Candice Hern (24 page)

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. “Oh, Edwina, I don’t deserve that. I said hateful things to you. Horrible things.”

“Apology accepted.”

He lifted his head, tilted her chin, and kissed her. Softly and with such tenderness it made her want to cry. He kissed her lips and eyes and temple and jaw, then gently held her away from him, taking both her hands in his.

“Now it is my turn. I have a few things to say to you, Edwina. I was
so
angry with you. I thought you had betrayed me and it hurt. But when your note said you were giving up the
Cabinet
, my anger was overtaken by concern. It had been my words that had driven you from the most important thing in your life, and I could not bear it. I could not bear to see you lose your passion. The anger was momentary, you see. The love is forever. And I do love you, Edwina.”

How could she have believed she never wanted to hear those words again? Her heart took flight and soared. She had not fallen off a cliff. She was flying.

“I want you,” he said. “I want to claim you for my own, just as I did that night when I pretended you were my lightskirt. I think we could be good together, you and I. I need you to keep me grounded, to temper my reckless nature, to help me keep my focus outward rather than inward. I need you to teach me to be unselfish and generous and thoughtful, to find my place in the world.”

“Oh, Anthony.”

“And you need me to keep you from being too earthbound, too selfless, too controlled. You need me to show you how to take risks, to reach for the moon. Just as I am risking everything right now to bare my heart to you.”

He squeezed her hands and pulled her slightly
closer. She might have buckled at the knees if he hadn’t been holding her upright. His words were so beautiful to her ears, it was almost beyond bearing.

“We need each other,” he said. “I suspect we shall each spin off into our own private directions without the other, and dissipate in the wind without a trace. We complete each other. At least, I know you complete me. Without you I am unfinished and unfulfilled. I don’t want to live like that. Complete me, Edwina.”

She could bear no more and flung her arms around his neck. “Nothing would make me happier. To complete you. To be completed by you. I do need you, Anthony. For all the reasons you have said. I need you—in my life, in my heart, and in my bed.”

“I was hoping you would say that.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “I want to spend every night making glorious, breathtaking, earth-shattering love to you. I do have one more question, though.”

“Yes?”

“You are a most unusual and unconventional woman, Edwina, and we have often been at war with each other. Dare I hope that you will agree to live in love and peace with me in a horribly conventional arrangement like marriage?”

He must surely have seen all the joy shining from her eyes for she was filled with it, flooded with it, almost overwhelmed by it.

“I have some doubts about peacefulness between us,” she said, “but I will wager we can make a success of such an age-old convention.”

“I will take that wager,” he said. “I will bet my life on it.”

And he kissed her to seal the bargain.

W
hen Edwina accepted the challenge to expand her magazine’s subscription base to four thousand, some readers may wonder why such a small number seemed like such a big deal. In fact, it was a very big deal.

Periodicals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did not have the circulation in the hundreds of thousands we expect today. The most popular and widely circulated periodical of the time was the
Gentleman’s Magazine
, which had a subscription base of around ten thousand, a number that far outstripped other periodicals of the day. A typical monthly periodical printed around 2,500 copies, and these generally did not include colored prints. Heideloff’s
Gallery of Fashion
, the most ex
pensive and exclusive of the early fashion magazines, had an annual subscription list of only around four hundred.

To give
The Ladies’ Fashionable Cabinet
an initial circulation of two thousand, and a final circulation of four thousand is in fact stretching credibility to the limit. It is much more likely that such a magazine would have had an annual subscription list closer to a thousand. But I have used a bit of literary license in establishing the number slightly higher for the sake of twenty-first-century sensibilities.

With the exception of
The Ladies’ Fashionable Cabinet
, all magazines mentioned in the text did exist in 1801. The political and social agenda behind the
Lady’s Monthly Museum
existed as described.

The preliminary peace between Britain and France, the London Treaty, was signed on October 1, 1801. It was a prelude to the more formal Treaty of Amiens signed on March 25, 1802. It lasted less than a year. War between Britain and France resumed in May 1803 and continued until the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815.