Page 15 of The Miracle of Love
She sighed again. “My mother and siblings might resent me for not taking this obviously easy way out of our troubles. But it would not be easier for me. I am heartsick that love may be out of my reach now. However, I cannot give up hope. I want to find love. Even if that joy is never to be. I cannot give up yet. Perhaps I will come around in time and settle for less. I would just like something more than…more than a big, empty nothing.”
He needed to read this book on love his brother had dumped atop his bureau.
Not that he wanted to be married. But…damnit…neither did he want Grace to reject him. Perhaps he was being peevish about it, but Grace was wrong.
He would make her a good husband.
She continued to chatter. “Let’s concentrate on finding that crown and then go on with our separate lives. Do you think the Duke of Wooton might go easier on my mother and siblings if you did find it with my help? We don’t need much. Perhaps a pleasant cottage in the countryside or by the sea. And a small allowance, enough for us to meet our basic needs.”
How was he ever going to fall asleep now?
The girl had him completely in a roil.
He wanted to be angry with her for rejecting him—not that he had proposed to her—and yet he was proud of her for holding true to her convictions. Her decision was foolish and yet he did not think of her as foolish at all. If anything, he found her refreshing and endearing. Grace was the sort of girl who would take her marriage vows seriously.
It frustrated him to no end.
He did not know why it should.
He growled softly. “So, you would choose to live out your days as a struggling spinster rather than marry me?”
“Why are we still having this conversation? Have you decided to propose to me?”
“No, I am merely trying to figure you out.”
“There is nothing complicated about me. You know my feelings on the matter.” Grace blew out the candle and buried herself under the covers.
Deklan lay awake in the darkness, his eyes on her until the slivers of moonlight no longer illuminated her slender body.
The blasted girl was crying again and was lost in that big bed.
He wanted to climb in beside her and comfort her.
Lord, he ached to put his arms around her, swallow her up in his embrace.
Well, he wanted to do more than merely hold her. He would start with removing that fortress of a nightgown off her exquisite body.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity but could not have been more than twenty minutes, he heard her soft breaths.
Knowing she was safely asleep, he drifted off as well.
Morning came too soon.
The sun was not very strong in the winter except in the early hours immediately after dawn. The blasted golden orb now shone with an intense glare right in his eyes. Grace must have drawn aside the curtains.
She was that sunny sort of girl who probably woke up smiling and chirpy most mornings. Well, she might have done so in her happier days.
“It figures,” he grumbled, blinking against the impossibly bright light as he sat up and stretched his aching muscles.
He slowly rolled to his feet.
Between the cold night air, the hard floor, and his tension in knowing Grace’s bed was within arm’s reach of him and he could not touch her, he was not about to greet the day in jolly humor.
Not that he was ever jolly.
“Good morning, Deklan,” Grace said, her voice rippling through him like a soothing wave.
He turned, surprised to find her already washed and dressed.
