“Oh Christ,” he groaned against her lips. “Oh fuck. Lydia.”
And then he was kissing her, frantic and hungry and probably too rough for the state of his bruises. She gasped, and he made a desperate sound into her open mouth, kissing her harder, pulling her tighter. His hands were everywhere—her hair, her back, beneath the leg she’d somehow wrapped around him.
He picked her up and carried her until her back pressed against the wainscoted wall. A small and breathless laugh escaped her, and he pressed his forehead against hers. “I love that sound. I was so afraid I would never hear it again.”
She let his letters slip to the carpet and then she wound her fingers into his hair. “I am still vexed with you, you know.” She squeezed her legs around his waist to emphasize the gravity of her words, and he groaned—a different sound this time, rougher, raspier—and rocked against her.
Her head grew slightly muddled. Perhaps she had chosen the wrong way to underscore her point.
“I know,” he muttered, his mouth finding her neck. “I’m glad. Be angry with me. I should like to spend the next decade making atonement.” He took her earlobe between his teeth and bit down. She whimpered, and his hands tightened around her hips, holding her in place while he sucked and nibbled at her skin.
She tipped her head to the side and let him.
“What do you want?” he murmured. “What can I give to you, my love? I have about a hundred rambling letters. I have a castle,if you’d like it, though I fear it has numerous windows that need replacing and very little furniture. I have sixteen zebras.” His voice was lower on the next words, almost inaudible, but she heard him anyway. “I have a family who loves you a great deal.”
She reached up and caught his face in her palms, moving him back so that she could look into his eyes. “I regret to inform you, Arthur Baird, that I do not want for anything except”—her voice caught at the sight of him, so hopeful, so precious to her—“except the man I love. He’s been notably absent of late.”
“Never again,” he vowed, and then he bent his head and brought his mouth back to hers.
Some minutes passed, in which Lydia was sensible of very little beyond Arthur and his hands and his whispers ofHush, my love,and thenThe hell with it, let your brothers kill me, I’ll die jubilant.
She was still breathless and panting when he lifted his head. “Lydia, will you—” He broke off. His eyes were blue with yearning, gold with devotion, green with hope.
“Ask,” she said. “Arthur. You can ask me anything.”
His thumb made small distracting circles against her waist. “Will you say it again?”
Her lips curved up as she looked at him. Love wasn’t a cautiously unfurling petal in her chest this time, but a garden, a profusion of glorious tangled blossoms.
“Which part?” she asked.
“Any of it. All of it.”
“I want you,” she said. “I choose you. I love you without end, without hesitation, and I will say it to you every day for the rest of our lives, if you’d like me to.”
“Oh God,” he said hoarsely, “I should like that very much.”
“I will, then,” she said. “I promise.”
Chapter 30
Today is the twenty-second of November in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and eighteen. Yesterday in front of several witnesses, I vowed to love you reverently, discreetly, advisedly, and soberly. And this morning, for you alone, I vow this: I will love you indiscreetly and unadvisedly, fearlessly and without reservation, with all my body and all my heart, today and tomorrow and until the end of time.
—from the papers of the Countess of Strathrannoch, left upon her husband’s pillow
Arthur’s mouth was warm against Lydia’s ear, a soft and humid caress. “Close your eyes.”
“I—” Her voice was a squeak. She tried to modulate it. “I cannot!”
“Aye, you can.” His arm slipped steadily around her waist. “Close your eyes, love of mine.”
His hand was large and solid on her hip, and she found herself rather mesmerized by the sight. “I—I can’t do it.”
He hummed into her ear, a deep vibration that was almost alaugh. “I could blindfold you. Would you like that, Lady Strathrannoch?”
“I—I—” Oh, she’d gone shivery all over, heat rising to her skin. He could—she thought she might—
She blinked rather rapidly, recalling herself, then whirled and stuck her finger into his chest. “No! We are in the middle of a public street, and the road is made of stones that I suspect have lain here since the fifteenth century. I will not close my eyes and stumble about like I’ve spent the morning tippling—”
