Page 73 of A Lady of Means
“Moria,” he punctuated her first name.“I think we both know this moment has been coming toward us for a long time.I’ve considered what I would say to you, and replayed it in my head many times, always falling short of what you deserve.But the point is, I’d like to spend a lifetime with you, finding all the right words, saying all of the things that you deserve to hear, hoping that you’ll return them.Would you do me the honor of becoming my Duchess?”
All the tears that Moria had been holding back behind a dam of steel will, expelled themselves.
She wouldn’t have the man that she would die for, who would die for her, but she would not be alone.And she could come to love this man before her.
Couldn’t she?
The tears wouldn’t stop.
“Moria?Have I shocked you?”
In answer, she pulled him to her, dropping the coat she’d been wearing on the ground next to them.She stood and pulled him up to her, unlocking him with her lips, letting his hands wrap her into him.She felt the length of his body against her own.Wool and linen against the silk of her dress.
At some point he’d removed his gloves, and she felt the soft press of his warm hands against the cool of her back.
“Yes,” she said, against his smiling lips.“I’ll marry you, George.”
He laughed his satisfaction.He had locked eyes on her, but in the darkness he couldn’t or wouldn’t see the sadness that was surely there.He was fidgeting in the pocket of his waistcoat for the ring.
Touch as light as a breath, he tugged her glove from her hand and slid the betrothal ring on her finger.To Moria, it felt like a shackle.As final as a death knell.
He curled her fingers into a fist and kissed her hand.He held her ringed hand up to the moonlight, the jewel glowed like a smaller moon glistening atop her hand.
“It’s perfect,” he whispered.
It was perfect.But it wasn’t perfection she had wanted.
It had been, once, a lifetime ago.
Perfection was what everyone else had wanted.
“Should we go tell your family?”He made to re-enter the ballroom, but she stalled.
He held onto her hand, not understanding her hesitation.
How often would he misunderstand me?She wondered.
Devyn had always understood her.
“I will never be anything but yours.Until I draw my dying breath.”
But now, he was gone, and this man remained.Of all the months he’d waited, why did it have to be tonight?
She couldn’t face them inside, not yet at least.“Can we simply…enjoy this moment?The two of us?”
He closed the short paces between them.Her arms came around him, looking up at him to find reasons to cling to him, things that she could hold onto and choose to love.He misread it for true affection.He placed a kiss to her temple.His lips moved to her cheeks, then to her jaw, and finally to her ear.
“I’m sorry.I should have proposed to you ages ago.I made a bold claim on the floor of parliament, years of frustration spurring me on in the moment.And then I got caught up in winning, in seeing a cause through to the end.But I never should have made you wait for me.”
That wasn’t the part she objected to.It comforted her to know that there was more to him than the cool veneer she so often witnessed, a man who could get heated over injustices and work to wrong them.
He’d courted other women, bedded them, even, likely, somehow it didn’t sting.Moria had done more waiting in her lifetime than this man realized.
She’d waited for Marcus.
She’d waited for Devyn.
She hadn’t been waiting on this man, but she merely touched his face in answer.The skin beneath her fingers felt foreign.
