Page 96 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
The coin landed once more, atop the emerald counterpane stretched over them, its silver surface gleaming. “Oh,” she said. “There it is at last. What doyouwant, Luke?”
He lifted his head, confused, until she gave a tiny jerk of her head to the coin there between them, which was face down. Facedown? It couldn’t be.
Lizzie’s fingers stroked through his hair in precisely the way she had long learned he liked. “You know,” she said softly, “no one ever thinks to check the other side of a coin.”Hecertainly hadn’t. Because he had known what the outcome would be—or what he had thought it would be. “The trick coin is in my nightstand. I’ve decided I don’t need it any longer.” Her head settled upon his shoulder, eyes earnest, dark and brimming with hope. “What do you want, Luke?” she repeated.
“I want you,” he said, overwhelmed by the generosity of the gesture. “I only want you, Lizzie. I want you to love me.” His fingers trembled as he raked them through her hair, cupped her chin to turn her face to his.
“I do love you,” she said, the words muffled by the press of his mouth to hers. “I do love you, Luke.”
“And I want to raise your terribly obnoxious siblings, and be a part of your family. I want to be your husband, with all that it entails. I want to scandalize theTonwith it. I want to accompany you to your social events, and sleep with you every night—”
“Nowwho’s greedy?” she laughed, a dimple appearing in her cheek with it.
“Yes.” Hewasgreedy, and unashamed of it. “I want everything.”
“All right.” A rustle of the covers, and then she had slung her leg over both of his, wiggling to sit up, bracing her hands upon his chest. “You can have everything. I want that, too.” In the sudden flurry of motion, the coin went flying off the bed, landing with a pronouncedthunksomewhere upon the floor.
She didn’t need it any longer. But it didn’t matter—he would give her whatever she asked for anyway. And by the brilliance of her smile, he suspected she knew that well enough.
“I love you,” she said again, bending to brush her lips across his. “And you don’t need a wager to win it. It simplyis. All I want from you in return is yours.”
“You are the other half of my heart.” Everything he had always wanted, everything he had surrendered all hope of winning. “You saved my life the day you shot me. Ihadto love you for it.” The broken, shriveled thing his heart had become had begun to revive itself right here in Hatfield. It had belonged to her long before he had been willing to admit to it, but the fear that had driven him had been eradicated by the certainty that it would remain safely held within her small hands.
His lonely life as he had once known it was over; a thing of the past. It seemed anathema to him now, that coldness which had permeated every aspect of him, and which had nearly cost him the dearest thing in all the world.
“There’s going to be more Talbots, you know,” Lizzie said, stretching herself out to notch her head beneath his chin, and the warm weight of her body curled into him. “Imogen’s baby is not so far from arriving. Georgie will marry someday, and Jo. Your life will never be the same.”
His fingers sifted gently through the soft, dark locks of her hair, coming to rest upon the silky smooth skin of her back. “Do you know,” he said, “I think that sounds perfect.”
Epilogue
London, England
June, 1834
You’re certain,” Luke said, as he smoothed the folds of his cravat, which had become unforgivably rumpled, “that this is what you want?”
“It is,” Jo said, bending to retrieve an orange blossom that had fallen free of the crown of them wreathing her hair. “Not that you haven’t asked fifteen times already just this morning—”
“Just to be certain,” Luke interjected. You could have had a duke, you know. I also received offers from two earls, a marquess, and a viscount.” Not that any of them had been good enough for her anyway—but at least they would have kept her in England.
But no—Jo had decided that only a man who was her intellectual equal would do. She’d settled upon a man who was a fellow of the Royal Society of London, an antiquarian of some renown. A man who was soon to take her away from England’s shores altogether.
“I thought youlikedLawrence,” Jo said.
“Up to a point,” Luke grumbled. In fact, he had held the man in rather high regard. Jo had been a bit of an oddity on the marriage mart, but she had grown into a beautiful woman, which had won her no small amount of attention. But it had only been Mr. Lawrence Dawson—a meremister!—who had seen her for the gem she was. He had courted her with science lectures and mathematics and astronomy, but Luke thought the thing that had clinched it had been his gift of a recently-published dictionary of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Along with his promise that wherever his research took him, there too would go Jo. Though ladies were not permitted to join the Royal Society as fellows, as Luke understood it, Jo had contributed a great deal to Mr. Dawson’s publications—and would continue to do so into the future.
That research—to which Luke had contributed a significant amount of money, unknowing at the time for which purpose it would be used—would send him on an expedition in only a week’s time. And today she would marry the blasted man who would take her away from England with him.
“It’s just that I don’t want you to go,” he said sullenly, cramming his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “I’ll miss you. We’ll all miss you.”
“I have to go—I’m ever so much better at translation than is Lawrence. That’s thanks to you, you know, Luke. Nobody else would have humored my love of languages like you.”
“Yes, well, hindsight is a fine thing.” That bright, sparkling laugh—the echo of her sister’s—warmed him.
“You’ll hardly have time to miss me,” she said, her eyes glinting with mirth. “You have Lizzie and the children—allof the children.”
