Page 90 of Lord Ramsey's Red-Headed Ruin
“Wonderful! Where does an English couple go for that?”
“For us, it will be Brighton.”
“Fitting,” she said, and squeezed him. But then she grew quite serious and pulled away from him. “However, I think I… I cannot do it. I cannot marry you.”
“What? No?” His whole body stiffened. “Why not?”
“You have not said you love me.” She planted her feet and pouted. “How can I marry a man who cannot admit he loves me? It is a—”
“Nightmare. A problem. An insult. How could he not?”
She beat one fist into his chest and pushed at him.
He hauled her back and held her flush against him. “He can say it.”
“When?”
“Every day. Every hour. You will grow weary of it.”
“Weary me now, sir.”
He picked her up to swing her around in his arms. Then he stopped, and all the angels of heaven could have heard his deep and darling voice. “I love you, Amber St. Antoine. From the moment I saw you. From the second I held you. Each time you smiled at me. Each time you argued or aided or walked away from me. Yes, I loved you. I was caught. Honored. Enraptured. You were my beginning and my end. My breath. My salvation. And yes, so often, too often, you were my ruin. I loved you then. I love you now. I will love you till the end of time.”
Her knees failed her. “Ramsey, you are my everything.”
He grinned and gave her a smacking kiss. “Soon to be your husband.”
“And the father of our child.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
20 Portman Square
London
The following Fridayin London at his townhouse, Ram stood in the salon awaiting the appearance of his bride-to-be. For the unexpected occasion of his wedding, he’d summoned his tailor for a special suit of clothes. He felt new, different, at ease. Most of all, he wished to appear as he was—content.
The woman he could not live without was about to marry him. Live with him. Love him for decades to come in all the wedded bliss they would shower upon each other.
Furthermore, his bride was well. Very much so. As the second physician that saw Amber had declared—and she repeated to Ram after her announcement—Amber St. Antoine had suffered a severe case of nausea and discomfort with the onset of her pregnancy.
“Some women do suffer in the extreme,” the man told Ram the day after Amber revealed the news to him. Ram had to call the fellow back to the house just to hear the assurances from his lips. Plus he had to ask about the effects, if any, of what she had endured upon the babe. Assured of her health and the child’s, Ram asked about traces of poisoning.
“I find none,” the physician replied.
Ram, who had stood dumbfounded at Amber’s spectacular declaration, recovered only after he kissed Amber and swept her to the lawn chaise and his lap. He had to sit, of course, because the joy of her announcement had doubled his delight that his lady had just agreed to marry him.
“I would like to help your mother and grandmother tend their roses,” Amber had said with a nonchalance that had him clamping her close and kissing her breathless. “Then, too, I must win back some of my gambling losses to your grandmama.”
“That will take some time, I fear, my love,” Ram told her.
“I know it! The woman counts her cards better than Aunt Cecily. I must learn how she does it!”
His nana, however, was showing no signs of allowing her soon-to-be granddaughter-in-law win anything except the bounteous approval of her marriage to her grandson…and her love. Ram’s mother, overjoyed as well at the news of a grandchild, announced she would not play cards with Amber. “Discourteous, but I know not how I win at cards. Honestly, I cannot teach you. I simply…intuit!”
At the moment, both women stood talking with Scarlett Hawthorne. Ram and Amber had agreed the lady should be a guest at their wedding. It was she who, in a way, was responsible for their happiness. Plus a friendship between Scarlett and Amber now seemed assured. Scarlett had come to luncheon last week, and, during the purely social call, the two women who had got on famously. They had also speculated that when they were children they had met briefly when their parents socialized together in Paris.
At the end, Scarlett had indicated that she had need of both Ram and Amber for work in London. She asked if they would consider it—and they took only a second before agreeing. Ram had asked Amber, after Scarlett’s departure, if indeed she would do that.
