She didn’t smile.“Your Grace.”
He crossed to the center of the room, each step measured and slow.He had rehearsed a speech—several, in fact—but the moment he met her eyes, every version vanished.He was left with nothing but the truth, and the truth was a knife.
He bowed, which felt silly but necessary.“I owe you an apology.For last night.For everything.I behaved disgracefully.”He hated the weakness in his voice.
Chrissy blinked.“I was there too.”
He pressed on, determined to confess every sin.“I’ve made a mess of things, and I’m sorry for it.If I could undo the damage?—”
She cut him off, voice steady.“You can’t.No one can.”
He nodded, once.“Then I suppose all that remains is for me to do my duty and ask you—” He stopped, the words tangling.“You know why I’m here.”
A faint flush crept up her cheeks, but she didn’t look away.“I do.”
He hated how clinical it sounded, how much it resembled a business transaction instead of a proposal of marriage.He forced his words through a throat gone tight.“I want you to know that you have a choice.I will do whatever you ask.Even if it means stepping aside.”
Her eyes widened, incredulous.“Is that what you want?”
He was silent.Then, finally, “I don’t know what I want.That is—I do know.But I have no right to want it.”He laughed, short and bitter.“God, this is not how I imagined this.”
Chrissy shifted her weight, the skirt of her gown whispering against the settee.“How did you imagine it?”
He looked at her, really looked, and the rest of the world collapsed.There was only the girl in blue, and the gulf between what he deserved and what he hoped for.
He inhaled, slow and deliberate, then started again.
“Forget all that for a moment,” he said, and crossed the last few steps to stand in front of her.He reached for her hands, hesitated, then took them gently in his.Her fingers were cold, but the contact steadied him.
“I was wrong.I’ve always thought of you as—” He searched for the word.“Dazzling.Unreachable.But the other night when I came to supper, something changed.You smiled at me, and it felt like the first real thing I’d seen in years.I’ve spent so much of my life pretending not to need anything, and then you—” He broke off, shaking his head.“You make it impossible not to need.”
Chrissy’s breath caught, just audible.
“I don’t know what love is supposed to feel like,” Nomansland admitted, voice low.“But I know I will never be happy again unless I can spend the rest of my life seeing you laugh.I want to learn all of it—what makes you angry, what makes you happy, what makes you blush.I want to be the man who deserves you, even if it takes me the rest of my days.”
The silence was thick and holy.
“Will you marry me?”he asked.
Chrissy’s eyes filled, and the tears trembled there, bright as gems.She nodded, then found her voice.“Yes,” she whispered, then louder.“Yes.Of course I will.I love you, Nomansland.”
He pulled her in, and the first kiss was careful, cautious, a benediction.But she reached up, pressed her palm to his cheek, and the caution vanished.The second kiss was full and hungry and, finally, perfect.
He didn’t care about the bruise or the servants or the fact that, at that moment, Abingdon was probably listening from behind a hidden door with a loaded pistol in his coat.All he cared about was the girl in his arms and the certainty, at last, that he would never let her go.
They broke apart only when the clock on the mantel struck the half hour, the sound impossibly loud in the small room.
Chrissy smiled, and the world righted itself.“We’ll have to tell the others.”
Nomansland grinned, reckless.“Let them wonder a but longer.”
He kissed her again, just to be sure.
They found the settee by instinct, not design—two bodies drawn together by the magnetism of relief and hard-won happiness.It was big enough for two, but neither Nomansland nor Chrissy seemed inclined to observe the conventional boundaries of personal space.She perched at the very edge, hands fidgeting in her lap, while he sat close enough that the heat of her was its own private sun.
She couldn’t stop grinning.It was a ridiculous, ear-to-ear thing, and Nomansland found himself mirroring it without effort.He watched her, drinking in every flush and dimple, wondering if it was possible to become drunk on the sight of a person.
Chrissy spoke first, voice low and conspiratorial.“If you’re going to be my husband, you’ll have to teach me all the scandalous things in those letters.”
