Chapter 37
They have another busy week, with a contractor measuring and drawing the front-room, transforming their plans for a practice into something that can be made real. Through the same contractor they order a new boiler, which will be made and installed by a specialist craftsman within a few weeks, hopefully just before winter truly sets in.
Vincent starts to learn the script by heart, and oversees Catherine's efforts to change from herself to a toddler in the blink of an eye. He teaches martial arts and fencing to Mina, who gains skills quickly, spending hours on practise at night.
One day he visits the council house with Adison and Catherine, to get a licence to get married, and they find out that Adison needs her father's consent to get married since she is not yet twenty-one years old.
That is quite a setback for Vincent, part of him wants to meet his beloved's father, who is a very friendly, educated man by all her reports, and ask him for his daughter's hand in person.
But part of Vincent fears that meeting, though he knows Adison loves him, is committed to him for life as much as he is to her, her father may see things very differently. Envisioning himself as a concerned parent might see him, Adison's father will meet a pale, scarred stranger with jet black hair and sulphurous eyes, apparently half again her age, who moves like a panther.
What father would want his beautiful young daughter to marry a dangerous looking nobody ten years her senior? A man without name, who is to all intents and purposes just one year old?
A sweet voice breaks his surly musings.
'If we hire Neil's carriage, we can be back within twenty-four hours, Vincent, it's not that far to my father's estate. Though he'll be sadly disappointed to have us visit only to get his permission to wed.'
Adison loves him so much, Vincent knows she cannot imagine her father opposing a marriage between them, the idea of her father refusing his consent doesn't occur to her. She thinks Vincent's disappointment is due to the delay this will undoubtedly cause their marriage plans, she has no idea he is afraid to be rejected as suitor of a young lady of relatively high birth.
'What if I'm not good enough for him?' he asks, his usual composure gone, doubt in every feature.
'You're not going to marry my father, are you?' she asks passionately, 'how can you even consider yourself not good enough for me?'
Adison, passionate? That's a first, she looks inches taller suddenly.
'If you look at it objectively, Adison, I'm nobody. I don't remember anything that you didn't teach me, I look like a freak, I move like a predator, and this body is half again your age. Why would your father want me to marry you?'
And now he has made her cry. Damn. Adison never cries.
'Is that how you see yourself, Vincent? A freak?'
When Adison can speak again she is almost angry.
'How can you even think such a thing? To me you are the most beautiful man that ever lived, and the wisest, I don't know how you became who you are in just one year, is seems impossible, but I don't care. With you, I feel safe, and loved, and so do all your friends. Ask any of them, ask Catherine, she's known you for less than two weeks.'
Catherine looks at him significantly, and he takes Adison in his arms, his beloved, crying stormily against his chest, leaving him speechless and totally stunned.
He can see himself in the mirror every day, can't he? Why does stating the obvious make his beloved so upset?
With a very serious face Catherine observes, 'She's right, you know, I felt safe with you from the very first. To me you are beautiful, but even if you weren't, I'd love you and trust you.'
'But everybody has doubts, don't they? That is not such a bad thing, is it, love?'
Adison is much quieter now, and she takes him by his smooth jaws and looks him in the eye, a look filled with intense love.
She replies, reasonable once more.
'It isn't, beloved, you have a right to doubts, too. I guess I'm just too touchy to yours, you were so sensitive about your looks when you were young, I hoped the success and the appreciation you met with had given you self-confidence. I didn't know you still had those doubts, and you put them to me so bluntly all of a sudden.'
'Well, asking your father for the hand of his lovely young daughter is rather profound, especially since we've never met.'
Adison has to acknowledge that, but that is not what being a parent is about.
'My father just wants me to be happy, and as soon as he sees us together he will recognize our love. He has never been ambitious towards me, or he would have sent me to school instead of letting me stay home and attend his meetings. He spoiled me for marriage with a man of our class long ago.
Please forgive me for acting out, you're right, it is normal to doubt oneself, and you are entitled to your own share of uncertainty. It was selfish of me to want you in control all the time, sometimes you may rely on me to talk some heart into you.'
She kisses her lover, only a tiny bit unchastely, they're in public after all.
'I love it, that you look like a predator, I mean, it always makes me think of, well, you know what. We've children present after all.'
'If Adison's father seems adverse to the idea, I'll sit on his lap and call him grandfather, and he'll melt and consent,' Catherine puts in her two cents, and as both Adison and Vincent look at her in alarm for talking like that in public, she adds cheekily, 'there is no-one here to hear me, when you kissed they all moved on quickly.'
The mood improves after that, and they decide to sleep on it a few nights. Adison can invite her father over for a few days' amusement in town, they can drive over as quickly as possible, or they can stay for a week or so, but that means Vincent will need to arrange some time off, which will probably not be easy.
Of course there is the possibility of waiting until the end of October, just before the rehearsals at the St James start, but somehow Vincent feels the need to face Adison's father quickly, have it over with so to speak.
