"Love is a Choice" by Gratiana Lovelace, 3/15/13 (Completed)

Prologue through Ch. 2: Their Wedding Night Begins Fitfully

However, for the young lady in question, the 18 year old Lady Katharine Southwick Wingate, the proposal, marriage negotiations pertaining to her dowery, and their wedding this very day just two weeks since she met her now husband, Lord Rafe Wingate, have been quite a whirlwind.  She has not had any chance to catch her breath, not gotten to know her new husband, nor has Lady Katharine decided if she likes the fact that she is married at all--let alone, married to Lord Rafe in particular.  But the banns have been said, the marriage rites performed, and the ring is on her finger.  So all that remains is that the wedding night awaits--maybe. 

Lord Rafe and his new bride Lady Katharine are just beginning their lives together as husband and wife.   However, life is rarely perfect--then or now.  And the same can be said about love and happiness.  Happiness is an ever evolving attempt to reconcile what we want with what we have.    Whereas love is finding joy with someone who will care for us, cherish us, believe in us, support us, and nurture us--beyond what they hope to receive in return from us.   

And if life is about making choices that impact our future--so it is with love.  It is not easy finding love, nor knowing when it is right.  But sometimes love finds us, when we are not expecting it, nor prepared for it.   And when that happens, we have to find the courage to choose love.

To be continued with Chapter 1

“Love is a Choice”, Ch. 1:  The Bride’s Wedding Night Escape

The cool night air that had earlier refreshed Lady Katharine Wingate, is now beginning to chill her to the bone.  If she had not walked out on her wedding night with not even her shawl over her wedding gown--if not her cloak--she would at least have some warmth now.  The thin satin and lace of her wedding gown is no barrier against the cold not quite Spring weather--made chillier by an incessant howling wind.  And her feet in their delicate wedding slippers are not faring well either.  She knows that she will have blisters on her feet from where the rocky and rough hewn road stones and forest brambles are tearing at her slippers and her feet.  And her finely embroidered satin wedding slippers are nearly ruined.

No, she made a big mistake to bolt from her bridegroom not long after they entered their warm wedding night bed chamber at his parents’ country estate’s hunting lodge.  Her new husband, Lord Rafe Wingate, had imbibed a bit too cheerfully at this evening’s wedding reception.  And when he sat down on their bed to remove his boots, he promptly laid back and fell asleep. She supposes his inability to stay awake was due to his extreme age--28 years to Lady Katharine’s youthful 18 years.   Were he a few years older, he could almost be her father--she wrinkles her nose at the thought.  Though her own dear papa, is well into his forties and thankfully still robust of health.   

But Lady Katharine barely knows Lord Rafe.   Her parents Sir Antony and Lady Charmaine Southwick had so eagerly accepted Lord Wingate’s offer for her hand after her coming out ball at the beginning of the season, that Lady Katharine Southwick did not even have the customary courting period to allow her to adjust to the idea.  She does not know the man to whom she now finds herself wed and she lets out a mournful sob into her delicately embroidered linen handkerchief as she looks at the ominous dark woods surrounding her.  They were married within a fortnight of meeting and she now finds herself in the predicament of being in an unfamiliar countryside near Warwick, England, walking in the cold, to she knows not where. 

Upon seeing a faint light ahead in the trees, she hopes that it might be a caretaker’s cottage on the property where she might seek shelter.  She runs toward the light with little thought to the state of her hair that has come completely undone and lies about her shoulders in its natural state of softly curled dishevelment--her brunette ringlets having long since unfurled.  Lady Katharine hurries to the front door and knocks frantically.  There is no answer. So she knocks again--a little louder this time.  Then finally life seems to stir within as a tiny but large boned Scottish woman [(5a) right]  in her mid fifties wearing a nightcap and a  shawl over her plain cambric shift opens the small cottage door wide--her girth nearly encompassing the span of the doorway.