Before she recalled…
How they’d last parted.
Before he’d taken up a place at her bed, as the duchess had shared. Driven there by guilt? Or the caring that Her Grace had spoken of?
His eyes lingered on her face, his opaque gaze revealing nothing, and then he moved his search lower, until his focus landed on her cane.
She reflexively tightened her hold upon the top of it. The gold-etched orchid carved into the piece bit into the thin fabric of her leather glove.
“Are you well?” he asked quietly.
“Prodigiously so,” she said on a rush.
They remained there, he beside that boulder he’d made his seat, and she at the opening of the copse, hardly daring to enter, wanting it so very badly that her selfishness proved stronger, and she ventured over to him.
In that moment, they were strangers. But then, isn’t that what you always were to each other? a voice silently taunted. Jeered.
And yet, they hadn’t been. She’d shared parts of him and had wanted to share… all. And I should have. “Harris,” she began on a rush. “I am so sorr—”
“As I was saying,” he cut her off. “I came here every morn for the past seven days.” He shifted his focus out to the now-smooth, serene surface. “And I thought about the last time I came here… with you.”
She stiffened.
“I thought about us that day, and all the days we were together… and every day, Julia,” he said quietly, his gaze still out on those waters. “I would come and wish as we did that day.” He motioned with an open palm, and she followed that gesture to the small pile of coins resting on the boulder, ones she’d previously not noted until now. “Do you know what I wished for?” he asked, turning back.
Wordlessly, she shook her head, and he moved closer, his long legs carrying him the remaining way, erasing that distance between them, until he stopped. Just a hairbreadth away. He brought a palm up and cupped her cheek.
Warmth radiated through her, a heat greater than the sun, so soothing and splendorous it brought her eyes closed as she leaned into Harris’ touch. “You shouldn’t,” she said hoarsely. “Someone once told me that if one shares one’s wish that it will not come true.”
“That is true,” he murmured. “But I wished for you to be here,” he continued, and her eyes flew open. “I wished to turn and find you standing there, and here you are, Julia.”
Her heart leaped. “What…?”
“I wished that you could love me and forgive me.”
Julia’s breath drew on a quick, audible intake, the cane slipping through her fingers, but he was there, stabilizing her at the uninjured side of her waist, keeping her upright. What was he saying? Her mind tried to make sense of it. All of it. Scarcely daring to believe the words he’d spoken, the ones she so desperately wished to be true and real and not merely the stuff of dreams she’d carried these past weeks.
Harris leaned close, placing his lips beside her ear, his breath, a soft, gentle sough upon her skin, more tender and soothing than the late spring breeze. “And do you know what I realized, Julia?”
She managed to shake her head. That slight movement brought his lips into contact with the shell of her ear in a fleeting kiss.
“What I wanted most weren’t gifts that I would or should wish for, because then they’d be unearned. Having the right to love you and earning your forgiveness are actions that I want to desperately commit myself to.”
A little sob escaped her, and Harris brushed the pad of his thumb along her lower lip. Crouching lower, he rested his forehead against hers. “I wanted to ask you if you’d do me the honor of spending every single day with me so that I can make you happy and be there for you, and we can fight whatever monsters exist, together.”
A tear slid down her cheek, and he smoothed it away, but there was another to replace it and another.
“Harris,” she said achingly. “I don’t blame you for your anger.” She lifted her eyes to his. “I lied to you.”
“I don’t care about that,” he said pleadingly. “Not anymore.”
“You should.” With the same tenderness he caressed her, she stretched a palm up and stroked his cheek. He immediately captured her wrist and pressed a kiss against it. “There can be no relationship with lies.” She grimaced. “That is, not a healthy relationship, and so much has happened…”
His features froze, forming a perfect mask, and then that mask slipped. “You don’t want to marry me.”
“I do,” she said on a rush. And then she stopped as his statement cut through her racing thoughts. “You want to marry me?” she repeated breathlessly.
“Of course I do, love,” he said with an aching tenderness. “I want every day with you. I want children with you, so many daughters with your spirit and strength and courage.” His words all rolled together, each one infusing a greater warmth into her breast. “That is, if you want them.”
“I do,” she said, her voice breaking on a half laugh, half sob. “And a son with your charm and goodness.”
“I don’t want to rely on wishing anymore, Julia,” Harris whispered. “I want us to make our own future and shape our life, and I want us to do it together. If you’ll have me. If you want to spend every single day with me, as I do y—”
“Yes,” she cried, ignoring the stitch in her side as she pressed herself against him. Leaning up, she lifted her mouth for his kiss. “I want all of that, Harris.”
A smile teased the corners of his lips. “Then you shall have that, love.
