Drops of Gold(79)

“Don’t leave me, Marion.” He took her face in his hands, his eyes boring into hers. “Promise you won’t leave me.”

She had no chance to reply. In the very next moment, his lips brushed over hers. His hand slipped behind her neck, holding her fast to him. She clasped the front of his coat, desperate to keep him there, willing herself to believe she wasn’t imagining him there.

“Marion,” he whispered against her mouth before kissing her more deeply.

The moment absolutely had to be real. Even in her most fanciful moments she’d never conjured a kiss as heavenly as this. The feel of him there, his masculine scent that she’d memorized but couldn’t quite describe, the warmth of him so near, all made the moment as close to perfect as she could imagine it being.

Layton pulled away enough to rest his cheek against hers. “My darling Marion,” he whispered. “Tell me I haven’t lost you completely.”

She couldn’t even force a reply. He must have cared for her to have come after her. She turned her face up toward his, studying his expression, every nuance of his look. Please, she silently begged. Please love me.

“I have found every excuse imaginable to convince myself to give up the idea of—” He brushed his fingers gently along her cheek. “I was so afraid I would make you unhappy, would fail you, that you would be miserable with me.”

Like his first wife had been. Surely he knew that was illness, a mind ravaged by madness, and nothing he had done.

“I cannot promise to get everything right, but I swear to you I will try.” His eyes were pleading with her, begging for understanding. “Won’t you please give me a chance? At least come back for Philip’s wedding. Give me the opportunity to show you I could do better, that I—”

Marion pressed her fingers to his lips, which brought back that old, familiar fluttering in her heart. “A trial period?” she asked.

He nodded his head without speaking, her fingers still pressed to his lips.

“To decide if I love you enough to take a chance on you?”

Layton nodded again, the vulnerability in his eyes all but undoing her.

“Can I ask you something before I give you my decision?”

“Of course, Marion,” he replied, removing her muting fingers by taking her hand in his. “Anything.”

“Why did you—” This was harder than she’d expected. “The morning after you kissed me the first time.” She felt herself blush. “Did I do something to—You lectured me. Chastised. All but said you found me and my kisses”—another blush heated her cheeks—“horrid. I don’t understand.”

Especially in light of the fervid kiss he’d only just given her.

“I was afraid,” he said quietly. “Between what I saw as the difference in our stations and the gossip that still occasionally surfaces in reference to Bridget’s passing and my guilt over her suffering and the lies I’d manufactured during the course of it all . . . I couldn’t ask you to share that burden.” Layton stared at their clasped hands. “And I was afraid you wouldn’t. That you didn’t, couldn’t—”

“Love you that much?” Marion finished for him, smiling for the first time in far too long. She didn’t think it possible to love him more.

Layton nodded without speaking, his fingers playing with a lock of her hair that had come loose. Tiny, tender gestures like that were among the things she treasured most about him. They were evidences of his thoughtfulness, reassurances that no person he cared for would ever be neglected.

“If you doubted my love for you, what sent you chasing after me?”

Layton reached into the noticeably wet outer pocket of his coat and pulled out what at first looked to be a mess of river junk. But on closer inspection, she recognized the pile as sodden leaves, no doubt fished from the River Trent.

“Drops of Gold,” she whispered.

“There were twice this many, Marion.” Layton let them drop to the floor, wiped his hand on his coat, and took her hand again. “Three times, perhaps. I remembered what you said about the river bringing the Drops and the Drops bringing joy and happiness. And I realized . . .”

“Realized what?” Marion knew she clasped his fingers a trifle too tightly, but she had to know, had to hear him say the words.

“The river brought me you, Marion Linwood.” He pulled his hands free and wrapped her in his arms. “You and your stories. Your eternal optimism. Your refusal to be cowed by what I now realize was a suffocatingly unhappy household. You came. And you saved us. And I fell hopelessly, completely, in love with you. It scared me, Marion.”