Page 79 of The Miracle of Love
She still stood beside him, her cold hands held close to the warming fire.
Blessed saints, she felt so right and perfect next to him. He was a big man and she was merely of average height for a woman, but it felt to him as though their bodies were made to fit each other. Their hearts, too. Somehow, she filled in all he lacked. “Grace, do you realize we have never spent a night apart since meeting each other?”
She nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. We’ve done it all backwards, haven’t we?”
“Sleeping together first and then getting to know each other? Well, the circumstances are unique.” He studied her, caught by how pretty she looked in the firelight’s reflection.
He also noted fatigue in her eyes, for they had been riding hard all day in the cold and she had to be completely worn out. But nothing seemed to detract from the delicate beauty of her features.
They had kept their cloaks on until he got the warming fires going. He now removed his cloak and then helped with hers, tossing both onto a nearby chair for now. “It will feel odd to be apart from you,” he said. “I won’t like it.”
“It will feel odd for me, too. You are better than a warm blanket. You give off heat like a stoked furnace.” She cast him a surprisingly tender smile.
He laughed. “Glad to be of service.”
As for him, sleeping with her in his arms was heaven.
He did not want to give up his taste of heaven. “Stay with me, Grace.”
She cast him that distraught, you-will-think-me-a-hussy stare, because sleeping with him, even though he had not touched her beyond a few kisses, was still utterly crushing to her spirit.
They had shared a room and then a bed out of necessity, but this did not diminish the embarrassment she must have felt slipping between the sheets with him each night.
He should have understood this.
The fact she enjoyed lying beside him, curling up against him, gave her no solace and only made her feel worse.
“You are right. I’m sorry. I’ll put you in the bedchamber next to mine, assuming it is furnished. Is this what you prefer?”
She sank onto the sofa and buried her face in her hands.
He settled beside her. “Grace, do whatever it is you wish to do. Expressing my preference was not meant to put you in agony. You know I cannot get out of my low brain whenever I am around you. Ignore it. Your comfort is all that matters.”
She surprised him by throwing her arms around him.
“Grace, love.” She was twisting him in knots. He wanted to do right by her, but everything he said seemed to upset her. “Are you not sure? I thought it would be an easy choice for you.”
“What if I wanted to stay with you?”
“It would delight me.”
“But what will you think of me?”
“Because you want to sleep in my bed?” Gad, had he not just mused about her feelings of shame. She was such a sweet thing. “It does not make you wanton. A wanton is someone who flits from bed to bed with a string of partners. You want to stay with me because you love me to the depths of your soul.”
She looked up at him in alarm.
“You cannot hide your feelings. There may as well be a big sign written across your forehead that saysI love Deklan. You do not hide your feelings well at all. Why deny them to yourself?”
She buried her face in her hands again. “Oh, what am I doing? You even said yourself this is all a big mistake.”
He did not know what she was talking about.
He groaned. “Tell you what, if that adjoining bedchamber is properly furnished, then this is where you’ll sleep. But the door will be open between us and you can come into my bed any time you wish. Or ask me to come into yours. Or not. Whatever you decide is fine with me.”
“Truly?”
“Yes, Grace,” he said, now laughing softly. “Well, my body will be wracked in torment because it will miss yours. I think I am always going to feel this way about you. But it is more important that you are comfortable and not caught up in the pain of guilt come morning. You first, Grace. You will always be my first concern.”
