“And I do promise…no, no…I do solemnly swear…no, no, no…I promise to swear that I…blast…”

Kurt looked up from his sketch book, smiling when his husband appeared, muttering to himself as he hobbled from the house and out to where Kurt sat, wrapped in a blanket over his day coat, soaking in the midday sun. Blaine had a pencil and paper clutched in one hand, leaning heavily on his cane with the other, as he often did when lost in thought, mulling over important matters of business.

“I do hereby promise,” Blaine tried with a lift on the added word, but then shook his head. He began to pace back and forth, heels clicking on the stone beneath his feet, hoping that new words, better words, would chase him down from the garden, or blow in on the breeze.

“Are you writing your wedding vows, husband?” Kurt asked, a smile in his voice, one that had taken root there now that he actually had the opportunity to sit outdoors, warm his paper pale skin in the daylight, and capture the fresh scent of the air as it passed over the rose bushes and the wisteria trees, not through his window to tussle with the stale air indoors. “Or are you penning another correspondence to Baron Schuester about that property dispute?”

Blaine didn't stop his pacing when he answered.

“I usually can tell when you are trying to be funny, Count,” Blaine replied snappishly. “But this time, I am at a complete loss.”

“Ooo, we're using titles now, are we?” Kurt teased, putting down his sketch book with his pencil stuck inside.

“We are,” Blaine replied.

“Well, well, well. You are more surly than usual.”

“Am I?” Blaine replied, giving his response no thought.

“Yes,” Kurt said with an amused sigh, as Blaine's moods no longer troubled him the way they did when they two first wed. “Why don't you come here and tell me what's vexing you.”

Blaine halted just a moment. He had already made the decision that he wasn't going to stop, but suddenly changed his mind, if for no other reason than to rest his frazzled head. He turned to the chair beside Kurt, the one that Kurt had the maids bring out on the chance Blaine wanted to visit with him, and lowered himself slowly into it, holding tight to his cane for support. He adjusted himself, rearranged his prosthetic limb in symmetry to his real one, and sat with his back straight, addressing his husband as if he were about to address a higher lord.

“You and I,” Blaine began, “are to be married soon.”

“Again,” Kurt added with a chuckle, “thanks to my loyal and wonderful husband, who always keeps his word.”

Blaine nodded slightly at Kurt's praise and continued.

“Everyone we know is going to be in attendance.”

“Yes, they are,” Kurt agreed, “for it was you who invited them, and not a one would be daft enough to deny your invitation.”

That acknowledgment did not seem to make Blaine any calmer.

“They are all going to be watching…listening.”

“Also true,” Kurt laughed.

“Please,” Blaine begged. “Please, do not laugh at me so much, husband.”

“I am not laughing at you.” Kurt smiled warmly. “Truly, I am not.”

“I am trying to tell you that I…am not good with words,” Blaine admitted, “and making speeches. Not like this.”

Kurt looked at his despairing husband, whose gaze had shifted to the sheet of paper in his hands, the pencil smudges on his fingers, and felt his heart go out to him. No, things of this nature were not easy for Blaine. They had been once, when they were both children, naïve to the ways of the world and the evil that existed in it. But now, worn down by experience, Blaine had almost lost his ability to be compassionate.

There were few souls he loved. Most he did were gone to him, except for Kurt, and their daughter, and Blaine tried his best to fill his thoughts of them as he wrote, but still, the words would not come. He feared, for as much as he loved his husband, they never would.

And now, everyone they knew would learn of one more deficit of the default Earl of Anderson Manor.

“If it were only you and me there,” Kurt asked, “what would you say to me?”

Blaine's eyes darted up at him. He still felt at a loss for words, but he took a deep breath, holding the pencil hard in his grip until the thing almost split in two.

“I would say that I am the luckiest man in the world,” Blaine started, speaking soft, as though he thought someone might come out of the house any moment and listen in. “I would say that every day that I get the privilege of waking to your handsome face is another day in heaven. I would say that I have loved you for longer than I can remember, and that doing so was as easy as waking in the morning, or breathing, or taking a step outside my door. Even when I thought I had lost you forever, I still loved you. When things seemed low and I had no hope, my memories of you kept me going - the thought that I might someday see you again, that you would want me, that I might take your hand and make you mine…” Blaine paused for a breath, and Kurt realized, as his chest shuddered, that he had been holding his. “I would say that I am sorry for all of the awful, all of the horrible, all the unforgiveable things I did and said before we got to this point, but that I am glad we are here together. We are in love, and we are a family, and there isn't anything else in the world that I could want more.”

At a second pause, Blaine's eyes searched Kurt's, waiting for a reaction.

“And would that be the end, my love?” Kurt asked, in a tone less inclined to tease after hearing what his husband felt.

Blaine's face went blank for a moment, and then he said, “No. I would say that from here on out, I will live my life, every day, endeavoring to deserve you, and the love that you have given to me, so freely.”

Kurt nodded, quiet, unable to come up with praise that could equal Blaine's final remark.

“How does that sound?” Blaine asked, a bit nervous in the face of Kurt's silence.

“Wonderful. You see, my darling?” Kurt took Blaine's hand in his and held it, running his thumb, which had gained renewed ability from weeks of healing, over Blaine's knuckles. “That is all you need to do, my love. Speak from your heart.”

“Did I do it well?” Blaine asked, hope brimming in eyes glimmering golden like the sun streaming behind his head.

“Yes, my Lord,” Kurt said. “It came out beautifully.”

“Thank you,” Blaine said with an unconceited pride. “Oh, but I…I'm afraid I didn't write any of it down.” Blaine looked at the page in his hand, wrinkled beyond repair and scrawled sloppily on. “I don't think I'll be able to remember it all word for word.”

“It does not matter,” Kurt said, relieving Blaine of the overly-handled page and sticking it in his sketch book. “I heard it, my love, and I will always remember it.”