Fiona
Archie picked me up the next evening for what he called a proper date, nothing rushed or squeezed between his obligations the way our earlier meetings sometimes had been. He took me to a quiet restaurant with a view overlooking the river, and I could tell almost immediately that something about the evening felt different, more deliberate, like he'd been building toward this moment for longer than I realized.
"I spoke with your mother," he said, once we'd ordered, his hands folded on the table in front of him, something nervous and earnest in his expression that I'd rarely seen from him. "I asked for her blessing to court you properly."
My stomach dropped and soared at the same time, two conflicting reactions crashing together so fast I could barely separate them. Warmth, because t
