Marrying Miss Hemingford
Page 25
‘There is always the second of my answers.’
He laughed, half convinced she meant it, but then sense prevailed. ‘No, my love, we will save that for the marriage bed. When it happens, it must be right and I wish us both to savour it to the full as husband and wife.’
‘Then you must call at my aunt’s house tomorrow, decked out in your best to ask formally for my hand. I shall be waiting.’
And that is what he did. In spite of their impatience they decided to wait until the new Cliff House had risen from the old; after all, it was going to be their home as well as a hospital. Because of all the goodwill Anne had engendered, the money came pouring in and not only money, but offers of practical help from bricklayers, carpenters and painters, and it went up in record time. Six weeks later, the roof was on and the rooms painted and though the wards had to be finished off and equipment brought in, their living quarters were habitable and they could wait no longer.
It was a double marriage ceremony, Walter Gosforth and Aunt Bartrum and Justin and Anne, witnessed by Harry and Jane, who had come down from Sutton Park, Viscount Rockbourne and Andrew, now almost fully recovered, and all their friends, high and low; they made no distinction.
The wedding breakfast was held at Cliff House and that night, when everyone had gone home, Justin kept his promise to make their wedding night the most fulfilled and happy she had ever known. Now she knew why she had remained single so long; she had been waiting for the right man, for Dr Justin Tremayne.
They spent a week in London and a week at Sevenelms and then returned to Brighton for the opening of the new hospital which had been completed while they were away. ‘I was right,’ he told her after the ceremony, when the town dignitaries and the watching populace had departed. ‘You do make dreams come true.’
‘Oh, that was Tildy,’ she said, reaching up to kiss him. ‘And her little friend.’
ISBN: 978-1-4592-2506-0
MARRYING MISS HEMINGFORD
Copyright © 2005 by Mary Nichols
First North American Publication 2006
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