“A Welsh gold mine,” Mercy echoed. “Oh! The barkeep said when he was last seen, he was in the company of a couple of—”
“Welsh toffs,” Thomas said. “I remember. It seems he wasn’t running through my funds then; he was celebrating his own good fortune. He went off with them to inspect it himself, and returned to London with a fortune in Welsh gold. It seems his conscience had got the better of him, for he tracked down Mr.Sumner and spent the day putting things to rights before he came to me to confess.”
“What did you do?” she breathed.
“I let him go,” he said. “I let him go because it would hardly serve us to endure the potential scandal of a public trial, and because I doubt he shall ever be in a position to misuse someone else’s funds again, and because—because he begged formercy.” She felt the slight lift of his shoulder beneath her head. “And because I thought…when all was said I done, I owed him. I owed him for what he’d done, because if he had not done it, I would not be here, now, with you. And at this moment, it feels like a damned miracle.”
Mercy took a shuddering breath, feeling the sting of tears behind her eyes. “Thomas—”
“No, you have got to let me get all of this out first,” he said, and she realized abruptly that he was yet laboring beneath the misapprehension that she intended to refuse him. “I can’t solve every problem. Probably we’ll encounter more than it is possible to expect. But I can promise that I will never desert you. I will stay by your side through it. Whatever we might face, we can do it together.”
A little hiccough slipped up her throat. “Papa says I’ll drive you mad inside of a week.”
Thomas managed a hoarse laugh. “Yes, he has told me that, too.”
A short silence. Mercy nudged him again. “Well?”
“Well, what? It’s true. You will drive me to madness. You do menace me; it’s not in dispute.” He chuckled at her frown. “I want that madness,” he said. “I want it all. The chaos of you. I want to remind you to take your shoes when you leave them on the stairs, and to be certain you’re eating properly, and to stay up late with you when your busy brain won’t let you sleep. I want little Florentia, and—and—”
“Sherborne,” she prompted in a whisper.
“God,” he sighed, letting his head drop to the floor with a thump. “Really? Couldn’t we—” He cut himself off abruptly. “We’ll argue about this later. What I want, Mercy, what I want more than anything else is—is—” He turned onto his side, splayed his hand across her cheek to turn her face to his properly. “I want you,” he said, “to let me be the one with my feet planted on the ground, so that you may stand upon my shoulders with your head in the clouds.”
Mercy made a small sound in the back of her throat, a curious mixture of a sob and a laugh. “I will cause problems for you,” she said, swiping at her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “I know I can be maddening at the best of times, and you will have to accept that I will never fit the mold of the perfect lady. I don’t think I could do it if I tried. I won’t ever make myselflessthan who I am to become more of someone else’s image of who I ought to be.”
“I don’t think you quite understand,” he said. “I love you because of those things, not in spite of them. Every maddening bit of you makes you precisely who you are. I don’t want you to be anyone else, because if you were, you would not bemyMercy. I’m only sorry that I have been so rigid, so inflexible in my opinions, that I ever made you feel you were not enough. You always have been. I was the one who needed to change.”
“I will have responsibilities,” she cautioned. “Papa’s businesses will eventually pass to me, and it’s quite a lot to manage.”
“I’ll help keep you organized,” he promised. “I know quite a lot about estate management. Probably I could parlay what I know into business, if necessary. I think—I think if we work together, we’ll be a force to be reckoned with. The numbers and accounting are well within my areas of expertise, and the creative aspects are within yours. Will you let me help you withit?”
“If you will let me visit the manufactories when I please.”
“If youwill let me accompany you,” he countered, pressing a kiss into her hair. “This is important to you,” he said. “So it is important to me, as well. I am never going to be the man who throws caution to the wind and leaps in headfirst. But I will be the one who loves you beyond reason. And just occasionally, I might surprise you, just a little.” He pressed his forehead to hers and whispered conspiratorially, “I stole a pair of your gloves weeks ago, when you left them in the library. I keep them in the drawer of my nightstand.”
Mercy bit her lower lip against a reckless laugh. “Why?”
“Because I knew they wouldn’t be missed,” he said. “And—I don’t know. Initially I meant to return them, but then they became something of a token, I think. As close to having your hand as I could admit to wanting, before you knocked some sense into me.”
“Thomas, I’m not even certain taking a pair of mislaid gloves qualifies aspettytheft,” she said, though she felt a sliver of regret for the words when his face fell. “And besides,” she added consolingly, rubbing her nose against his, “I don’t expect you to throw caution to the wind. I love you exactly as you are.” Just as he loved her. She needed his caution, his level-headed perspicacity and practicality, especially on those occasions in which she might be overly tempted to leap in before she had adequately assessed some risk. She needed it in exactly the same way he needed her enthusiasm and exuberance, to pull him from his starchiness for a bit of fun occasionally. A sort of balance they could only have found with one another.
His chest rose and fell with a fervent sigh of relief. “So you’re going to marry me, then?”
“I haven’t decided. Let me see the ring first.”
Thomas slapped a hand over his mouth, stifling the laughthat threatened to shake the rafters. “You mercenary wench,” he said, rolling atop her. “I’ll have a yes out of you eventually.”
∞∞∞
He’d had a yes out of her within moments, and the ruby ring he’d placed upon her finger glittered in the lamplight, a hidden fire contained within its depths.
She’d have to return it to him, of course, before he left her this evening. It would be an impossible thing to explain if she arrived to breakfast wearing it. But she was loath to surrender it for even a second, and a wistful sigh slipped from her lungs as she watched the scintillating sparkle of it, the inner flame dancing within the gem.
“Dear God,” Thomas hissed through clenched teeth, his thighs tensing. There was the faintest squeak of the ropes beneath the mattress as his weight shifted where he sat at the edge of her bed.
Mercy pulled a pout as she drew away. “Thomas,” she chided gently, looking up at him from her position kneeling upon the floor before him. “You really will have to be quiet. Papa is still exceedingly vexed.” And would undoubtedly become more so, if Thomas were to be caught within the house he had so recently been ejected from.
And yet he clearly found himself no more capable of keeping himself quiet than she had in similar circumstances. His chest heaved with the frenetic breaths that he sucked in one after another; his fingers kneaded the nape of her neck. “Where the hell did you learnthis?” he asked, in tortured tones as she slid her lips down his throbbing shaft, one slow inch at a time.
