“Emeline.” The voice was deep and sure and oh so familiar.
For a moment, she didn’t dare hope. Then she dropped her hands.
He stood in the entrance to her sitting room, his coffee-brown eyes smiling just for her.
“Samuel.”
She rushed at him, and he folded his arms about her. Still she made sure to get a good grip on his coat.
“I thought you’d left. I thought I was too late.”
“Hush,” he said, and kissed her, soft brushes of his lips over her mouth and cheeks and eyelids. “Hush. I’m here.” He drew her into the sitting room.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered.
He kissed her with determination, as if to prove his existence real. His lips gently parted hers, and he tilted her head back. She grasped his shoulders, reveling in this freedom to kiss him.
“I love you,” she gasped.
“I know.” His lips wandered over her brow. “I was going to stay here in your sitting room until you admitted it.”
“Were you?” she asked distractedly.
“Mmm.”
“How very intelligent of you.”
“Not so intelligent.” He pulled back his head, and she saw that his eyes had grown dark and serious. “It was a matter of survival. I’m cold without you, Emeline. You’re the light that keeps me warm on the inside. If I left you, I think I’d freeze into a solid block of ice.”
She pulled his head back to hers. “Then you’d better not leave me.”
But he resisted her urging. “Will you marry me?”
Her breath caught in her throat, and she had to swallow before she replied huskily, “Oh, yes, please.”
His eyes were still grave. “Will you come with me to America? I can live here in England, but it would be easier for my business if we lived in America.”
“And Daniel?”
“I’d like him to come, too.”
She nodded and closed her eyes because it was almost too much. “I’m sorry. I never cry.”
“Of course not.”
She smiled at that. “It’s not the usual thing, to keep a boy by his mother’s side, but I’d very much like to have him with me.”
He touched the corner of her mouth with his thumb. “Good. Then Daniel comes with us. Your aunt is welcome to come as well—”
“I will remain here,” Tante Cristelle said from behind them.
Emeline swung around.
The older woman was standing just inside the doorway. “You will need someone to handle the estates, the money, these things, yes?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Then it is decided. And, of course, you will make the journey across the ocean every few years so that I might see my great-nephew.” Tante Cristelle nodded with satisfaction at having ordered everything and left the room, closing the door softly behind her.
Emeline turned back to Samuel to find him watching her.
“Will it be all right?” he asked. “Leaving all this behind? Meeting new people? Living in a new country, one not quite as sophisticated as this?”
“It doesn’t really matter where we live as long as I’m with you.” Emeline smiled slowly. “Although, I plan to set a new standard for sophistication and wit in Boston. After all, no one there has been to one of my balls.”
He grinned at her then, a wide happy smile that with all his bruises made him look like a pirate. “They won’t know what hit them, will they?”
Emeline mock frowned, but then she drew Samuel’s head back down to hers so that she could kiss him. Sweetly, happily. And as she did, she murmured one more time against his lips.
“I love you.”
Epilogue
“I love you.”
As Iron Heart’s words left his lips, there came a scream from the wicked wizard.
“No! No! No! It cannot be!” The terrible little man’s face reddened until steam began to shoot from his nose. “I’ve waited seven long years to steal your iron heart and make its strength mine! Had you ever spoken in those seven years, I would’ve won it, and you and your wife would be damned to hell. It isn’t fair!”
And the wicked wizard spun in a circle, enraged that his spell was forfeited. He spun, faster and faster, until sparks flew from his whirling body, until black smoke billowed from his ears, until the very ground quaked beneath him, and then, BANG! he was suddenly swallowed by the earth! But the white dove upon his wrist flew up as he vanished, the golden chain broken, and when the bird alit, it turned instantly into a squalling baby—Iron Heart’s son.
And then what rejoicing there was in the Shining City! The people cheered and danced in the streets with happiness at the restoration of their prince.
But what of Iron Heart and his cracked heart? Princess Solace looked down at her husband, held still in her arms, afraid that he was already dead, only to find him whole and smiling back at her. So she did the only thing a princess can do in such a case: she kissed him.
And though many in the Shining City are of the opinion to this day that Iron Heart’s heart healed when the wicked wizard’s spell was broken, I myself am not so sure. It seems to me that it must have been Princess Solace’s love that revived him.
For what else can mend a broken heart but true love?