"Yes," she said.
He winced. "You don't have to agree with me, you know."
"I was answering your first question," she said.
He sobered immediately. "You don't think you will be sorry, Diana?"
"No," she said. "Do you think you will be?"
"Only if I see you unhappy," he said. "I will never forgive myself if I make you unhappy."
"I have the advantage of you," she said. "I have been married before. Marriage is what you make it, Jack. I was never unhappy with Teddy, though I might have been. He was rarely at home, and I had no children to take away my loneliness, and I did not really love him when I married him. Not as I love you, anyway. But I was not unhappy for all that. I spent my days trying to make sure that he was happy and contented."
He framed her face with his hands. "I swear to you, Diana," he said, "that I will try to do that for you.Every day for the rest of my life.I can't promise to succeed, my dear. I have had so little experience with trying to make other people happy. But I will promise to try."
"And I will too," she said, her hands smoothing up his coat and under his lapels. "Jack, am I going to wake up soon?"
"As you did at the inn to my eternal regret?" he said. "No, Diana, I am sorry to say that this lover is very real and very inadequate and very nervous and uncertain of himself.And very much in love with you.And very much hoping that you will renew a certain request you made some minutes ago."
"That you make love to me?"
"Yes, that's the one."
"Make love to me, Jack. This night has been so very special. So very like a dream except that I know you are real and I know I have just agreed to marry you. Make it even more special. Make love to me."
"Are you sure, Diana?" His hands rested on her waist. He lowered his head to set his mouth against her throat.' 'Are you sure? I can wait if you want. I can wait until our wedding night. But you must tell me now if that is what you want.Now or sooner."
"Make love to me," she said, resting her forehead against his shoulder while his hands began working the buttons down her back free of their buttonholes.
"Make love!" he said softly. "This will be the first time for me, Diana. I swear it will. I have never made love before." He eased her gown over her shoulders and held her slightly away from him so that it could drop to the floor. "Come on, then, mylove,let's see if the universe will hold together over the next minutes or not."
It did not. He unclothed her and laid her down on the blankets and cushions they had used for the picnic. And he unclothed himself with her help and lay down beside her.And brought his mouth to hers.And lost touch with all the reality about him—the storm, the pavilion, the ball taking place at the house. All his reality was centered in the woman he loved with all the expertise of years.
But for the first time in all those years she was not just a woman to pleasure and be pleasured by. She was Diana, the woman he had fought not to love, and failed. She was his world, his universe, his very life. It was her name he spoke as he brought them both to the brink of sexual ecstasy and beyond.
And the reality of her surroundings receded for Diana too. But there was reality. It was focused on the man who loved her slowly and gently and expertly, and fiercely at the last. The man who taught her to relax and to enjoy,to reach out and touch. The man who she knew from the moment of his first touch would not leave her empty and dissatisfied.The man who finally took her to the mindless moment of ecstasy.
He was no dream lover. He was Jack. And she loved him.And would no longer believe that it was a misplaced love.She loved him.No matter what.For always.
The universe exploded.
It came together again only very gradually several minutes later. Diana lay snug and warm in Lord Kenwood's arms.
"Well," he said, after bending his head to kiss her lingeringly on the lips, "if I had known it was to end like that, Diana, there is no power on earth that would have stopped me at that inn. What an amiable fellow that innkeeper is, by the way, not to put locks on his doors. I shall have to stop there on my return to London and shake his hand. And whodidyou think I was, Diana Ingram?"
"You were my fantasy lover," she said. "And I realize with every ounce of foresight in my body that I will be teased about this for the rest of my life."
"By me?" he said, looking down at her, one eyebrowraised. "Me tease the woman I love? You malign me, Diana. I have one question, though. How do I compare with my competition?"
He grimaced as she punched him in the stomach.
''I shall certainly kick him out of bed every time he tries to climb into it," he said, closing his eyes and settling his cheek comfortably against the top of her head. "There will be room in our bed for only two persons, one male and one female. And I intend to be the male. Perhaps we can set up a truckle bed for him, Diana. Oof! That is quite a powerful fist you have there."
"You will feel it," she said, "every time you are odious enough to mention that topic. I am already sorry that I was honest with you."
"Will you be willing to be married in St. George's in London?" he asked. "Withall theworld present, of course. I am afraid that only so will I be able to convince everyone that I really am married. I have been written off as a hardened case for a long age, Diana. All the anxious mamas gave up laying siege to me years ago."
"That is doubtless because of your shocking notoriety," Diana said. "But yes, I think a large wedding would be splendid, Jack. Will it be soon?"
