Julian proposed to Isabella in early winter, nearly eighteen months after their first tentative acknowledgment of feelings neither of them had been ready to name plainly, and the manner of it, when Isabella described it to Wren the following morning, carried exactly the unhurried, deliberate quality both sisters had come to value above almost anything else this past year had taught them to prioritize.
"He didn't plan some elaborate scene," Isabella said, still visibly glowing with the particular disbelief of a woman absorbing genuinely wonderful news. "We were just at his apartment, cooking dinner together the way we do most Sunday evenings, and he stopped in the middle of chopping vegetables and told me he'd been carrying the ring in his coat pocket for three weeks, waiting for a moment
