“What?” he asked, almost pleading for her to get on with it. He had no notion of what to expect from this, and he feared the pain it might bring just as he feared the hope now pressing on him.

“I’m sorry,” Elinor said, a slight catch in her voice. “I am so very sorry. What I said yesterday… It was not fair to say, and I didn’t mean it.”

He stared at her, hardly breathing, barely blinking. “Which part of it?” he asked her, wary and hesitant.

She seemed to be relieved at his response, but he couldn’t understand why. Perhaps it was the same reason he was beginning to feel it.

They were speaking to each other, and that seemed its own kind of miracle.

“Any of it, honestly.” She shook her head, the hand on the bridle moving to the horse while the other clutched at her shawl more tightly. “It was unforgivable. I fell victim to the trap you warned me about; I saw who you were instead of who you are. I assumed the worst based on the small part I heard and would not listen to the truth.”

Her throat worked on a swallow, and he watched that delicate throat move, captivated.

Elinor moved her hand along the horse a little, towards him. “I see the change in you, Hugh, and I know the difference.”

A wondrous lightness began to fill him, and he smiled with the joy of it. But that joy was short-lived, as was the smile. Pain wedged itself in, and despair wrapped itself around him.

“But is it enough, Elinor?” he asked as the agony within his chest began to tighten his throat. “Will it ever be enough?”

Somehow, the woman he loved smiled with tenderness as well as an air of mischief.

“I certainly hope so,” she quipped softly. “I’ve run all the way out here in the snow without a proper coat or boots to tell you that I love you and beg you to marry me.”

All sensation and thought fled from him, and he could only stare at her as his heart, or what had once been his heart, began to pound in a fervent but unsteady rhythm.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You have my pardon,” she informed him, moving closer, “and my person, if you want it. I’m in love with you, and I want you to marry me.”

He laughed a faint, breathless, nigh delirious laugh. “And you came out into the snow for this?”

Her hand rested on his boot, and somehow every single one of his toes felt the warmth of her skin. “I couldn’t let you get away. You may be my only chance, and I know I will never love like this again. So…” She paused, swallowing again, “Will you?”