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Perhaps she should have known it was inevitable. Jo always thought herself so smart, so forward-thinking, quite clever enough for college, if only they would have a woman go there. How was it then that, somehow, she was unaware of Teddy’s true feelings until such time as they overtook him and almost swept her along in the rush?
He returned from college the conquering graduate and was hailed as such by his dutiful friend who had missed him so. Oh, there had been days and weeks enough when Jo was sure she should go completely out of her mind from missing him, as well as envying him his chances in life. Finally, to have him home, to be allowed to welcome him into her life and into her arms, the places where he most truly belonged. What dreadful luck then that he had chosen this great occasion to speak freely of his feelings, never once mentioned before. Perhaps that was unfair, Jo thought, to make believe that she never for a moment considered a future as Mrs Theodore Laurence. She would be a liar to say the idea never once entered her head, but that was childish folly, she had been sure of it, and now that they were grown, it must be long forgotten. Not so for Teddy, it would seem.
“When I imagine myself in that life,” he told her of his own future, “I can think of only one thing that would make me happy.”
The words ought to have been enough, but it was rather more the look upon his face when he spoke them. No man had ever looked at Jo that way before, but extensive reading and observation of others told her all she needed to know of such an expression. That and careful study over years enough of Teddy’s dear face and the great myriad of emotions that could play upon his fine features.
“Oh, no,” she said at once, with a shaking of her head to accompany it. “Teddy, don't. No, wait, Teddy.”
Her insistence was in vain, and though she tried to make her struggle real, it was difficult to maintain any kind of pretense when he pulled her into his arms and covered her lips with his own. Had she not wondered more than a handful of times on what it would be like? What she might feel, how she might swoon as Amy always spoke of in romantic circumstances, the way she might just allow herself to give in, if only for a moment?
What a moment it was, Jo would not deny, when Teddy finally kissed her as any man in love might kiss a woman. It was as close to flying as she had ever known, and yet, there was so much more to consider than this. Finding her good sense and hanging onto it for all she as worth, Jo extracted herself from Teddy’s grasp, forced herself away from him.
“We have to talk about this reasonably,” she insisted, breathless and overwhelmed, but determined as ever, knowing that she had to be, for both their sakes.
“I have loved you since the moment I clapped eyes on you,” Teddy insisted. “What could be more reasonable than to marry you?”
“We’d kill each other,” came her quick and easy retort, for she knew in all likelihood it was true. “Neither of us can keep our temper.”
“I can,” he insisted. “Unless provoked.”
“We’re both stupidly stubborn, especially you. We’d only quarrel.”
“I wouldn’t!”
“You can't even propose without quarrelling.”
At that he smiled, seeing the truth of it, as she knew he must. Friends they had always been, and she prayed always would be too, but to marry? Jo was sure she could never. If she were to try to enter in to such an arrangement, there would be no better man than her dearest Teddy, but all that she told him was also perfectly true. They would destroy each other in days and all would be lost. Jo March was not built for marriage, she knew that more than she knew anything else.
“Dear Jo,” he said then, taking her face in his hands before she could brook any further argument. “I swear I’ll be a saint. I'll let you win every argument. I’ll take care of you and your family. I'll give you every luxury you’ve ever been denied. You won't have to write, unless you want to,” he promised her, and she could not doubt him for a moment. “Grandfather wants me to learn the business in England. Can’t you see us bashing around London?”
“London?” Jo gasped at the very idea. “Oh, Teddy, I’m not fashionable enough for London. You need someone who’s elegant and refined.”
“I want you,” he insisted, every shade of love so very evident in his eyes for her.
It would have been so easy to accept. Jo could feel the simple answer that he wanted right there in her throat just begging to be spoken, but she could not. She could neither condemn herself nor Teddy to such a fate. She wanted too much from life to give in. She loved him too much to pledge her troth and never be able to be what he deserved in a wife.
“Teddy, please don’t ask me,” she begged of him, even as her eyes filled with tears. “You don’t know how tempting an offer it is, how much I should love to let myself... but I can’t do it,” she told him helplessly. “I have such affection for you, I care for you with all of my heart. You’re my dearest friend and, of course, I love you. I just... I can’t be a wife.”
