“I like it when you call me Oliver.” He nudged my shoulder with his.
“It’s a pleasant name to say.” I tucked my chin low as heat soared into my cheeks from my declaration. Oh Lord, help me. What am I doing?
“Sadie.” He pressed closer, his voice low. “I found your message.”
“My message.” I barely uttered the words, searching his face.
“And I want you to know that I brought my own magic.” He took my cold hand into his warm one, his gaze locked with mine. “Enough for the both of us, if we need it.”
His certainty trembled through me with the hint of hope. Yes, he cared about me. And I him. But how could this work? “I want to believe you, but it doesn’t seem real. I’m a servant. I’ve never even owned a pair of new shoes. You live in a world so different from mine. Don’t you think those differences will eventually pull us apart?”
“Are those differences the ones that really matter?” He brought my hand to his lips, and my breath weakened. “All I’ve ever wanted in life is a well-stocked library, a warm place to sip my tea, and a special person with which to share it all. I’m not afraid of hard work or meager beginnings. Things are just that, things. Magic makes the smallest meals a feast if love is a part of it.”
“Love?” I barely worked the word through my throat. “You love me?”
“Can’t you tell?” His smile gentled with the look in his eyes. “Don’t you realize, we’re two halves of the same whole. We understand one another at the heart level. No amount of money or prestige can deny such kinship as this. I know you feel it.”
My bottom lip trembled against my best efforts. “We don’t even live in the same country, let alone the same social class.”
He released a long sigh, allowing the pitter-patter of the rain a pause within the conversation.
“What if we’d just met, you and I. You walking along the street in Biltmore Village and I coming in from work at the…” He looked up at the branches overhead.
“Sawmill.”
His eyes lit. “Yes, sawmill, all covered with dust but still rather dashing.” He patted his chest and continued. “I would approach you and ask if you’d take a walk with me. Of course, you would reply with…”
His brows rose, waiting for my response. He was so close, his pale eyes near enough to view the sunburst of gold around the irises. “Yes, I’ll walk with you.”
His smile flashed wide for an instant. “And we would talk for hours about books and our love for nature and the virtues of excellent tea and how ridiculously clever Shakespeare’s Falstaff is.”
“Or Dickens’s Dodger.”
“Exactly.” He searched my eyes with such tenderness, it soothed like a caress. His words rasped, “Or Dodger.”
“And we’d walk until the lanterns light on the street,” I whispered, envisioning the conversations, the shared life.
“And then I’d accompany you to the door of your house and ask if I could see you the next day, and the day after that.” His thumb brushed my cheek. “And every day for the rest of our lives.”
With the slightest hesitation, his gaze holding mine, he crossed the inches between us and touched his lips to mine. Vanilla, fresh rain, and moist earth mingled in waves around me as he lingered, his palm rising to warm my face. I’d read of kisses, but nothing prepared me for how the touch of his lips against mine somehow reached my soul. All the hints of attraction and kinship his nearness had encouraged the past three weeks settled into a deep, sweet bond.
The chasm between upstairs and downstairs, the rift of our worlds, even the schism of an ocean, evaporated into the tenderness of such affection. My breath shook, my chest quaking as if this fragile connection bound my life to his and I would never be the same…would never wish to be the same.
With trembling fingers, I rested my palm against his chest and embraced this exquisite love, this whole acceptance, of one person for another.
He drew back first, a beautiful tenderness reflecting in his eyes, and I blinked back tears at the sweet realization: not only did he see me, but he embraced me as I was. His companion, his friend, his lover. His equal, capable of believing in this impossibility or hoping for a reality beyond my reach as much as he did. Love did that. It gave me courage.
“I have three days before I return to England to start my fall term.” His thumb slid to rest on my chin. “May I write to you?”
My hand squeezed around the lapel of his jacket. Three days. So soon. “But send the letters to my aunt’s house.” No one could know. Not yet.
He pushed back a damp tendril of my hair. “I cannot be certain how long it will take and what I must do to make this happen, but if I send for you, would you come?”
I pinched my quivering lips tight, a wave of tears blurring my vision. “I don’t understan—”
“To be my wife.” He spoke the words on a soft laugh as if he could scarcely believe it as well. “I will find a way, Sadie.”
How? When? Those questions dispelled beneath the confession that he wanted me to be his. “If you send for me.” My breath quaked out the words. “I will come to you.”
“Not if, my dear girl.” He grinned, wiping at my tears. “When.”
I laughed and hesitantly touched his cheek.“You sound so certain.”
“I’ve never been more certain of anything in my whole life.” He kissed me again, longer, sweeter, and my soul ached closer
