‘I...’ Marianne let her voice tail off because she could not think of any reason strong enough to keep this raging need at bay any longer. The burn of unsated need deep within her and the sting of wanting and not having was sapping her rational mind and he had already turned her set-in-stone determination not to marry him into a whole flock of ‘maybes’ and ‘yes, I will.’ ‘I am burning, I am so hungry for you I cannot lie about it any longer and you are right and I do love you, Alaric. But how can we make it for good when we are so very different in so many ways?’
‘Because love matters and wherever and whenever it comes along it should not be ignored and pushed aside. You loved Sergeant Daniel Turner so finely and recklessly and so well, why would you make a second love with me into something less, Marianne? I honour the man for having the sense to love you so completely, but you two were supposed to be divided by birth and education and goodness knows how many other barriers, but you demolished them all between you. Am I so much less of a man you will not do the same for love of me?’
There was all the doubt he was a good man with a true heart in his eyes now and it was her fault. She had met the real man under the title when he was laid low by his head injury and still stinging from Juno’s rejection. And now he had Marianne Yelverton-Turner to make him feel unwanted and uncertain of his many and far-too-plentiful attractions, he did not need his mother to reject and belittle him, did he? She hated herself for putting those doubts back in his clear blue gaze again and found her courage at long last.
‘No, you are a wonderful man, Alaric. Strong, loving and true and your brother would be so proud of the man you are now, but how can I ever live up to your high standards if I agree to marry you?’
‘If you ask me, the boot is on the other foot.’
‘I do love you,’ she admitted, ‘and it has nothing to do with this poor forlorn old house before you get carried away by the idea I would only agree to marry you to get my hands on it. I wanted you from the instant I met your bloodshot eyes through the gap in Miss Donne’s door. I knew I would have to want the instant I found out who you really were, but that did not mean you were not the unshaven pirate baron who stole my heart when I thought I did not even have one left to steal.’
‘And I wanted you just as instantly, my fierce Mrs Turner, and never mind the exhaustion dragging at my heels and the driving need to find Juno and make sure she was safe. I did not know you liked unshaven pirates, by the way. I shall have to work a lot harder on some sea-dog ways.’
‘Please do not. I doubt the world could cope with you rampaging around it, stealing cargoes and kidnapping lady pirates to carry off to your lair.’
‘My, you do have an exotic imagination.’
‘I do,’ she told him with a silly, besotted smile as a good many of her fantasies offering a future of wild lovemaking could be hers if only she could reach out and grasp it and forget all her doubts that it was the right thing to do. ‘What if you regret me in a few years’ time, Alaric?’ she asked very seriously as she pushed those tempting scenarios aside for a maybe later.
‘Did you ask Turner that when you packed your bag and stole out of your father’s vicarage with the dawn to find him and marry him, Marianne?’
‘No.’
‘Then why are you asking me to put a limit on my love for you? I will still love and need and desire you when I am in my dotage. Right now I am not quite sure which will come first, having you in my life and finally admitting we cannot live without one another or reaching my dotage before you will finally say “yes” to me.’
‘I am ready to right now,’ she told him, certainty that he was right exploding all her scruples at last. ‘I love you so much I have to believe we can cross off all the items on my list of why we should not marry, Alaric. I will love you until my dying day.’
‘Then will you marry me?’ he said and got down on both his knees, on this filthy floor inside this broken-down old house. ‘I love you beyond words and promises, Marianne, but please will you help me to remake Viscount Stratford and be my love and my wife as long as we both shall live?’
‘You had better do a lot of it, then,’ she told him acerbically. ‘I am not losing another love for life and having to spend mine without you, so you had better make up your mind to living with me for a very long time, Alaric, Lord Stratford.’
‘Is that a “yes”?’ he asked her, a world of hopes and dreams naked in his eyes along with a full measure of lust and a side dish of fantasy to add to the mix.
‘Of course it is, you silly viscount. Now will you finally get up and kiss me properly before I faint from pure need on this very dirty floor.’
‘Not yet,’ he replied tensely as he got to his feet and stood a frustrating few yards away from her.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I am not stopping once I have started and we have already established there is nowhere in this
