His lips were curving even before he opened his eyes. He glanced at her, at the jumbled tumble of rippling locks that screened her face. Felt her stirring, as if sensing his wakefulness, she was waking, too.
Then awareness reinfused her limbs. Raising a hand, she brushed her hair out of her face and glanced up.
He smiled-at her, into her eyes. He couldn’t recall ever feeling so joyous, let alone letting it so blatantly show.
Puzzled, she searched his eyes. “What?”
His smile only deepened. He looked up at the canopy to hide any smugness in his grin. “You’re going to marry me.”
She didn’t immediately reply. He glanced down-and saw it was taking her a moment to assemble a frown. She managed one, of faint disgruntlement rather than anger, and directed it at him. “Why do you think that? I haven’t agreed to accept any offer, nor have you made one, if you recall.”
His grin returned. “I know. But I will, and you will. You’ve made your decision. You’ve made up your mind.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You can’t know that.”
Holding her gaze, he smiled, a softer gesture. Lifting one hand, he smoothed back her hair, but kept his eyes on hers. “I do know. You’re in my bed. Naked in the Earl of Crowhurst’s bed where only countesses of Crowhurst have ever lain.”
Arching her brows, she struggled up; leaning on his chest, she made a show of looking around the large room.
He laughed, rocking her; he closed his arms loosely around her. “You knew that last night when we came in. You didn’t bother mentioning it because in your mind it no longer mattered.”
When she looked back at him, he tightened his arms in a gentle hug. “And you were right. You belong here. In this room, in this bed, with me. This is where you should-and will-spend your nights for the rest of your life. Here, with me.”
She continued to look at him as if uncertain how to deal with him, with his sudden and absolute knowledge.
He arched a brow and tried for a vulnerable expression and tone-not easy at the best of times. “Am I wrong?”
Entirely unintentionally Madeline laughed. Still trying to narrow her eyes at him, and failing, she pushed back from his chest to flop on her back beside him, so she could stare at the canopy, too. “I do hope this isn’t going to be a habit of yours-being so disgustingly all-knowing.”
He chuckled; finding her hand with one of his, he linked his fingers with hers, raised them to his lips and pressed a lingering kiss to her knuckles. “Only with you.”
She humphed.
After a moment-a moment in which they both, she was sure, looked ahead into the joint future that had, entirely unexpectedly, opened before them-he asked, “What persuaded you? What changed your mind?”
She was silent for a while, thinking back. Eventually, she said, “As you no doubt intended, it’s been made transparently obvious to me over the past several weeks that you are truly in desperate need of a wife, not least to manage all the aspects of your life as earl that you are patently ill-equipped to deal with yourself, and that Sybil, your sisters, Muriel, my brothers and with few if any exceptions the entire local community-and even your ex- colleagues and ex-commander-believe that duty should fall to me.”
“And that convinced you?”
She heard the surprise, nay, skepticism, in his voice and smiled; he did know her well. “No. That only made me more uneasy. Everyone here had viewed me as a lady who didn’t need to marry, who’d been excused from marriage for over a decade, and then, just like that, they changed their minds? They might have been right, but what did they know of me?” She waved dismissively. “I’d never been a young lady looking for marriage-they’d never seen that side of me. I’d never put it on show. They’d seen me only as my brother’s surrogate…what did they know of that other me?”
He waited a heartbeat, then asked, “So what tipped the scales my way?”
She felt her lips curve. “You…and in a strange way, our villain, or rather his machinations and how we dealt with them. You, in that you made the effort to see me, the real me. You never had before, but then you somehow stepped back and gained a different, deeper and truer perspective…and once you had, you didn’t retreat but instead started to deal with me as me, not as who everyone else thought I was. That was strange and unnerving and unsettling at first, but…in some ways it’s been a freedom, a freeing. With you, I can be who I am without any veil or disguise-I can be the me I never thought I’d have a chance to be.”
His lips brushed her fingers again. “The woman you thought you had to keep hidden, locked away, forgotten, in order to care for your brothers.”
No question, she noted. She nodded. “That was, and still is, a strong point in your favor, but not the only one, not the principal one.”
“Not the one that persuaded you to change your mind.”
Again she nodded. “My list of reasons for not marrying you were in retrospect less relevant-important in their way, but not the critical question. When I made that list, I didn’t truly know, didn’t fully comprehend what that critical question was. Is. But then you set about demonstrating that my listed reasons weren’t as I’d thought-which left only that critical question unresolved.
“That was where we were when you told me you wanted to-had from the first intended to-marry me.” She turned her head on the pillow, met his eyes. “That was the moment when I suddenly found myself facing that critical question and-so very unlike me-I discovered I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t even know how to learn it.”
She paused, studying his amber eyes. He didn’t ask, merely raised his brows and waited; she smiled. “There was no single moment, no sudden revelation. Almost immediately Ben was kidnapped, and I didn’t have time to think about that question. But the answer crept up on me. It wasn’t what you did, the actions you took to get Ben back, and then rescue Edmond, although I was grateful”-she squeezed his hand-“more grateful than I can say, that you were there to help me get the boys safely back.”
Drawing in a breath, she tried to find the words, the right way to explain how it was that, as he’d correctly divined, she now knew her path beyond question or doubt. “It wasn’t what you did, it was how you did it. How you deal with someone is a reflection of how you see them, and throughout these last crazy days you’ve dealt with me in only one way-as if I were already your wife, as if you could no longer see me as anything else, as if the answer to my critical question was, at least in your mind, taken for granted.”
She searched his eyes, then drew breath and said, “My critical question was whether you loved me. I knew I loved you, but didn’t know if you returned my regard, not to that degree. But even if you did, I didn’t know-couldn’t see-how you could manage to convince me…but you did.
“You demonstrated the answer rather than gave it to me in words, and your actions spoke loudly and clearly. I understood what it cost you to let me go onto the beach at Kynance Cove alongside you-but you did. You accepted that, for me to be me, it had to be that way-you bent, adjusted to accommodate me, even though I knew that what I’d asked was one of the most difficult things for you, being you, to grant, to allow.”
She looked into his amber eyes, clung to the understanding she saw there, exulted in it. “You showed me that despite being so alike, especially in that way, we could still have a life together, that we could be close, could share all the moments of a life, the difficult as well as the easy, that we could build a full life and enjoy it together while still being us-you being you and me being me. You showed me that your love and mine would allow that to be.”
Smiling, she let her certainty show, let it light her eyes. “And that’s what I now want-to spend the rest of my life with you, by your side, filling that space everyone seems so certain I was meant to fill, loving you and having you love me.” Her smile eased; she felt it grow more serious, but no less sincere. “If that’s what you want, then I want it, too.”
He didn’t laugh, didn’t smile, although his lips were relaxed in an easy line. Shifting onto his side, he raised a hand and framed her face, looked into her eyes as though through them he saw her soul, as if he spoke to it. “That’s what I want-that’s the most important thing I would ask of life. I’ll never be whole, never be complete, unless I have you as my wife, beside me, mine…” He drew a tight breath. “Mine to love and care for, to build and enjoy a life with, to have at the center of my life, my heart, my soul.”
