Page 114 of A Lady of Means
And when their hands and lives were bound together with an altar cloth as London’s diamond and the captain who stole her heart spoke ancient words in Latin and vows of their own making, Moria couldn’t hold back her tears.Of all the tears she’d cried over loves won and lost, these were the happiest.
Epilogue
Moria trailed a languid,loving finger down the side of Devyn’s face, the map of his pain written in scar tissue.Devyn untied the fastings of her dress.
“I wanted to ask you earlier, but…as you likely haven’t forgotten, it was madness.”
“Ask your question,” she said, kissing the scar that ended at his jaw.
He ran a hand over the dress before laying it gently atop her trunk in the lord’s quarters of Wintersea Manor.Their new home.They’d dismissed the servants for a few days of solitude and enjoyed their first interrupted days and nights together, making plans for the title Devyn had begrudgingly admitted he relished taking responsibility for now that he’d seen her, the woman he loved, in his ancestral home, as the lady of the manor he should have given her long before now.
“Were these willow fronds?On your dress?That you wore to marry the duke?”
Moria wrapped her arms about his bare torso.“I tried.I couldn’t replace them.I couldn’t wear a different dress.”
“Oh, Moria,” he said, dropping the dress and holding her against him, kissing her bare shoulder.“You really are a mess.”
“Andyou!You stormed a church.”
“I did,” he grimaced.
“You stopped my wedding,” she poked him in the chest.
“I told you.You are it for me, you very mean girl.I’d do it again.”
“And I’d choose you in front of all of London again.I’m sorry I forced your hand.”
He pulled her to sit atop his lap at the edge of his bed.“How sorry?”
One hand at his chest, she pushed him backward on their bed.“I promised I’d get on my knees for you.”
* * *
Some time later,when they’d both sated their lust and expended all their energy christening what was to be the home they’d share and rebuild together, she lay on his chest in the portrait gallery.
“I wrote to you,” she said, sharing his air, supplying it.He pulled the tapestry covering them up higher to shield them from a draft.
“I know, I wrote you back,” he said.One hand squeezed her hip and bringing her closer.
“No,” she said, eyes catching on his mouth.It was a testament to what a good mouth it was that with a face like that, it still caught your eyes.“I mean, when you were…gone…I still wrote you letters.”
Devyn made a noise in the back of his throat.She’d drunk down all of his sounds like the sweetest wine, but this was the painful kind.Made her feel a little wobbly and not in a good way.
“You left them for me, but I didn’t have time to read them.I was too busy stopping your wedding.What did you say?‘That was very unchivalrous of you to go and die when you explicitly told me that you wouldn’t?’”
Moria bit her lip to hold back a smile.He could always pull those out of her.
“No.Sometimes I felt a little angry, but mostly just…pain.Like…there was some shard of glass in my shoe and every step made me bleed but I couldn’t not walk, and I couldn’t take it out because to never think of you at all like you’d never been, it hurt worse.”She sniffed and looked away.
Devyn pulled her close with both hands on her hips and swept her into a kiss.She’d imagined him kissing her like that, while she’d written to him and missed him and conjured the feeling of him on her body.Her imaginings hadn’t been near potent enough.
“I love you,” he whispered into the space between them, trailing her hair out of her face and behind her ears.“Can I read your letters, my lady?”
“I think I’ll save them for special occasions.”
“This isn't a special occasion enough for you?We are married, on our honeymoon, and you are a countess now.”
Moria grimaced.“I was supposed to be a duchess though, but now I’ll have to defer to my sisters.”
