Be My Bride by Regina Scott

and small puffed sleeves were edged with intricate embroidery of white roses on emerald leaves. In the center of each rose was a small pearl. Similar roses seemed to climb from the ribbon at the hem to blossom under the gathered bosom.
    “Oh,” John grunted dismissingly, “it’s just a dumb dress.”
    “Very nice, Mother.” James nodded dutifully before John pulled him across the corridor toward the well-furnished play room. Adam reached out and patted the soft material.
    “It’s very pretty, Mother. You’ll look just like the roses in Mr. Daniel’s garden.”
    Cynthia smiled at him, feeling her eyes moisten. “That’s right, Adam.”
    He crawled down from the bed and skipped off across the corridor. Watching him, Cynthia glanced up to find Daniel watching her.
    “I don’t know what to say,” she murmured, oddly embarrassed. “It’s absolutely beautiful.”
    “Good,” Daniel replired. “Then you’ll have no trouble accompanying me to the assembly this Wednesday.”
    “No, I suppose I won’t.” She couldn’t help laughing at the thought.
    And she had worn it to the assembly, with a nosegay of rosebuds at her wrist and roses entwined in the braid in her hair. And Daniel had danced every dance with her, and she’d felt more beautiful than even the night she’d met Nathan. In fact, Nathan had never seemed farther away, and for once the thought didn’t terrify her.
    Daniel couldn’t help noticing the change in her. All his efforts to bring them closer were beginning to work. She was laughing again, not the teasing laughter he remembered as a young man but a joyful sound that did something to his heart to hear it. He ordered a dozen more dresses, each in a different style and all in shades of violet and blue and pink that complimented her fair coloring. Whether it was the dresses or laughter he didn’t know, but he was pleased to see the dark circles disappear from around her eyes. 
    He was also pleased and a little surprised to find that virtually none of his own clothes were fitting. Between the improvement in Monsieur Henri’s cooking and the exercise he was getting with the boys, he had lost a good fifty pounds. When he put on the new clothes he ordered for himself, he had to admit that he cut a rather dashing figure. Perhaps Cynthia hadn’t married herself such a frog after all.
    There was one thing more he felt he must try to change, however, and that was Cynthia’s inability to play with the boys. While he would cheerfully wrestle and dash about the house with them, Cynthia always watched from a distance. She watched with an indulgent smile on her face, that was true, but she refused to join them.
    At first he wondered whether she was hampered by her new gowns, but she didn’t seem more likely to enter their games when she wore the hideous black dress, which was rarely now. More likely, he decided, she had had to be both mother and father for so long that she was unable to unbend to be herself even long enough to play a game of hide and seek. It seemed to him a symbol of their relationship – while it was pleasant, the joy was missing. If he could get her to unbend in one area, perhaps the other would follow.
    His opportunity came one afternoon when he had been playing a boisterous game of touch and run with the boys through the hedges of the maze. He had stopped to catch his breath near one of the entrances when he heard Cynthia calling to the boys to come in for tea. James and Adam dutifully appeared from behind various shrubs. A half-hearted scuffle behind him could only be John. He held out one arm to stop them and put a finger to his lips.
    “Let’s see if we can’t get your mother to play for a bit,” he whispered. All three of them brightened, and they scampered off into hiding. Daniel sauntered out of the maze right into Cynthia’s path.
    “Hello, my dear. Did I hear you calling?”
    Cynthia smiled at him over the basket of roses in her arms. She had to admit that even with