She chanced a glance at him. He didn’t look pleased, precisely. He looked dumbfounded.
She hoped that was a good sign.
“I love you,” she said again. “I think I’ve loved you for a long time, but I wasn’t ready to see it until now. You are perfect to me—you are all I want. You—” She looked around at the little tableau, the bath and champagne and fruit. “You deserve to be cared for. You deserve to have someone give you everything you want and pet you and hold you and make you happy. You said—”
She swallowed, tears clogging her voice. “You said you were afraid you did not have anything to offer me. But Henry, I know it to be the other way around. I don’t—always do the right thing. I try—I try so hard—but I am not—”
Somehow he was in front of her, cupping her face in his hands. “You’re perfect,” he said hoarsely. “You’re perfect, Margo Halifax, just as you are.”
“I’m not,” she said. “You’re blind and silly and I’m—”
And then he pulled her up, pulled her against his chest, and kissed her until every word in her head was gone, and all she knew was the man in her arms.
“I am going to make you so happy,” she said when he let her go.
And he looked happy—he looked dazed and delighted and undone. “You—Margo—are you certain?”
She looked at him, his beloved dark eyes, and threaded her fingers into his hair.
She wanted to go slowly now. She wanted to get this right.
“I’m certain. I’m impossibly certain.” She touched the line of his jaw with her thumb. “You have been my constant, Henry William Mortimer. I had not realized until things started to come apart—with Matilda, with myself—how true that was. You are the one thing upon which I rely. When Matilda left, it was you I thought of, you I trusted. I think I’ve loved you for a very long time. I think I needed to knowmyselfbetter to realize it.” She took a breath. “I think I needed to trust myself a little bit more. In order to believe that I would not hurt you by loving you.”
His hands were warm on her shoulders, warm and steady. “I trust you, Margo.”
She felt her lips curve. “I know you do.”
“Will you—do something for me?”
She swallowed. “Anything.”
“Say it again.”
She cupped his cheek in her hand. His serious mouth tugged up—a slow, dazzled smile. “I love you, Henry Mortimer.”
“Oh Christ,” he said. And then he kissed her.
Some minutes later, Margo lifted her head. Her breath was coming in short hard gasps, her body plastered against his. His hands had made their way up underneath her chemise. “We should take a bath,” she managed. “It’s going to grow cold.”
“Let it,” he said, and then he pushed her down onto the bed, and she pulled him with her.
Much later—it was hard to say how much, as they had no timepiece—Margo lay tangled up with Henry atop the ticked coverlet.
“Are you entirely certain that you were a virgin?” she asked. She was still a trifle out of breath.
Henry laughed into her shoulder and squeezed her rump. “If you count how many times I imagined doing that very thing with you, then no, not even a little bit.”
She rubbed her face against his skin and could have melted into his body.
But no. She couldn’t melt. She had one more thing she wanted to say.
“I thought,” she said slowly, “that we could stay here another night.”
“Mm. Or forever.”
She bit her lip. “Well, I’d—” Why, after everything that had passed between them, was she so nervous? “I’d rather hoped you might want to continue on.”
He lifted his head. “On?”
