“I asked him for your hand at the beginning of your Season, but I wanted to give you time to look about,” Hugh said, running a hand through his hair. “Then I realized that your ‘looking about’ turned me feral, so I stopped going to balls. You might aswell know that I’m jealous, Snaps. No talking to other men on the terrace at midnight.”
“I was always looking for you,” I admitted, which led to more kissing.
“It seemed to me that you didn’t bother to dance with me during the Season,” I said later, “and then when you hadn’t anything else to do, you pulled out a ring and gave it to me.”
“It wasn’t just that I wanted to knock down your dance partners. I wanted to kiss you, which would have been monstrously improper. It seemed best to stay away. I was so afraid that you would reject me that I couldn’t express myself at all.”
A long time later, I came back to my senses to find that Hugh and I were pressed together.
“I adore you,” he said in a raspy voice, pulling away just enough so that our eyes could meet. “With a passion that is the backbone of my life, Snaps. I decided to marry you as soon as I realized that people could pair off, like animals in the ark. You were there when I learned about Noah and his ark. Do you remember?”
I swallowed hard. “When I was three and supposedly read the story to you?”
“Exactly. I bought Norland Park’s entire library so that I can give you your atlas back.”
“Youwhat?”
“That foolish woman Fanny Dashwood decided to have the library torn out so she could do up a salon in the Chinese style, so I sent our estate manager over and scooped up all the books.”
“Oh, Hugh.” My eyes grew hazy with tears.
“I bought Dashwood’s hunters, too, as she’s decided they’re too expensive. Dashwood lives a dog’s life, that poor sod.”
“Poor fellow,” I said, gurgling with laughter.
And happiness.
“I have never wanted anything in this life except to be with you, to laugh with you, to learn with you, to argue and share things with you.”
“I didn’t let myself admit it, but I feel the same way,” I said. “You are magnificent, and I am hopelessly besotted. If you left now, for France or even for Bath, it would break my heart.”
His arms tightened around me. “You asked me a couple of days ago what I was meant to be, Snaps. Do you remember?”
“Yes. You said I was meant to be a novelist,” I said with a happy glow of memory. “And you didn’t tell me about you.”
“I was meant to be your husband, Miss Dashwood. Even when I was six years old and chasing you around the garden making blossoms snap at you, I knew it.”
He stepped back and turned to Belial, peacefully cropping grass. From a saddlebag, he pulled a slightly crumpled bouquet of snapdragons. “For my fiery snapdragon.”
As I took it from him, my lip trembled, and I almost started to cry. The only reason I didn’t is that he uncorked a small bottle of green liqueur and put it into my hand. One gulp of Pernod had me coughing so hard that tears really did come to my eyes.
A while later Hugh said, “After you read me the story of Noah’s ark, I told my mother that I was going to take you on board or not go at all—which is why she had nothing to do with my proposal years later.”
“You told the countess that?” I gasped. Then I realized that it might explain why she had always been so very kind to me, even when I was a little girl.
Everything he’d said had gone to my head, so much so thatIreached up and drew down his head and kissed him, instead ofthe other way around. A very long time later, I realized that I was no longer sitting on the wall, but instead on Hugh’s lap.
“It’s my turn,” I said huskily, arms around his neck. “Will you marry me, Hugh?”
His eyes widened, and that beautiful, wicked smile spread over his face. “Yes, but only if you call me Squibby, and I call you Snaps.”
I nodded, because his expression made me unusually shy.
“Even on our tombstone,” I promised.
This time, I let him put the ring on my finger.
EPILOGUE
