Title: I told her all my heart
Rating: G
Fandom: North and South (2004 tv mini-series)
Pairing/Characters: Margaret Hale/John Thornton
Summary: The train ride home.
Disclaimer: North & South © Elizabeth Gaskell and the BBC. No copyright infringement intended.
Warnings: none
Notes: Title is from William Blake's poem "Love's Secret".
Word count: 382
~*~
On the train ride home, he had asked her - after he had paused from exploring her taste with his lips of course - what had changed since that dreadful day when he had first proposed and she rejected him.
She looked thoughtfully out the window, past the moving flurry of nature's background. "I suppose - I had misjudged you for the longest time. I thought you a heartless man who only thought about money. To think that you wanted me for your wife...it was preposterous and I had no idea what you found so worthy in me. I certainly didn't think I was worthy of you."
He bowed his head in regret. To think of all the time they wasted, not thinking they were worthy of each other when, really, there wasn't any one else John would've found more worthy than Margaret.
But it wouldn't do to dwell on the past. What mattered was that they were here together now.
He took her hand in his, kissed it reverently, trying to imbue everything he felt for her in this one simple kiss.
"Then I started seeing you in a different light. It's - difficult to explain but it was like everything became so much simpler and I couldn't stop thinking about you. My heart would flood with happiness at the thought of you, even when I knew you must've hated me so for rejecting you."
His lips moved up to her neck, and he tasted her warm skin. They were in public, he had to keep reminding himself; they couldn't possibly do all the things he wanted them to do.
"I could never hate you," he replied. "I tried to - I tried to with all the effort I could muster yet even when you wanted nothing to do with me, I still couldn't help but love you."
"Did you love me even when you knew I lied to you?"
"Yes, because I know you were only trying to protect your brother, I understand that now."
She turned her cheek and pressed it up against his, smiling. Coming to Milton again, she couldn't conceive of the contentment that seeped into her at the moment. It was like coming home. And she was.
They stayed like that all the way to Milton.