Jo so wished he could understand. In fact, she believed that somewhere deep inside he must, for he knew her best of anyone in her life, including all her dear sisters and sweet Marmee too. Teddy could see into her soul, she had always been sure of that, and so, in that moment, had only to meet her gaze to realise that all she said was true.
Perhaps he did, though all his usual understanding was set to drown beneath the pain she had caused him. Jo regretted that, regretted that she had been forced to cause such hurt to one she loved so much, but she had no choice.
Watching Teddy walk away from her then had almost broken her heart in two, but Jo knew it was no more than she deserved, for had she not caused the same in him with her refusal, however well-intentioned?
She would think of it many times in the days, weeks, and months that followed. At night, in dreams, she replayed the scene of Teddy asking for her hand and wake up tearful at the memory of his pain, or sometimes from experiencing an altered scene when her answer were different. The happiness she could create in her imagination alone could sometimes drive her to tears much faster than thoughts of reality.
It would be several months before she realised quite what a fool she had been. An occasion in New York, after she made her first and greatest friend at the boarding house.
Dr Friedrich Bhaer was a fine man, a professor from Berlin, Germany, who had quickly realised that Jo was a writer, if only by the ink stains on her fingers. In his rooms, they sat down to coffee and talked of where they each came from. He asked her if she missed her family in Concord and without pause she told him that she did, very much.
“My sisters especially,” she said, lifting her cup from the saucer to her lips. “And Laurie.”
“She is your sister?”
“No, no,” Jo explained, trying not to laugh at the mistake. “He’s... well, I suppose you would say he was my best friend, and unfortunately, ‘was’ would be more accurate than ‘is’, at this moment,” she realised aloud, gaze shifting to the carpet as the usual feelings of guilt, confusion, and regret flowed over her. “I’m afraid that the relationship we formed when we were young grew complicated as we aged. Now, I worry that what we had might be lost and...” she trailed off, as her eyes returned to her friend’s face and she saw the expression he wore. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she apologised, laughing nervously. “I’m sure this is nothing that you wish to hear.”
“It is of no matter to me.” Friedrich shook his head. “It seems you need to share your feelings with someone. I have two ears to hear by and a head I might nod sympathetically, as needed,” he said with a kind smile. “Go on, if you would like,” he urged her.
Jo was not entirely certain what more she could say. Her own feelings where Teddy was concerned were so confusing to her, or perhaps the problem was more the clarity she gained as each new day passed.
“I fear I have caused irreparable damage to a person I care for so much,” she confessed at last, forced to swallow very hard before she could go on, her eyes staring down into her coffee cup even then. “When Laurie proposed, I... I couldn’t imagine the future he wanted for us. How I would fit into it, what our lives would be. Now, I think about being without him, finding my own path but never being able to share my success and failures with the one person that I...”
“That you love most of all people,” Friedrich finished for her.
Her eyes shot up to meet his own, and though, at first, she was surprised by what he had said, it took all of a moment to realise he was right. Of course, he was perfectly right, and Jo should always have known it to be the case.
“This Laurie is a very lucky man to hold the heart of one so special,” her new friend told her with a smile. “I hope you get a chance to mend what may be damaged with him.”
“Oh, so do I,” Jo declared than, meaning every word so very truly. “So do I.”
Perhaps he should have known it was inevitable. Laurie always thought himself so smart, so forward-thinking, quite clever enough for anything he wished to do, if only he were given the chance to prove it. How was it then that, somehow, he was unaware of his own true feelings, until such time as one so young and seemingly naive told him of them?
He had gone to Europe in search of something. Solace, he supposed, after Jo refused him and all but broke his heart. It had seemed so easy to pretend he could soldier on without her, that his love for her was so fleeting as to be simply pushed aside and forgotten. As if such a thing were possible.
To be with any of the dear March sisters again should have been balm to his wounded heart, and so, he pretended that it must be. Amy’s presence was comforting, in its way, and Laurie threw himself at her as whole-heartedly as any man could, when that heart was still in pieces, courtesy of another. Perhaps he ought to have realised sooner that any of the Marches could have seen through the charade, even if he had trouble himself.
