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here . . .’
    I am totally getting that fixed first thing!
Brianna Jade thought, staring at the beautiful picture –
vista
– before her, the white bridge standing out in front of
a background of soft greens, a gentle slope rising beyond, planted with foliage in which mauve and white flowers flashed out here and there in the emerald bushes, the pewter lake like the base of a
bowl.
Now I’m seeing myself in my wedding dress standing there, Edmund beside me, with flowers floating in the lake . . . white roses . . . and white ribbons all wrapped around the
bridge, maybe some lavender ones too . . .
    ‘I thought we might walk up to the gazebo?’ Edmund was saying. He led her up the short stretch of path to the open stone building that looked like a small temple, with pillars in
front of lots of statues of Greek gods and goddesses in stone drapery.
    ‘I love the statues,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Mom does too.’
    Edmund had extracted the Tiffany box and was holding it behind his back now. ‘All from Greece,’ he informed her. ‘An Earl of Respers brought the statuary back after his Grand
Tour in the late eighteenth century.’ He coughed. ‘Not that the Greek government knows they’re here. I’m afraid he bribed a lot of people to be able to take them out of the
country. We should probably give them back.’
    ‘Hell, no!’ Brianna Jade shook her head decisively. ‘That was ages ago, and they look great here. Finders keepers. Plus,’ she added, ‘I saw on the news that Greece
is totally bankrupt, so they’d just sell them to someone else anyway, and they could never look as nice as they do right here.’
    ‘I’m very glad you’ve taken that position,’ Edmund said. ‘Because I’m hoping, more than I can say, that you will agree to, um, take up a permanent
position—’
    Oh God
, he thought,
you sound as if you’re making a speech in the House of Lords! For God’s sake, Edmund, there’s a beautiful young woman looking up at you,
waiting for you to propose to her – try to sound like a man and not a stuffed shirt!
    He cleared his throat.
    ‘What I mean to say,’ he continued, ‘is that in the time that we’ve spent getting to know each other, I’ve come to appreciate you more than I can say. You are a
truly lovely, sweet girl who would adorn any position into which she was placed—’
    Position! Why on earth do I keep saying that?
    But mercifully, as he seemed to be irredeemably tangled up in unnecessarily pompous verbiage, understanding was dawning on Brianna Jade’s face.
    ‘
Oh!
’ she exclaimed. ‘I get it now.’ She shook back her cascades of hair. ‘Take your time,’ she added reassuringly. ‘It’s not like
we’re in any rush. And I want this to be special.’
    This helped considerably.
I really am hugely lucky,
Edmund thought.
When Lady Margaret McArdle told me about the most beautiful American heiress London had seen for donkey’s
years, what were the odds that she’d also turn out to have a lovely temperament and a sensible head on her shoulders?
    ‘Brianna Jade,’ he found himself saying very simply, ‘I honestly don’t even feel I
deserve
to ask you to marry me. And I want very much for us to be able to be
honest with each other, which is why I’m not going to tell you that I’m madly in love with you, and I certainly don’t expect you to tell me the same – not right now, anyway.
We’re both aware that in some aspects this is an arrangement. I’m very happy about it, and I do hope you are too.’
    It was formal, he knew, and it was not the romantic declaration that a young twenty-four-year-old woman might want to hear. But it was the truth, and he had resolved beforehand that she –
and he – deserved nothing less. It was common knowledge in his circle that Prince Oliver, heir to the throne, had proposed to Lady Belinda Lindsey-Crofter under entirely false pretences,
basically tricking a young woman who was genuinely in love with him into