A Midnight Clear by Emma Barry & Genevieve Turner

the dawn would come. She didn’t know a time when she hadn’t known it. Joe loved her.
    Joe shifted on his knees. “I know I’m asking you to sacrifice too. And I know this might not be the life you wanted. But it’s what we both seem called to do. And I’ll make the good days so good for you.”
    Frances knew she was blushing wildly. Joe didn’t help matters when he squeezed her hands to confirm her assumption.
    “Say yes, Frances Dumfries. Let me spend all the days I can making you happy.”
    Frances’s heart was knocking against the front of her chest. Her hands, which Joe was still gripping, were frozen and molten at once.
    Across the room, she could hear Suzanne whisper, “That was pretty good.”
    To which father replied, “He still didn’t ask my permission.”
    “But he asked mine,” she told her family, who dutifully went silent. She looked down at Joe. Patient, lovely, kind Joe who she loved to distraction, who wanted to make her happy, and who would be committed to his family, even if he was in the Navy.
    She couldn’t send him away. She couldn’t stop seeing him. She would put up with the uncertainty and the danger and the service if it meant she got the rest.
    “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you. I’ll be your Navy wife—”
    Joe was on his feet in a flash, putting a ring on her finger before she even had the chance to look at it. “I don’t want you to be my Navy wife. I want you to be my wife.”
    “Well, now I don’t know why I hesitated.”
    And with that, just like Benedict with Beatrice, he stopped her mouth with a kiss—right in front of Father.
    After the kiss, they all had a celebratory drink, even Suzanne, and Father even gave them some time alone.
    “Let me put up a few more ornaments,” Frances said, “so we can feel like it’s a proper Christmas. The tree looks so bare.”
    “Not on your life. I only have a few minutes with you and I have other things in mind. Plug in the lights and get over here.”
    She and Joe nestled in front of the sparkling tree—and it was actually sort of pretty, even without tinsel and the rest of it.
    When his breath evened out, she wondered if he’d drifted off to sleep. She whispered, “You coming home was a miracle.”
    “No it wasn’t. It was hard work and leadership.”
    He’d been playing at humble only until she’d agreed to marry him, hadn’t he? In retribution, she pinched him.
    He pulled her almost into his lap, his hands skimming over her, gently squeezing and tickling every bit of her.
    Frances laughed and then inhaled sharply. She was going to share a bed with Joe. She was going to have his children. Even now, with him braced over her, laughing in the most open, relaxed manner, a dizzy shiver went through her.
    Of course she’d said yes. There simply wasn’t any other possible answer when he was asking.
    At last he stopped tickling her and their breathing went back to normal, but she stayed in his lap. Father would have a fit if he came in, but he was warm and she fit against him perfectly.
    “You accepting me was the miracle,” he whispered after a bit.
    “I don’t know how to refuse you. When will we be married?” she asked, playing with the ring he’d put on her finger.
    Joe started kissing every strand of her hair, but paused long enough to say, “I was thinking over the summer. After graduation, of course, but so we can spend some time in Maine before I’m posted.”
    She looked up at him. “Did you really decide you wanted to marry me the instant you saw me?”
    “Yes. I told my roommate that night.”
    She smiled, knowing it was vain, but all she said was, “What a silly notion.”
    “Oh no, it was the most sensible thought I’ve ever had.”
    Frances hoped they could spend the rest of their lives testing the theory.

E PILOGUE

    “You may kiss the bride.”
    At the chaplain’s suggestion, amidst the cheers of what seemed like the entire Naval Academy, Joe tossed back Frances’s veil and planted his lips on