Not a Gentleman (North and South Fanfic)

Chapter Nine: The Carriage

Eventually, she calmed. The ragged breaths evened, the tears abated slightly and she looked up at him, her face red and blotchy but as beautiful as he'd ever seen it. John offered her his handkerchief.

"I am sorry..." she began.

"Do not apologize, Margaret. It is not wrong to feel grief over someone you loved."

"To express such intense emotion so publicly is not- is not- and yet I have done so twice!"

"We are not in public now. It is just you and I."

"But I should not be showing such a side of myself to you. And I should not have done so yesterday. It is not ladylike. It is in no way-" she took a deep, ragged breath, "appropriate."

"I want you to show all sides to me."

Tears flowed again. First a few, then a flood. She applied handkerchief to face, but the cloth was sodden almost immediately. Margaret turned away from him as she attempted to regain control over her runaway emotions.

Her back to him, head bowed, she said finally, "Why are you so good to me?"

"You do not know?" was John's quiet reply.

She did not reply, and her posture remained rigid.

"Margaret, look at me." John placed a hand on her shoulder. She slowly turned to face him.

"I love you."

Again, she was silent, and he could not read her expression.

"Do you not know this?" he asked gently.

"I thought... you did not say so. And then you offered to release me."

"Only because our engagement seemed so offensive to you."

"Not offensive. It was just a terrible shock. The decision was so very-one sided."

"I know I can be overbearing. I have a tendency to take what I want. But in this case-"

"I know, John. I know you did not. I have reconciled that you are two disparate people."

"You have?" John lifted an eyebrow in wonderment.

"John the student and friend is not Mr. Thornton the manufacturer. What's more, I know that what you did after the riot, you did out of concern. I no longer hold it against you. And my feeling for you..." Margaret blushed, and John found himself gazing at her raptly, watching every small movement of her face for messages uncommunicated.

"Margaret?"

"I think that I could be happy with you." Margaret twisted the handkerchief, then smoothed it in her lap. She blushed even more profusely, and John realized she had more to say.

"I have known for a while that I feel a certain... attraction to you and I thought perhaps that you did for me, as well..."

"Oh, you thought that? Was it so obvious?" John laughed quietly, as his arm encircled his love.

"But I worried that this was all it was, given your earlier words. I have never been loved before. Nor have I loved."

"Margaret, let me reassure you. I do not think that man has ever loved the way that I love you. You have my entire heart, and always will."

John's heart soared. She had not said so explicitly, but there was the implication: Nor have I loved. She loved him. She just was not ready to say so yet.

He pulled her closer, and lay a chaste kiss on the top of her head, then settled back against the bench to sit quietly for a while. She leaned against him, eyes closed, restful.