Page 86 of Her Wicked Highwayman
“That’s because it is.” Diana held up the two small painted portraits of Isla’s parents. He stared between her and the portraits, confused.
“All these years I prayed for answers, andyouwere the answer.” She held the portrait of Isla’s mother next to her own face. “Don’t you see?” she asked, her voice wavering with a wave of emotions he didn’t understand. He looked from the portrait to Diana.
Diana put a hand on Isla’s shoulder. “My sister Eleanor is Isla’s mother Ellie.”
“Diana is my auntandmy mama,” Isla said, noting how Rafe was slow to grasp the revelation he’d just been given.
“Your Eleanor isEllie?” He stared between Isla and Diana, his heart stretching, filling with grief and love all at once. “How did you discover this?”
“I knew in my heart the moment I saw this portrait,” said Diana. “But while you were resting, Mrs. Chesterfield showed me the bag you brought back from Scotland. It held Eleanor’s clothing and letters—letters that she addressed to me but had never sent. I read them all, Rafe.” Diana’s voice shook. “After her husband, Angus, died, she was going to come home to Foxglove, to bring Isla to our estate, only she never made it. You fulfilled my sister’s wishes and brought her daughter home to me.”
“Those letters were for you?” He’d briefly read through a few of them when he’d first met Isla. But he would have remembered if one had been addressed to Diana, and none had been. “The letters held no name for whom they were intended.”
Diana pulled one letter out of the pocket of her dress. She unfolded the paper and held it out to him so he could see the little symbol that was in place of a name.
“Yes, she always drew a little cat’s face,” Rafe said. “It’s one of the reasons I call Isla ‘kitten.’ It made me think of her mother.”
“It’s a kit, actually, not a kitten. A baby fox. Eleanor always called me ‘little fox’ because I was the youngest member of the Fox family.”
Rafe stared at the letter, thinking of how a strange twist of fate had put those letters and that child into his path.
All this time Rafe had held Diana’s past and Isla’s future in that bag he’d carried all the way from Edinburgh. It was as though fate had pulled him toward Diana, their meeting inevitable somehow.
Isla looked between Rafe and Diana. Her tiny fingers were still tucked into Rafe’s hand. “Will she still be my new mama?”
Diana bent to kiss Isla’s forehead and placed her hand over Rafe and Isla’s joined palms. “Of course. It’s the three of us from now on,” she promised. “Always.” She echoed the vows they’d made that day in the library when she’d agreed to marry him.
Rafe felt like he could fly. Despite the pain, anything felt possible now.
“I may fall asleep,” Rafe said. “But I’d like for you both to stay.”
Diana lifted Isla onto the bed, and she lay down and promptly fell asleep.
“Huh, she beat me to it,” he muttered.
Diana lingered near the edge of the bed by Rafe, unsure of herself.
“I need to return something to you.” Rafe lifted his wrist that still bore the pearl necklace as a bracelet. “This belongs with you.” He sensed her hesitation. “You said it was your mother’s. It belongs with you.”
“I’d almost forgotten,” Diana admitted. “It seems so silly to have worried about such a small thing when we first met.” She undid the clasp of the necklace and slipped it off his wrist with great care before she fastened it around her neck. “And to think, all this time you held mytruepearl—Isla.”
“I saw how much it meant that night when you left it in my care,” Rafe said. “I was careful with it, just as I will always be careful with you. You’remytreasure, Diana.”
Her eyes filled with fresh tears. “You must stop being so wonderful. I cannot cry anymore.”
He chuckled, ignoring the flash of pain it caused. “As long as they’re happy tears, I won’t apologize.”
“Rogue,” she admonished with a little smile.
“Yourrogue,” he said. “I love you, my little fire drake. I vow to love you with every breath in me, with every bit of my soul.”
She knelt by the bed, bringing her face close to his. Her brown eyes were bright with heat and shone with the light of the vast and beautiful universe that Diana held within her.
“I love you, Rafe. I love you with all that I am and all that I will be. Yousavedme—you gave me back myself. I’d got lostsomewhere along the way, and you brought me home.” She leaned in and kissed him, then looked over at Isla beside him. “You brought us both home.” Then she kissed him again, and for far longer.
There was something exquisite about being kissed by the woman he loved even as his body burned with pain. But it was a pain he would endure again in an instant if he had to. It reminded him of how precious life was, how terribly short but infinitely sweet, if only one was brave enough to take the risk to live. To love.
His father had been right. He loved to take risks. And loving this woman and this child... they were his chance to live.
