Chapter Text
Louisa stood before her cousin, more agitated than she had expected, her eyes upon the book in his hands.
It was bound in dark green leather, plain and elegant, with a delicate line of gold upon the spine. Yet it held what no binding could contain: her grandmother’s poems.
She had found them after her death and trusted Joseph with their preservation.
Joseph set it gently upon the table between them.
He had come from London, where his name was now spoken with esteem—not for display, but for the steadiness of hand and feeling by which he made wood, leather, and paper almost live. George had once smiled at his younger brother’s profession. “A bookbinder?” he had said. He had not smiled long.
“I bound it,” Joseph said quietly, “as I believe she would have wished.”
Louisa brushed the cover. “It is perfect.”
“I read some of the poems while I worked,” he admitted. “Only a few lines at a time.”
She looked up.
“I did not know she wrote so. As though speaking to someone long absent.”
Her expression softened. “To him.”
Joseph inclined his head.
Silence settled between them.
“It is a pity,” he said, “that we never knew the Colonel.”
Louisa opened the volume. For a while neither spoke. The verses seemed less written than preserved: proof that love survives.
After a few lines, her eyes filled.
Joseph did not interrupt.
At length she closed the book.
Her hand remained upon the green cover. His was near enough that the smallest movement might have passed for accident.
But neither wished to be deceived.
His fingers came lightly over hers.
Louisa did not withdraw.
They had known such nearness in glances, in letters beyond courtesy, in farewells prolonged too long. Yet beside that book, what had long been silent could no longer remain so.
Joseph looked at her. There was nothing bold in his expression; only tenderness long familiar.
“I am glad you asked it of me,” he said softly.
Louisa lifted her eyes to his. “I could not have asked anyone else.”
His hand closed over hers; not to claim, but because he, too, had feared letting go.
And in that quiet room at Delafort, nothing new had begun—only something long present had at last become visible.
The End