Gingerbread Bride

Chapter Thirteen

There were no dreams for Mary that night. She lay awake, turning over in her mind all that Rick had said and done since she first met him two and a half months ago in a field in Sussex. In the early hours of the morning, she gave up on sleep and lit her candle to wash and dress, then crept down to the kitchen. Rick would probably leave the inn at first light for his trip to London, but perhaps, just perhaps, she could reach him first.

***

Rick spent the night awake. Mary's rejection hit him hard; he'd been so sure she still cared for him, and not just as a friend. Had he been imagining the sideways looks when she thought he wasn't watching? Were the thousand small services she rendered him, the kindness she always showed him, just signs of affection? Did the blush he could provoke with a compliment mean nothing?

He'd been halfway back to Oxford before the remark about Enid started to bother him, and all the way to his room at the inn before he made sense of it. His foolish Mary thought she had been compromised, and he had been trapped into proposing. Of course. She had a sense of honor equal to his own, and never a thought of taking advantage of circumstances beyond their control.

He almost turned back then and there, but she had gone to bed. He wouldn't be able to see her until the morning. By everything holy, he was not leaving for London until he got Miss Mary Pritchard on her own and made her listen to him.

In the half-light before dawn, he set out for the Wrens' house, walking his horse carefully on the icy surface of the road. He'd covered perhaps half the distance when he saw her trudging towards him. He knew her immediately, even from several hundred yards in uncertain light.

He dismounted, and waited for her, the anxious uncertainty in his chest easing a little further when her face lit up at the sight of him.

"Running away, Miss Pritchard?"

"Running towards, Lieutenant Redepenning." She blushed then, stopping several paces away, just out of reach. Some perverse imp, still smarting from last night's rejection, kept him silent.

"I brought you a present." She came close enough to hand him a box, tied shut with a ribbon. His heart sank, then. A present. One friend to another. He was reading the signals all wrong, it seemed. He mastered his disappointment enough to smile, to thank her, to hand her the reins, so he could open the box.

It was one of her gingerbread biscuits, cut in the shape of a lady, with an icing dress and bonnet and currant eyes. "A gingerbread lady?"

"A gingerbread bride, Rick," she corrected. "If..." She blushed and stumbled a little over her words, "If... you h-happen to be in n-need of a bride."

"As it happens, I am," he said. Could a man survive such a rebound? From despair to jubilation in a few short words. The birds were beginning their dawn chorus, but none of them sang as loudly as his heart. "I am in need of you, Mary, my love."

Who reached for whom remains forever a mystery, but the box dropped onto the path, unheeded, as their arms wrapped around each other. Their lips met for the second time in their lives, and for many minutes, nothing further was said.

Eventually, Rick found himself considering the logistics of icy roads and wet hedgerows, which recalled him to himself enough to impose discipline on his wayward impulses.

"Mary, I had better put this precious little gingerbread bride safely back in her box before I crush her, and take my own dear runaway bride home to her family. Do you think they will let you come to London with me? If we take Polly, for propriety's sake?"

"To London?"

He put the bride in her box and kissed Mary again. "To stay with my sister while I arrange the wedding. You will marry me straightaway, will you not, Mary? As soon as I can arrange it? So we can spend the rest of my leave together?" He kissed her again, before she could answer.

"Yes, as soon as we can," she affirmed when she was able.

"My dearest love," Rick said.

"Am I your love?"

He loosened his hold enough to lean back so he could see her face. "Surely you know you are."

She shook her head. "I thought I was just the nuisance you had to keep rescuing."

He bent to kiss the tip of her nose. Tall as she was, he was taller.

"Rescuing you is, and has always been, one of my favorite things to do, Mary. I am proud that you have promised me the right to rescue you always."

"Always, Rick, and whenever I run, it will be to you, not from." His beautiful bride giggled. "But right this minute, the gingerbread bride needs rescuing—from the horse!"

Their tender moment ended with Rick chasing the box-chewing horse down the icy lane, while his runaway bride, now truly caught, stood laughing.

THE END

I hope you enjoyed Rick's and Mary's adventures. Gingerbread Bride is a novella in my Golden Redepenning series, which so far includes Farewell to Kindness, the story of Rick's cousin who unexpectedly inherits an earldom and a mystery, and A Raging Madness, in which Rick's brother Alex rescues his first love from her evil in-laws. I'm currently writing the next in the series, The Realm of Silence. This is Rick's sister Susan's story.