The backs of her eyes pricked. She was too lightheaded to process what this might mean.
“It was a short proposal,” he whispered. “You can talk now.”
Virginia doubted she could do any such thing. She was thrilled and terrified, hopeful and dumbfounded. Her heart was exploding. She’d dreaded having to continue without Theodore, but had never truly entertained the possibility of becoming his wife. This was either a dream come true or a nightmare.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You can’t renege on the cat. If you want to see Duke again, you have to accept me, too.”
A startled laugh escaped her tight throat. “IloanedDuke.”
“Until I’m completely healed,” he reminded her. “These scars are here to stay. I suspect the brace is, too. I’m sorry, darling. You fell for the oldest trick in the book.”
She tilted her head. “You read books about stealing a woman’s cat in order to trick her into marrying you?”
“Practical battle tactics,” he assured her. “When you marry me, I’ll share my library, too.”
His library… in the middle of London. The one city she never wished to see again, and that definitely would not welcome her.
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” she stammered.
He hiccupped.
She blinked.
He hiccupped again.
“Damn it.” He yanked off his cravat and placed it in front of his mouth as though to muffle the sound. “My very first proposal is the worst one in hic—history.”
After another hiccup, he clamped his mouth shut tight.
Virginia recognized his fierce expression. He was reciting his favorite poem to try to make the hiccups go away.
She’d read his book. She hated that poem. There was another she liked much better. She quoted it aloud:
“I love the moon's pure, holy light,
Pour'd on the calm, sequester'd stream;
The gale, fresh from the wings of night,
Which drinks the early solar beam;
The smile of heaven, when storms subside,
When the moist clouds first break away;
The sober tints of even-tide,
Ere yet forgotten by the day.
Such sights, such sounds, my fancy please,
And set my wearied spirit free:
And one who takes delight in these,
Can never fail of loving thee!”
He stared at her in awe. “You memorized one of Miss Bethem’s poems?”
