Fleur. Soft and warm and feminine, her body arched unashamedly to his, her lips parting beneath his own, her mouth opening to his tongue, her arms coming up about his neck.
Fleur. He allowed himself the full luxury of hope.
“I love you too,” she whispered against his mouth. She kept her eyes closed. There could be no more thought to pride. “I have not stopped loving you for even a moment. And the letter is not always against the vase. Only by day. By night it is beneath my pillow.”
“On the assumption that the pianoforte is too large to put there?” he said with such unexpected humor that she burst into laughter.
He joined in the laughter and hugged her to him.
“Fleur,” he said at last against her ear, “this cannot really be the first time I have laughed in a year, can it? But it feels like it.”
She drew her head back and looked fully at him for the first time. “I thought I would never see you again,” she said. “When you broke every bone in my hands that morning and jumped into your carriage and drove away, I thought I would never ever see you again.”
“Well,” he said, smiling at her, “that should be no tragedy. I am not much to look at, am I?”
“I don’t know,” she said, tilting her head to one side. “Aren’t you? To me you are all the world.”
“A dark and scarred world,” he said.
“A beautiful world,” she said. “A face with character. The face I love most in all the world.”
He took her quite by surprise suddenly by bending down and scooping her up into his arms and sitting with her on his lap on a sofa.
“Guess what I have in my pocket,” he said.
“I don’t know.” She circled his neck with her arms and smiled at him. “A priceless jewel you bought for me.”
“No,” he said. “Try again.”
“A snuffbox,” she said.
“I don’t use the stuff,” he said. “You are not even close.”
“A linen handkerchief,” she said.
“My other pocket.” He was laughing again, and she with him. “What do I have in my other pocket?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “How am I supposed to guess?”
“You should know,” he said. “What, of all other things, would I be sure to bring with me when I came for you at last?”
She shook her head, her smile fading.
“A special license,” he said, suddenly serious too. “A special license, my love, so that I can make you mine without delay once I have got you to say yes.”
“Adam,” she said, touching his scarred cheek. “Oh, Adam.”
“Will you?” he said. “Will you marry me, Fleur? I know I am no prize, and you know some unsavory things about me. But you would have my undivided love and devotion for the rest of a lifetime. And you would be a duchess, if that is any lure, and mistress of Willoughby. Will you, Fleur?”
“Adam,” she said, tracing the line of the scar downward from his eye to the corner of his mouth. “Think carefully, do. Think of what you know about me, about what I was, what I am.”
“A whore?” he said so that her eyes flew to his in shock and her face flushed painfully. “I am going to tell you something, Fleur, and I want you to listen very carefully. Sybil had consumption. It is very unlikely that she would have survived this year. But she could have had that year or part of it, anyway. She could have had my support and even affection and all of Pamela’s love. But she had had one cruel disappointment in life and another lesser one last summer. She lost her will to live. She would not accept the comfort I tried to give her. She almost totally ignored Pamela. And finally, when she had word of Thomas’ death—before I did—she took what little remained of her life.”
“The poor lady,” Fleur said. “I do feel desperately sorry for her, Adam.”
“So did I,” he said. “But listen to me, Fleur. You were put into a dreadful situation over a year ago. You faced either a noose about your neck or a nightmare of a marriage if you went back home, or starvation if you stayed in hiding. But did you give in to self-pity? No. You fought, doing everything you had to do to survive. You did the ultimate, Fleur. You became a whore. I pity my wife. I honor you more than I can say in words.”
She swallowed. “Perhaps because you know you were the only one,” she said. “How would you feel if there had been a dozen others? Two dozen? More?”
“Fit to kill,” he said. “Before my marriage, Fleur, I slept with more than a dozen women. I could not possibly put a number on them, the women I bedded. How do you feel about that?”