Selina took her hand off the key. Malcolm’s eyes followed her every movement as though she were a ship and he was adrift in the ocean. His jaw was tight; the edge of bitterness in his voice was carefully controlled. “There’s no obligation on your part. I don’t expect you to reciprocate. It’s just that I didn’t want to win if it meant that you would lose.”
Her heart ached for him. “You have no idea,” she said softly. “No idea of the man you are.”
He shrugged, feigning carelessness, and doing it badly. “I have… hopes. Of who I might become.”
“You are already wonderful.”
“Kind words, for the man who lied to you.”
“Stop.” Selina couldn’t bear the regret on his face. She took a step across the room, and found the space between them shrinking again, becoming manageable, traversable – dwindling to inches, and then smaller still.
She took his face in her hands and brought it down until by rising on tiptoe she could press her lips to his forehead. “Stop. You are enough. Do you understand me? You are…”
His bare arms brushed against the inch of skin between her gloves and her sleeves. He brought his hands up to her shoulders. Luxuriating in the feel of him, she sank down from her toes. Slowly. Her eyes catching in his as she went. She was suddenly aware of the scent of him, half-hidden beneath the aromas of bergamot soap and fresh cotton. He was so warm, every part of him – his hands and his scent and his shining eyes.
“You are everything I want,” she whispered. “I should have told you before. I knew what you were offering me, even when you didn’t quite say it. But I…”
“I said it badly,” he said. “I made a hash of it all. I couldn’t bring myself to admit what I needed from you – how desperately I need it, Selina.”
His lips were so close to hers that she could feel their heat as he spoke. His hands moved to encircle her, pressing her to his bare chest.
“I was afraid,” she admitted.
“Are you afraid now?”
All her long-ago-bolted doors remembered how to open. All the things she had locked away emerged into the sunlight. She shook her head. “I’d forgotten how to hope for this.”
His voice was husky. “I don’t think I ever knew how.”
He kissed her so tenderly that Selina felt every closed-up part of herself unfurl like leaves in the spring. Each time they broke apart she heard herself sighing his name, and she wondered at how natural it felt.
Soon Malcolm’s fingers were tangled in her hair, the hairpins pushed hopelessly out of place. He drew one out, twirled it in his fingers a couple of times, and brushed the errant lock of hair carefully back from her face. “I could have fallen to one knee in the Town Hall,” he said. “But I thought you might not appreciate me making a show of it all.” He paused, grimacing. “Besides, I’ve asked you often enough to know what the answer will likely be. It’s one thing to have a proposal rejected privately and quite another to endure the snubbing in public.”
Selina winced, the memory of his face when he last left Twynham coming back all too clearly. “Malcolm, I…”
“Hush.” He caught one of her hands and pressed it to his lips, a mischievous light gleaming in his eyes. “Give me a moment. You really knocked the stuffing out of me the last time I proposed, you know. Just let me muster the courage.”
Selina could not keep back her smile. “I hear there’s a vacancy for the position of Duchess of Caversham.”
“No.” He tightened his hand over hers, serious once more. “There’s a vacancy open for my wife. The dukedom is all well and good, but it’s not the important thing. I wish I’d realised it sooner. I wish I hadn’t spent so long calling you the perfect duchess when you were something else entirely.” He gazed down at her hand, small and fragile next to his strong fingers, as though it were the most precious thing in the world. “Simply… perfect. Exactly what I needed. Part of me must have known it all along. I never asked anyone else, you know.” These last words were soft, as though he were still unsure it was safe to say them aloud. “Only you. It was a game, and it wasn’t. But it was only for you. You do know that, don’t you?”
“I didn’t,” she admitted. “Not until very recently. Is it selfish of me to be so glad of it now?”
“I want you to be glad,” he said, as forceful in his sincerity as he had ever been in anger. “I want you to be glad every day of your life.”
“Then you ought to marry me, Malcolm.” Her heart slammed against her ribs the moment she said it. How had he found the strength to ask her so many times? How had she ever been cruel enough to laugh him off? “That is, if you would like to.”
He stared at her like a man who had discovered he could gaze into the sun without going blind. “If I would like to…?” His eyes flared wide. “My word. Streatham was right.”
She blinked. “Streatham? George?”
He let her go, caught between laughter and astonishment. “He told me I was doing it wrong. Ha! And it’s obvious now! I should have known all along that you wanted to do the asking.” He pushed a distracted hand through his hair, sending sparkling droplets of water through the air. “Yes. You brilliant, impossible woman, I would like to marry you very much. I have wanted it for more time than I can admit, and I don’t pretend I deserve it, but…” He steepled his fingers together as though he were praying and pressed them to his lips as he gazed at her, enraptured.
