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She could almost see it there, his heart upon his sleeve. She would not have called it love, what passion lived within him. But hate and obsession both? Those she could use. Was she not owed her pound of flesh from him? He had taken his already, and so much more than that. The strength that coursed through her was lent to her from all those wicked women who had come before her: Delilah, Jezebel, Eve. She found them, all, within her as she cast aside the cloth and rose to her feet.
“I love you,” he said. “I have always loved you. And that is yours without expectation or obligation. Even if you don’t want it. Even if you throw me away.” His fingers touched her cheek, a tentative, gentle brush, his thumb rubbing away the tracks of salt her tears had left behind. “I love you,” he said again. “I would give everything I own just to see you happy. And I won’t ever expect you to love me in return. Just let me love you. Because I—I could spent the next fifty years of my life paying for my transgressions in whichever way you deem appropriate, and still I would be happier than I
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“I will make you miserable if you stay,” she said, though it hadn’t come out sounding as much of a threat as she would have hoped. “I will give you back every bit of pain you gave to me and more again.” “That’s fair. And just.” “I will have you working until your back breaks in service of me,” she said, and she tried desperately for the ferocity she had possessed only days ago that had somehow deserted her. There was a wealth of disorder in her mind; every ugly thing that she had buried down deep coming up again and out and filling her with a wretched jumble of conflicted emotions. “I’ll
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I think you must know, even if you cannot yet acknowledge it even to yourself, that the only way Marcus would leave you is if you asked it of him. Because you could be as miserable, as wretched, as demanding and contrary as it pleases you to be—and still, he would be happy just to be near you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I won’t marry you to revenge myself upon your father.” She tucked her head against his shoulder, breathed in the clean scent of his shaving soap, and felt the last icy shards that had pierced her heart so many years ago melt away to nothing. “But I will marry you because I love you.” Marcus shuddered with relief, his arms holding her so tightly for a moment that she thought the air might be wrenched from her lungs. “You can’t take it back,” he said fiercely, and his lips caught at hers in a desperate kiss. “I won’t,” she said, turning her face to his. They
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Tomorrow morning,” he said. “We are leaving for London.” “London?” Her stomach clenched at the thought. “Why?” “Because I am going to do what I ought to have done years ago,” he said, tucking her head beneath his chin. “Marry you before you can come to your senses.”
Tell them what?” Giles asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion, that icy blue that could ferret out a secret at twenty paces. “Oh, lord—you’re breeding, aren’t you. I thought you had gotten a bit thick about the waist.” “Rude!” Lydia gasped, pummeling Giles in the shoulder, and he laughed as he fended off her weak attempt at assault. “And to think we meant to ask you to be Godfather!” “Godfather!” he said. “To your wretched little bratling?” He dodged another feeble blow. “Darling, I’d be delighted.”
