Oh please, no.
This is too much. He can’t be doing what I think he’s doing. I swallow hard. People are looking at us now, smiling at us, clapping for us, and I keep smiling because what the hell else can I do.
God knows I want him to ask, but this, here, is too much, too public. I feel my panic rise as he opens the box and starts to speak and suddenly the world around us fades away. I feel tears come and my voice catch and he’s taking off my glove and sliding a ring onto my finger. A small crowd has formed on the walkway above the rink and they’re cheering and whooping as the song ends and ‘Chapel of Love’ blasts out into the chilly air around us, the lights twinkling in time as I struggle to take everything in.
Edward pulls me close. ‘I love you, Harry,’ he whispers. And for a second nothing else matters, because when I look into his eyes, I know it’s true. This is him trying to give me new memories – strong, bold, undeniable memories. This is him sharing his life, his past, and his future with me. I touch his face, so handsome I often marvel at being allowed to. His lips are warm on mine and the city around us disappears, the sound of cheering muffled by his hands over my ears.
Later in the rink’s Christmas café, I inspect the ring on my cold-numbed finger while he fetches us hot toddies. The stone glimmers in the light, the colour caught between a rich claret and a warm brown. I’ve never seen anything like it. A ruby, I imagine. Large, deep, expensive. The setting, and cut, old. It must be an heirloom yet the fit is perfect.
Edward heads back over, balancing our drinks and two mince pies in his hands.
‘Did you plan that?’ I ask, taking a tentative swig of the sweet, heady drink. ‘The music, the singing?’ It fleetingly occurs to me that, with the means at his disposal, Edward could have rented out the entire rink and peopled it with ensemble actors twice over if he had so desired. It’s a terrifying thought, but thankfully a million miles from anything Edward might actually do.
He splutters a laugh and shakes his head, wiping mince-pie dust from his upper lip. ‘No,’ he chuckles. ‘I mean, I knew I was going to ask you tonight; I had the ring on me, but I wasn’t planning for it to turn into a Broadway number out there. Guess that’s New York for you; everyone’s got something to say.’ He looks suddenly concerned. ‘Ah, God. It was too much, wasn’t it? Damn it, sometimes I forget you’re British.’
He’s genuinely mortified.
‘No, stop. It was perfect. I mean, I’m not likely to forget it,’ I quip. ‘And for the record, I’m not British anymore, am I? My US passport is as real as yours.’
‘Good. Well then, consider what just happened out there on the ice as your swearing-in ceremony. It’s all going to get pretty un-British from here on in. But seriously, if anything gets too much, you have to tell me. No harm no foul. I don’t want to scare you off. At least… not yet anyway.’
He means his family. They must know he was planning on proposing; I’m guessing he had to ask them for the ring. And now that we’re engaged, meeting them must be on the cards. I raise my hand and consider the deep red jewel in the light. ‘What stone is this?’
‘Garnet. It was my great-grandmother’s. Mitzi’s.’ He studies my reaction. ‘You like it, right? No? We can change it. Get something new?’
‘No, no,’ I blurt. He’s so worried about the effect his family will have on me he can’t read me at all. ‘Edward, I love it,’ I tell him, taking in its gleaming facets. ‘I mean, God, I think I might love it more than I love you,’ I joke. ‘Seriously, though, I love that it means something. To you, to your family. That it’s important. What was she like? Mitzi?’
I would be lying if I said I didn’t already know as much as the internet can tell me about Edward’s family.
John Livingston Holbeck, Edward’s great-great-great grandfather, was one of the original gilded age tycoons who made their fortune in the 1800s during a period of massive expansion across America. J. L. Holbeck created monopolies and reaped the rewards of a captive market by controlling a large percentage of all shipping, rail and communications at the time. One of the handful of men who built America in a time predating taxation, he amassed a mind-boggling fortune and innumerable holdings and was a contemporary of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie and the father of the man who built the building we’re now sat beneath. Which makes me wonder if this ‘skating on the first day of the season’ tradition dates a lot further back than I had previously considered.