Page 58 of A Lady of Means
Devyn had no words to answer this question.He took the finger bearing his mother’s ring and held it to his lips.He kissed her finger, the words coming to him in a rush.
“I want you every day, in every way that you will have a humble soldier like me.I’m yours, my lady, and I promise to make you know it every day of our lives.”
The mid-afternoon sun limning Moria’s childhood home, visible through the carriage window, caught their attention.The carriage slowed to a stop in the front drive.Brierley, the butler who didn’t leave Brookevale Park, rushed out to meet them flanked by other house staff.
“Ready to scandalize the servants?”she asked, brows dancing.
His laugh was ready and filled his chest.“I’m in for a lifetime of scandals with you aren’t I, my lady?”
She didn’t say it, but it was in her eyes.Later, he’d question if it was the golden hour; but at that moment, he knew.The radiant spark in her glorious eyes, it was one word, a feeling that started with an “L,” and didn’t ever end.
ChapterTwenty-Five
When the sunrose on an early autumn day, Moria was already awake.She sat on a window seat and watched every single color painted across the sky, crying when shades of orange turned to pink and then purple and then blue.Pink was always Rose’s color.It was a color Moria clung to, even if sometimes in secret, for a girl she never got to know, never got to love.
It was fitting that she greeted the rising of the sun alone.She could almost feel the familiar, soothing presence of her mother watching the sunrise with her like they had in the past, the phantom touch of a hand on her shoulder.But she didn’t have to be alone.
Moria rose from her seat at the window, replacing her wrap about her shoulders.She slipped her feet into a pair of misshapen slippers that Olivia had made for her, smiling to herself.Of all the finer things Moria owned, she loved those slippers and the care that had gone into them.Not that she’d ever said as much, for if she did, Olivia and her skill-less needle would make her ten more pairs.
Moria padded down the hall to the room she’d shown Devyn to last night.
They’d arrived together, explaining that Captain Winter was here on business, to see one of the Earl’s horses put up for sale.No one had the cheek to question why Lady Moria, of all people, was acting as broker.
She’d shown him to a room, then she’d gone for a walk.Something about carriage rides always made her limbs feel restless.She’d picked flowers for a posy for her daughter’s grave on her walk: wildflowers from the edge of the fields and forest, roses, jasmine, and peonies from the hothouse.
He’d found her there, tears in her eyes and blooms in her hands, and said, “There’s the flower I was looking for.”
It felt so domestic and real and uninterrupted to have him all to herself in her family home, in the place where she’d spent countless hours imagining her bridal bouquet, growing flowers for her family’s table and for the arrangements at the village church altar.
He’d stood behind her, draping those powerful arms about her middle.The way he craned his neck to lean down to traipse the sweetest kisses from her cheek down her neck and shoulder had her knees turning to marmalade.She could smell the hint of mint and parchment and sweat as her body pressed against his.
She’d closed her eyes at the exquisite contact, bringing up a hand to touch his jaw.They stayed there like that inside a protective bubble, like time and all the things racing toward them couldn’t find them there.His stubble against her exposed skin, her mouth against his, hands touching and bracing, his male heat radiating through the linen of her day dress.They spoke few words, there was a whole language translated between them.
And then the dinner gong.She’d gone to change for dinner, he having brought no other clothes, forced to make do with something that belonged to one of her brothers.He’d showed up at her door, holding his dinner jacket split down the seams at the back.
“I told you it wouldn’t work.”
She’d been unable to hold in her laughter.“The shape of a man like you wasn’t made for dinner jackets, my darling,” she said, placing a hand on the fine linen of his shirt.The heat of his skin beneath warmed her hand.
He looked down at the ring on her finger.“What was I made for then?”
Moria looked around the hall to make certain there weren’t any servants watching.Slipping a hand inside his shirt, she stood on her tiptoes.She poured all the fierce, bubbling emotions into a kiss.His teeth gathered her bottom lip into his mouth, one hand squeezing her waist.That tender pressure concentrating so close to her core, her veins throbbed with the need for him to take those large, beautiful hands and move them lower.
“You were made for me,” she spoke the words against his lips.
A servant rounded the corner then.
“Greta?”the maid turned to her with a curtsy at the sound of her name from her mistress, Devyn pulled apart from her.“Could you tell Brierley that Captain Winter and I will take our dinner on trays in the library?”Moria gave her a saucy wink.
The maids' cheeks reddened.“Yes, my lady,” she muttered and tore off down the hallway toward the servants' stairs.
* * *
Devyn satacross from her at a large table in the library in only his shirt sleeves and waistcoat.The outline of his muscular thighs in breeches and bespoke boots kept snagging her attention as the footman laid a tray before them.
Without proper warning, they’d had to settle for a dinner of cold meats, sandwiches, cheeses, and fruits.Moria had chosen to supplement her dinner with a liquid one.
He took the bottle from her hands.“I’ll have one, just the one.”
