“Nothing.” He shook his head, then schooled his features into a semblance of his normal expression. He squeezed my hand. “A walk around the lake sounds lovely.”
* * *
The path was more crowded than usual for a Tuesday, with clusters of students and even some people unaffiliated with Harmony enjoying the unseasonably mild weather with a lakeside stroll. While walking around campus was usually one of our favorite midweek activities—Frederick’s ability to be awake during the day for longer stretches was something he liked taking advantage of—the walk didn’t seem to have lessened his earlier agitation. He visibly startled every time a particularly rambunctious group of students passed us on the path, and the fingers of the hand I wasn’t holding drummed a constant staccato beat against his right thigh.
When Frederick nearly jumped out of his skin at the approach of a duck quacking noisily at something it must have seen in the grass, I stopped walking and tugged on his hand.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“What?” His eyes were on the duck, who was now waddling its noisy way back into the water. “Nothing’s wrong. Why would you think something was wrong?”
His voice was half an octave higher than usual, the words spoken at nearly twice his normal rate of speech.
“Just a guess,” I said, peering at him.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said again. His jaw worked as he stared down at his feet, at the water, at the clouds in the sky. “I promise. Shall . . . shall we keep walking?”
The last time I had seen him this agitated was when we’d talked about moving into a new apartment together. One that didn’t feel like it was only his. One that didn’t carry with it the bad associations of the century he’d spent too incapacitated to notice the world around him.
Something was definitely on his mind.
“Whatever it is,” I said in as gentle a voice as I could, “you can tell me.”
He closed his eyes on a shuddering sigh.
“There’s something I would like to ask you.”
He shoved his hand deep into the pocket of his slacks. When he pulled it out again, in his hand was a small velvet box.
My heart stopped.
“I don’t have the right to ask you to stay with me forever,” he said. His voice had recovered its normal cadence and pitch. I wondered if he was starting a speech he had practiced during my long hours away from the apartment the past few months, since I started my new job here. “But I never said I wasn’t a selfish man. Or that I was a good one, for that matter.”
“You are not selfish,” I insisted. “And you’re one of the best people I know.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Points upon which reasonable minds can differ, I suppose. But what I want to ask you is—” He broke off. Closed his eyes. Shook his head. “What I came here today to talk to you about is—”
“You want me to think about it,” I said, interrupting him.
A flock of ducks waddled across the path a few feet away from us, quacking noisily at each other as my entire world tilted slowly on its axis.
Frederick nodded slowly. “Yes,” he whispered.
Then he opened the box in his hand.
I’d never given much thought to what I’d want my engagement ring to look like if I were ever to be on the receiving end of one. I’d always found diamonds to be sort of pretty, but in a bland and characterless sort of way. I’d never been able to imagine myself wearing one—on my hand, or anywhere else.
The ring that lay nestled within the black-velvet box had a blood-red ruby in its center that was the size and general shape of a dime but with interesting facets cut into it that caught the sunlight when Frederick’s shaking hands jostled it a little.
I may have never thought much about what I wanted in an engagement ring, but all at once I knew I’d never see one more beautiful, or more perfect, than this.
“If I say yes,” I said, my breathing starting to come too quickly, “you’ll need to teach me what to do.”
I chanced a look up at his face. He was gazing down at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“Teach you what to do?” he repeated.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve lived with you for over a year now, but you’ve been so careful to keep me from the . . . more detailed aspects of things. I’ll need to know exactly what I’m in for if I . . .” I trailed off, trying to think of how to phrase the rest of what I was thinking in a way that wouldn’t frighten any passersby.