Page 23 of The Lord Next Door I Wished For
“But you don’t want to.”
“Not particularly. I just want…”
“What?”
Her mind’s eye filled with the image of riding out in the meadows, of taking off without having to answer to anyone… “Freedom,” she whispered.
A long silence fell, and for a moment she wondered if he’d even heard her. Probably better if he hadn’t. It sounded ridiculous even to her. But then—
“Then that is what you shall have.”
She turned to face him. “Pardon?”
He shrugged as if this was some trivial matter they were discussing and not the rest of their lives. “If we marry I will get what I want, and so will you. As mistress of your own home, you’ll have far more freedom than you’ve ever known here.” He wasn’t quite meeting her gaze, but his expression was earnest. “And I have no intention of being some overbearing master of the house.”
“So if I…if I wanted to live independently…” She trailed off. Not even sure what she was asking. She had the terrifying notion that the rest of her life was at stake.
The full weight of what they were discussing, of how it could change everything—it weighed on her shoulders and made her tongue feel like it was stuck to the top of her mouth.
“I’d require an heir, of course,” Luke finally said when she failed to continue. “But there’s no need for us to be beholden to one another beyond…that.”
The “that” hung in the air between them and Jane cursed her fair skin, which had surely turned scarlet.
But despite the painful heat in her cheeks, her mind was reeling. This was more than she’d ever thought to hope for. A life of her own. Out from under her parents’ judgments and expectations. With Luke’s word that she’d have her freedom…
Did she trust him?
She cast a quick look at him and found him watching her closely.
Yes.
The answer came to her before she could even fully register the question. He might have changed in many ways. He might be infuriatingly self-assured and more of a tease than ever, but underneath all that she recognized the kindhearted boy she’d known.
It was still him. It was still Luke beneath the too-handsome face and the too-large body. She wet her lips, the answer already on the tip of her tongue even as her belly fluttered with nerves and her heart raced like a wild stallion.
He shifted as if to stand. “I’ll give you time to consider the—”
“Yes.”
He stilled. “Yes?”
She grinned and a second later he was smiling back at her and her poor heart didn’t stand a chance.
Lud, he truly had grown up to become a handsome gentleman, hadn’t he?
“So you’ll marry me then,” he said.
“So long as we agree to live our own lives after all is said and done,” she clarified.
His expression shifted, but the flicker of emotion she saw in his eyes was there and gone before she could name it, and then his smile grew so cocky she itched to smack him. “Of course. Do we have a deal?”
She slipped her hand into his and felt his fingers wrap around it, engulfing her hand in his firm grip. “We have a deal.”
CHAPTERSEVEN
Getting engaged,Luke soon found out, was a surprisingly dull affair.
Days passed in which he hardly saw his new bride-to-be, aside from the occasional, awkward encounter where they were surrounded by her mother, or both her parents, or the worst run-in, when he was forced to watch Jane smile her way through another interrogation from his grandfather.
