or that a title could make an invitation impossible to refuse." Nora met his eyes. "Then do not ask it as a lord," she said. "Ask it as Nathaniel." He took a steadying breath, the same sort of breath she had taken before addressing the assembly. "Would you consider building a life with me," he asked, "in which your work and judgment would remain your own?"
Nora did not give him an immediate answer. She asked whether he understood that she would continue teaching, that her mother would always have a home with them if she wished it, and that she would not become a pretty name printed above a charity whose books she was forbidden to open. He answered each question without pretending it was unreasonable. Then she asked whether he would remain beside her when she disagreed with him in public. "Especially then," he said. "I have discovered you are usually preventing me from making a fool of myself." She laughed, and only then did she place her hand in his.
They were married the following spring in the village church, with no great procession of carriages and no need to prove anything to the people who had once looked down upon Nora. Lady Honoria attended with her walking stick; Bess carried a posy of hawthorn blossoms; Elspeth stood among the guests and cried openly. Mrs. Fenwick adjusted her daughter's sleeve before the service, then stepped back to inspect the neatness of the seams. Nathaniel waited at the front, looking more anxious than he had before any room full of trustees. Nora walked toward him in a gown made by the same hands that had taught her to value a straight stitch and a truthful account.
The blue gown was eventually stored in a cedar chest, folded around a square of linen embroidered with two sets of initials. When their daughter was old enough to ask why a spray of hawthorn flowers grew across one shoulder instead of the hem, Nora told her the truth in words a child could understand. Someone had tried to hurt her because she spoke for people who were easy to ignore. Other people had helped her tell the truth, and the hurt had been repaired, though it had not been erased. The little girl listened solemnly, then asked whether she might learn to sew flowers like those herself.
"Of course," Nora said, setting a needle and a piece of cloth on the table between them. She guided her daughter's fingers through the first simple stitch. Outside the window, children hurried along the lane toward the school with books tucked beneath their arms. Nora remembered the gilded mirror, the costly silk, the torn blue bodice, and the point of steel that had once seemed capable of deciding her future. It had not decided anything. She had held it up to the light, told the truth about what she saw, and refused to let anyone make her lower her hand.