“I find you changed,” Amy told him scornfully. “In fact, I despise you. You laze about, spending your family’s money and courting women. You aren’t serious about music.”
“My compositions are like your paintings,” he snapped back without pause. “Mediocre copies of another man’s genius.”
“Then why don’t you go to your grandfather in London and make yourself useful?”
“I should,” he agreed, even as he reached for her hand and took hold. “Amy, why don’t you reform me?”
Without a second thought for his feelings, she snatched her hand away and turned her head to look elsewhere. “I’ve someone more practical in mind.”
“You do not love Fred Vaughan,” he insisted, sure it must be true.
Amy could speak of Freddy’s every good quality, but they both knew the majority of her interested in him pertained to his £40,000 a year. Of course, she did not deny it, even when presented with the facts. With her head held high she reminded Laurie without shame that he must have always known she would not marry a pauper, that she expected a proposal from Freddy any day now.
“You’ll regret it,” he told her, urging her to return her full attention to him. “I’ll regret it. I’m reminded of a promise. Didn't I say I would kiss you before you die?”
It was a clumsy attempt at seduction, if that was even what it was truly supposed to be. Laurie wondered at his own strategy or goal immediately the words were spoken. A promise made to a child by way of comforting her, what a foolish thing to speak of in making proposals to a young lady, for Amy had certainly grown up to be such now. A lady that would accept nothing but what she believed she deserved, and that was more than the overtures of a man who had always been devoted to another.
“Do you hear from Jo?” she asked then, almost as if she had read the very thoughts from Laurie’s own mind. “She has befriended a German professor.”
The barb that pierced his heart at being reminded of such things made Laurie feel vicious.
“Yes, well, no doubt he’s showing her the ways of the world,” he said nastily, immediately regretting such words and even the urge to have spoken them.
When he opened his eyes, after wincing at his own stupidity, he found Amy staring at him with nothing but disappointment in her eyes.
“I do not wish to be courted by someone who is still in love with my sister,” she said, more frustrated and tired of his foolishness, he suspected, than truly angry with him. “Laurie, please, do not try to deny your feelings for Jo. I have known of them since I was a child, and I certainly know they did not cease to exist just because she spurned you on your first proposal.”
Even to hear it spoken of wounded him still. Laurie turned away and looked to the sky in the hopes of keeping himself from saying anything else regrettable, and from allowing himself to show such emotions ill befitting a young man in the company of a young lady. He was reminded that they were so much more than that when he felt Amy’s hand at his elbow and turned back to see her soft eyes and softer smile.
“I will not pretend you have been quite as a brother to us all,” she said gently. “We each of us had our designs on you over time, of course, but Laurie, we all knew you were always for Jo and she for you. I was not as surprised as some might have been when she refused you, only because I know my sister’s independence of mind and spirit to be stronger than anything, even the love she has for those closest to her. It has clouded her vision for now, but in time, Laurie, she will see what she has done. What she has lost... or may have lost,” she amended, her smile widening. “Do not try so hard to throw yourself away on another, for just as you and I have always known I would never marry a pauper, we have also always known that you should be part of the March family and just exactly how you were to become one of us.”
She was spoken of as the artistic one in the family, amongst other things, but in that moment, Laurie was reminded that Amy was much more astute than some would believe. She saw what others did not, she knew and acknowledged what the rest of them tried too hard to deny.
Laurie was indebted to her for being so frank where someone else may not have been. He told her as much in the note he left before travelling back to England. He declared he had gone to make himself worthy of the March family, to which he so longed to be forever tied. To make himself all that Jo deserved for him to be, in the hopes of her one day realising their futures ought to be entwined.
It might all have gone according to plan, if the worst hadn’t happened. To receive communication from Jo after so long made his heart soar, but to read its contents brought him crashing back to earth in the cruellest of ways.
‘Dearest Laurie. You may not have heard our sad news of Beth. Meg has entered her confinement and poor Amy must stay in Vevey with Aunt March. This is far too great a sorrow to bear alone. Please come home to us, Teddy dear. Your faithful, Jo.’
