Page 100 of The Truth About Lord Stoneville
He’d told her all, he’d laid bare every dark corner of his strongbox, and still she was here in his arms, kissing him, holding him, crying over him. It was unimaginable.
If she could believe he was not truly the devil he’d played all these years, could he learn to believe in himself? Could he even, perhaps, be the man that she wanted? The man that his mother had intended him to be? Might he actually be able to change his life?
“I love you,” she whispered against his lips again, and his heart gave a leap of joy.
“My God, Maria,” he rasped. “You rip the soul from my body when you say that.”
“Don’t you believe me?” She pressed her mouth to his throat in a reverent kiss that made his pulse beat in a frenzy.
“I believe you’re daft. That’s what I believe.”
“No more than you. No more than anyone in love.”
There was that word again, the word he’d always distrusted when he’d heard it from women before, the word that now poured through him with all the sweetness of warm honey. He desperately wanted to trust it. He wanted to swallow her whole, to lay her down on the bed and fill her with his flesh over and over, until he could convince himself that she truly meant the words.
But when he reached for the buttons of her gown, she pulled away. “No, we can’t, not right now.”
“Yes, now,” he insisted.
“Mr. Pinter will be back any minute, and I can’t have him find me in the midst of—”
“You’re worried about whatPinterthinks?” he interrupted as a surge of possessiveness swept through him. “Sounds like you got rather cozy with the Bow Street runner on the way up here.”
A teasing smile curved her lips. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous of Mr. Pinter.”
“Damned right I am,” he grumbled, backing her toward the bed. “I’m jealous of Jarret, of Gabe, of every blasted fellow who looks at you and wants you.”
“You have no need to be jealous.” She looped her arms about his neck. “You’rethe one that I love.”
There was that word again, striking a sudden blow to his heart. He had a heart? Apparently he did. “Yet you ran off and left me without a word,” he accused.
“Only because you told me you weren’t sure you could be faithful to me,” she said softly.
He sucked in a breath. “That was my fear speaking. My fear that I might indeed have my father’s character. My fear that I couldn’t be what you needed.”
“And where is that fear now?” When her gaze met his, yearning and earnest, he felt a catch in his chest.
“Gone. One day without you told me that I want only you.” He dragged his fingers through her hair, scattering the pins, bringing it tumbling down about her shoulders. “When I walk into a room, sweetheart, I see only you. I might as well have been blind yesterday in London, for all the notice I took of other women.”
He couldn’t believe he was spouting the same sort of words he’d always laughed at his friends for saying about their wives. But every time he’d laughed, there’d been that tiny, envious part of him that knew how hollow his laughter was. And now he understood how hollow the life that went with it was, as well.
“How could I ever prefer another woman to the one I love?” he said.
She alone lifted the darkness from his soul. She alone saw in him the boy who, long ago, had hoped for something better. And the man who still hoped for something better. Who actually had a chance of it, with her in his life.
Her chin began to tremble as her arms tightened about his neck. “Y-You love me?”
Gazing down at her pert nose and the freckles that made him think of an adorable pixie, he felt his throat constrict. “I want you every hour of the day. I can’t imagine a future without you in it. The idea of returning to my empty house alone is so hellish that I’d rather wander the world at your heels than be without you. Tell me, is that love?”
She cast him a blazing smile. “It sounds like it.”
“Then I love you, my wonderful, sword-wielding, tart-tongued angel. I want you to be my wife. I want you to preside over my table and accompany me to balls and share my bed.” A most uncharacteristic happiness surged through him. “And I want to have children with you, lots of them, filling every room in Halstead Hall.”
A sudden understanding lit her face. His clever love didn’t miss the fact that he was offering her not just himself, but everything else he’d neglected, as well. Everything that he wanted to put to rights. That he needed to put to rights.
“Not fillingeveryroom, I hope,” she teased, even as tears shone in her eyes. “There are three hundred, after all.”
“Then I suppose we’ll have to get started right away,” he said, matching her light tone. His heart near to bursting, he reached again for the buttons on the back of her gown. “These things should never be left until the last minute.”
