been rehearsing this past half-hour, or capture her into his arms first. He'd been in tenterhooks lest Robert would fail in persuading Caroline to go with him, and what an enormous relief it was to see her flesh and blood, her face radiant, her misty eyes full of love, her lips slightly parted into a quivery smile as she walked steadily down the aisle. He struggled inwardly to regain composure, and bethought himself that this would only be once, and that everything should pass on perfectly.

"I was afraid you'd not come," he said as Caroline moved closer to him.

This rueful admission went unanswered. Quite incapable of speech at the moment, she did one thing that she'd been wanting to do in those two tumultuous days of languishing. She soundly boxed his ear.

"What the — ?" he exclaimed, completely taken aback, and feeling his smarting cheek. "Caro, what was that for?"

"Stupid, stupid man!" she said in a quivery voice. And perhaps, because of the pain and agony she had endured in the past week, and the overwhelming happiness pouring within her now were too much to contain, she burst into tears and eventually found herself imprisoned within two strong arms. "Oh, I'd been waiting a-and waiting—and waiting for you!" she told him between sobs.

Caressing her hair, Stefan replied tenderly: "My dearest, darling girl, I am very sorry to have kept you waiting. Certainly, I deserve a thrashing for that alone."

"And waiting and h-hoping that you'd come! I c-could have almost died of unhappiness!"

"And that would be the death of me as well. I am below contempt to have let that happen."

"And not one word from you. Not one!" she said fiercely, and looked up at him with a darkling look, her eyes still brimming with unshed tears. In answer to this, Stefan brought his lips on her cheeks to kiss them away, one by one, then on her forehead, before finally claiming her lips. This seemed to content Miss Davis, for she submitted to it wholeheartedly in a few minutes.

"We've emerged from a terrible storm, my love," he said fervently after a while, still embracing her, "that I can hardly believe we are still standing and holding on. I'd been in such an agony, fearing that this day would only remain a scrap of the what-might-have-been. If that were had been the case, then I'd cease to exist the moment you refuse to come here." He held her face, and looking passionately down on her glistening green eyes, he added: "Because I am utterly, irrefutably certain that life without you is nothing—nothing at all, Caro. My title, my estate — all my riches in this earth — I'll gladly trade them just to have you for the rest of my life."

"'So dear I love him that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life,'" she quoted, smiling mistily up at him.

"Ah, Milton. I should have thought of something from him as a response to that," he mused drily.

"No, my love. Your words are sufficient enough, and it persuades me most compellingly that you are, at last, making an offer for my hand."

This made him throw his head back and laugh heartily, as he had not laugh for many days.

Caroline regarded her rather uncertainly. "But is it not your intention why you've brought me here? I declare you are being odious for laughing so, sir!"

"Yes, little love, that is indeed my intention, but you've just deprived me the rare honour of properly asking you of it! And here I was, practicing the whole time how to make it to perfection."