The Scottish Bride - Catherine Coulter [138]
Mary Rose looked at his dearly loved face through the tears that blurred her sight. “Tysen,” she said, “I’m so glad you came back to me. I love you so very much. I don’t want to ever leave you.”
Then she simply closed her eyes. She was unconscious, that or asleep. He touched his forehead to hers, not moving.
“The bleeding has nearly stopped, Reverend Sherbrooke. Your wife will be all right. You did well.”
Tysen realized he was praying again, and it was a prayer filled with hope and endless gratitude, a prayer of promise and soul-deep joy.
Tysen stepped to his pulpit. Brilliant sunlight poured through the stained-glass windows. He felt the warmth of it on his face. He paused a moment, looking out over the many faces he’d known for eight years, all of them focused now on him, wondering at his silence, starting to get nervous because they didn’t understand.
Tysen looked at his brothers and their families, then at his own family—his boys, Meggie, and Mary Rose, who was still too pale, too thin, but she’d insisted she was well enough to come. And she was smiling at him, the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen in his life.
He felt a smile tugging at his own mouth. He wondered if he would ever stop smiling. He leaned forward, clasped his hands atop the pulpit, and said, “I have been here for eight years. I was a very young man when I came to Glenclose-on-Rowan, given this living by my brother, the earl of Northcliffe. You have, all of you, seen me grow to my full manhood amongst you. You have held me and my children close to you. I know each of you and I cherish what you are, what you doubtless will come to be.
“As you all know, I am now Lord Barthwick of Kildrummy Castle in Scotland. I went there solely out of duty, but God must have been directing my steps, for what I found was a very special woman who has shown me the absolute wonder of life, the glory of being a man who is beloved not only by God, but by a woman that He fashioned just for me.
“Through her, my dearest wife, Mary Rose Sherbrooke, I finally realized how very lucky I am. I finally saw what was right in front of me. I finally saw my children as the precious beings they are. I found that life could be filled with joy—endless joy. All I had to do was embrace it. I did.
“Now, however, I see that many of you wish that I would return to being that very devout and sober man you were used to, that very serious young man you had nurtured and watched grow in his faith and his self-belief. Since you had never seen him as a man filled with contentment and laughter and so much love he threatened to burst with it, you did not know that person, and thus he made you uncomfortable, and thus you did not want him.
“He was a stranger to you. He made you uncertain because where he once was stern in his admonishments to you as God’s creatures, once told you in no uncertain terms that a sin would blight your soul, he now wanted you to see the simple pleasure of just being alive, to feel the sun on your face and to smile under its warmth, to hear the sound of your children’s voices, knowing that they are yours and you will love them into eternity. This man now wants you to believe with all your hearts that God loves you, wishes you to be devout and loyal and honest, to worship Him with all the joy in your hearts, to be grateful to Him and to each other for the happiness we find here, on His magnificent earth.
“Our Lord created us, all the men and women who are sitting here today. And what he gave us, what he placed deep within each of us, is the capacity to love and honor and know in our hearts that there is meaning in our lives, meaning that allows for us to come together and give each other boundless happiness.
“I stand before you this morning a man who has been given one of our