Page 53 of The Austen Affair

We do get married at Gretna Green, which is sadly no longer the UK equivalent to a Las Vegas quickie wedding.

Nowadays, you need to file for a marriage license no less than twenty-nine days in advance—spontaneity is so dead!

But in the end, this isn’t any trouble at all.

My incredibly organized fiancé (what a word!) got all the paperwork in with time to spare.

We end up zipping over to Gretna Green the moment filming wraps, and tie the knot quietly and privately.

We fervently hope it will be a while before the news story breaks, and the “us” of it all will stay our own little secret, at least until the Northanger Abbey press tour.

What happens in Scotland, stays in Scotland…

But we don’t honeymoon. At least, not right away. Instead, we rush home to London. Our home. A home I’ve never seen before but is mine. Because it’s his. And we share things now, like a proper team.

I get to meet the rest of the family. I’m worried, at first, that they won’t like me, but Hugh isn’t concerned. “You already made my family love you once. Now it’s just a different branch of the tree.”

It’s hard to overstate how shocked Hugh’s sister is that her color-inside-the-lines brother got married on (what seems like) a whim.

But something about that actually seems to delight Florence.

She throws herself on me, hugging me so tight I feel like a birthday balloon about to pop.

“Oh, thank God, he didn’t marry one of the boring ones. ”

I can see that all these generations later, Georgie’s influence is still going strong.

Mrs. Balfour takes a little while longer to warm to me, but I’m okay with earning that trust. I start by making myself quietly useful, helping out around the house in Crouch End to allow Hugh as much time with his father as possible.

I see that Hugh and his family have made a habit of sitting at his dad’s bedside to read to him, from his favorite novels and even old scripts from his career.

Telling a story to someone you care about when they’re sick will never stop being a gesture of love, no matter how many centuries have passed.

I think it was particularly important to Hugh that he get to introduce me to his father as his wife, even if Mr. Balfour wouldn’t remember the news for long.

Still, that meant we got a new smile out of him every time it was brought up—because each mention was, to him, the first he was hearing of a lovely surprise.

After four solid weeks of family bonding, and at Floss and Mrs. Balfour’s absolute insistence, Hugh and I depart London and head off on our honeymoon. Where else? In Hampshire.

We book a room at the Highground Hotel, and seeing as they know it was Hugh’s ancestral home, they’re willing to work with us to figure out which room used to belong to his great-great-great-great-grandfather.

That suite doesn’t look much like a nursery anymore.

It doesn’t really look like a Regency bedroom at all.

(The whole hotel was heavily redecorated in the 1920s.) But the hardwood floors are still original.

Sadly for our bill at checkout, it takes two guesses to find the correct loose floorboard. But we peel up the wood with the edge of a hammer we packed especially for the occasion. Buried beneath two hundred years of dust, there it is: the complete memoirs of Edward Balfour, written in Hugh’s hand.

“I was wrong,” Hugh tells me quietly. “I was so wrong, Tess.”

I lean my chin on his shoulder, wrapping my arms around his waist. “Of course, dear. But when specifically?”

Hugh gives a dry chuckle. He’s still examining the papers with wonder. They’re frail, brown, and thin. But they exist. “I told you the past was dead,” he mutters. “But it’s not dead.”

“It’s not even past,” I agree.

Hugh looks at me in mild surprise.

“Oh, you’re surprised I know that quote, are you?” I ask, poking him in the ribs. “Still think I’m illiterate, after all these months?”

“Usually you quote Austen, not Faulkner,” he teases, leaning down for a kiss.

“Don’t be daft,” I say, nipping at his earlobe. “I’m quoting Prince Harry.”

Hugh groans, falling back onto our canopy bed in exasperation. “I should have known you were lining up a bit! I fall for it every time!”

I shriek with delight, climbing on top of him and straddling him, pinning him down on the mattress. (I do take care not to jostle the very delicate stack of papers in his right hand.) I lean over him, my dark hair spilling down over his face. “Do you still love me, though?”

Hugh closes his eyes, as if he’s thinking it over, but his answer is telegraphed by his free hand working its way up my thigh. “Er, yes. I think I still do.”

“More each day?” I press him.

“More each second,” he promises.

I lay my forehead against his and lay a tiny smooch on his nose. “I told you from the start: I would not be put off forever.”

He grins up at me with that goofy grin he only wears when we are approaching perfect happiness. “Come closer, Mrs. Bright.”