Within the hour, his travel arrangements were made. It was the longest journey of his life as he fought to return to the side of his beloved, knowing even then that, for all that Amy had said, there was every chance of his being nothing more to her than a friend and source of comfort.
“So be it then,” Laurie told himself as he travelled on, urging first the ship and then the horses that drew the carriage to gather all the speed they could, for his dear Jo needed him.
To finally see her again, to gather her in his arms and have her cling to him, telling him over and over of how she had missed him so. He told her the same, offered her comfort in the face of her loss, shared the pain of Beth’s passing, but still revelled in being back where he belonged at last. In the home of the March family, in the embrace of his dearest one.
“Oh, what fools we have been, Teddy,” she told him, not half an hour later as they sat squeezed into the comfy chair together, their arms about each other yet. “What a fool I have been.”
“Hush now,” he insisted softly, his hand smoothing her hair. “We make the best of what life throws at us, Jo, and if we stumble here and there, it’s to be expected. Beth would tell you so, wouldn’t she?”
A painful burst of laughter, caught halfway between a giggle and a sob, escaped her then.
“She would. She did,” Jo recalled, raising her head to look at him. “Oh, Teddy. It is so wonderful to have you home again.”
“It is as wonderful for me, I promise you, to hear you call me Teddy again,” he assured her, his hand at her cheek.
“To think that you never really had to go away,” she said sadly, “or that I might at least have been wherever you were all this time...”
“And then, when your sisters needed you so very much, you would’ve been too far from them,” he told her, knowing it was true. “I should have known better, Jo, than to be so selfish. My feelings were real then, as they are now, but I’m afraid my timing was perfectly shocking.”
He wondered if she truly understood the meaning of his words. Clever as she was, she ought to, but after everything that had happened in the past months, with the strain of all she had been through, he would excuse her if she did not. His precious, darling Jo whom he had loved so long, who was even more beautiful to his eyes now than she had ever been. If she only knew.
“I think about it sometimes,” she admitted softly, meeting his eyes. “More often than I should, probably. I can’t stand knowing how I hurt you when I refused your proposal, and perhaps even more than that, I couldn’t bear the thought of never being given a second chance.”
If she was asking for him to try again, Laurie would wish her to know he needed no urging. He had only held off for today because, with the circumstances being what they were, it felt improper to use her grief against her. Still, if Jo was going to openly ask him to repeat his offer, he had no qualms about doing so.
“Jo, you know my feelings have not changed,” he told her easily. “You must know. I’m sure I have made it more than plain. I offered you my hand and my heart, and though you would not take either, the proposal still remains the same. I know you told me you could never be a wife, but dearest Jo, if I were to be the husband, could it be so bad? You would be a Laurence in name, that cannot be altered, but you know that I have always been, and will always be, a March in my heart,” he declared, his hand at his chest to prove the pledge was true.
The tears in her eyes were painfully familiar, the expression too similar to what it had been the last time, when he offered and she refused. Laurie had to believe this occasion was different. Had she not been the one wishing for an encore? Had he not just given her exactly what she wanted, just as he had always tried to do, and always would until the day he died, if only she would allow him?
“Oh, Teddy,” she said then, shaking her head. “If we do not marry each other, surely the only result will be two other poor wretches being made miserable by each of us.”
The surprise of her reply and its ridiculous nature made him laugh out loud, but it didn’t matter, for he knew her meaning. There could only be one way to take such an answer, surely, and yet, he had to be sure.
“You will marry me, Jo?”
“Yes, Teddy. With all my heart, I will marry you,” she declared with a smile.
It was impossible not to kiss her in such a moment, and so he did, without pause. He held her tightly and promised her everything, his hand, his heart, his life, for he would love her endlessly and make her exquisitely happy.
“We shall have such adventures, won’t we, Teddy?” she asked him in earnest. “I could not bear to be only husband and wife when we could be so much more, when the world has so much to offer us.”
“We shall be whatever we wish to be, you and I,” he promised her. “Just so long as we are together, as we were always supposed to be.”
Jo’s smile, that lit up the room as well as his heart in that moment, was all the confirmation that Laurie needed of their future happiness.