“I think so,” she said. “I hope so.”
He reached for her hands.
She let him take them.
“Then I decide to love you,” he said. “Now and forever. My offer of marriage will stay open for as long as I breathe. If your counteroffer to be clandestine lovers is the only choice, then I accept it. And if you want me far away, then I’ll go. And I’ll love you always and forever, from the other side of the world.”
Her lungs could barely let in new air from the racket her heart was making.
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” she said. “We had an arrangement. If you managed to get Duke to allow you to ride him, I was to give your suit honest consideration.”
He’d fulfilled the terms of a challenge designed to make him fail—in more ways than Olive had realized.
She’d accidentally placed him into his worst nightmare. Tortured him with the prospect of confronting her most infamously irascible stallion. She’d forced Elijah to face his biggest, most primal fears, at risk of life and limb.
He hadn’t attempted it for his father.
He’d done it for her.
“Youwon,” she said softly. “You did it. I have no idea how—”
“It was the carrots,” he mumbled. “And possibly the extremely slow start.”
“Thatisit,” she said in surprise. “That’s exactly what you did. You were nice to him. You let him come to know you. You didn’t pressure him. You let him take as much time as he needed, and then you let him make his own choice.”
“The clothes might have helped,” Elijah added. “This is a very nice waistcoat.”
“Duke cares as much about fashion as I do,” Olive said dryly.
But she did recognize the value of something flashy. She let go of his hand and reached into her jacket pocket to pull out the medallion he had brought her.
“I won, too,” she said softly. “Not just that race all those years ago. I won a second chance with you.”
Elijah’s gaze snapped to hers. “What does winning mean for us?”
It meant ownership of a farm did not determine Olive’s worth as a person.
It meant instead of dedicating her life to chasing her horses’ best interests, Olive should consider her own best interests, too.
It meant a partnership didn’t make her less whole, but rather part of something even bigger than herself.
Olive slid the medallion into Elijah’s pocket. She didn’t need to hold on to the past any longer.
“It means I love you,” she said. “It means I forgive you. It means you’re human and I’m human and this probably isn’t the last fight we’ll ever have, but at the end of the day we’ll find ourselves in each other’s arms because the most important thing will always be each other.”
“When you say you love me,” he said slowly, “are you agreeing to the ‘from opposite ends of the earth scenario,’ or...”
She arched a brow. “Are you still carrying around that marriage license?”
“I am indeed.” He patted his lapel. “I say, Miss Harper, what are you doing on Sunday? Care to pay a visit to the closest chapel and take a few vows?”
“That sounds lovely, Mr. Weston. I’ll mark a note on my calendar. In fact...” She burst out laughing. “Papa was right after all. A Sunday wedding gives us plenty of time to announce our scandalously short betrothal at the Duke of Nottingvale’s Twelfth Night gala.”
Elijah grinned. “Shall we tell your father the happy news?”
“On theninthday?” She clapped her hands to her chest, aghast. “He would gloat for the rest of our lives.”
“Oh dear, that is a pickle.” Elijah pulled her into his embrace and claimed her mouth with a searing kiss. “How ever shall we pass the night?”
