And here she was. Lifting her face to the future, planning a new way to live. She needed her watercolors to paint this scene, this time, this moment of success, in her mind.
Three days had passed since Lord Langley had burst into her bedroom with the news that the French army had left the plains of Boulogne. Relief had washed through her with his announcement.
Somehow, she needed more.
Sure what that was, she had used her time awake to ponder what was lacking. Aside from her displeasure with herself at her failure to finish and deliver the Brighton drawings, she wished for a resolution of her personal life. She’d known that Clive had been ready to ask her to marry him just before Langley appeared. He had not broached the subject again, and she put that down to his desire, and her own, to see her health well improved.
She had spent years denigrating marriage. But Clive was everything her husband had never been. Kind, joyous, temperate, a tender parent, he’d commended himself to her from the first minute she’d met him.
For years, not even when she was married, she had not thought of herself as anyone’s wife. Certainly not as any man’s lover. She’d viewed herself, her life, as one spent alone. Drawing, painting, planting, cooking to please herself only.
She’d even told herself she would live somewhere by the sea, where time and tide blended into an atmosphere without beginning or end.
But that was past. And she was ready now. She loved CliveDavenport. Most wondrously, she did.
She gripped the windowsill and clutched at the handle on the pane of glass. She pushed it open, and the fresh air whirled around her. Fragrances of flowers, grass, and salt infused her with a breath of her new future.
A soft rap at the door was indicative of Clive’s gentle knock.
“Come in!” she called to him, whirling around but bracing herself against the sill and wall.
“Good morning.” He took one step, saw her, and stopped. “You are up!”
“I am.”
His joy was instantly overridden by concern. “Should you be?”
“Yes, I should be. Do come in. Do you have breakfast with you?”
He gestured to one side of the doorway, where he usually placed a tray upon a small stool, before he opened the door. “I bring the usual.”
She wrinkled her nose.
He laughed at her humor.
She straightened her back. “I won’t drink any of it.”
“But—”
“If you insist I drink any of that, dear sir, I will never marry you.”
He froze. “Do you intend to?”
“If you will have a Frenchwoman with no dowry, no family, and one skill—aside from cooking, that is.”
As if spirited by magic, he was before her, his arms around her, gathering her up off her toes against his solid form. “I will have you, all of you, for the rest of our lives.” He dropped a kiss to the tip of her nose. “I have money. It brings me the necessities of life. I have family. But it is not complete. I want to fill it up with you, wonderful you.” He pulled away, whimsy in his manner. “In addition, of course, I do like your cooking. I would be pleased to marry a lady who does it so well that, frankly, we will never have to hire a cook.”
Laughing, she cuffed him.
He held her so near, her body was his. “In that case, I accept your proposal, my darling, if you agree to one thing.”
“Anything you want of me is yours,” she whispered.
“Tell me that your mind is clear of your past tragedies.”
She stilled, butterflies in her stomach at this that she had not anticipated.
“I am done with revenge. I am done with old horrors. I have used my skills to do what I can for this effort abroad. I will live anew.” She cupped his cheeks. “Do you know why?”
