“But I have faith in you. No longer will the past deny me the future I desire.” Her voice was wobbly, but sure. “Nor do you have to be a prisoner of your past. Both of us, we are free to forge a new future, together.”
Her words—their faith and trust—were the greatest gift he’d ever received. He would spend the rest of his life trying to be worthy of them.
“You are all I need in this world, and I can now see only one future.”
“What is that?”
“One with love that lasts. One with you.”
He reached up and tucked a silky black tendril behind her ear, his fingers lingering on the curve of her jaw. “I think I’ve loved you from the moment you called me less than impressive.”
She exhaled a breathy laugh, perhaps a little embarrassed of itself.
“You not only showed me who you are—an independent woman who speaks her mind—but who I was, and who I needed to be to win and be worthy of you. You’ve made me a better man than I ever had a notion of becoming.”
He could stop here. Mayhap he should stop here. But he needed to say something. And, perhaps, it was something she needed to hear and consider.
“You are determined, resilient, intelligent, and beautiful,” he said. “You are extraordinary. You are magnificent.”
“Please, Jamie, you don’t need to say such things.”
“I do, because they are true. And they make me wonder.”
Her eyebrows crinkled together. “Wonder?”
“If I can be enough for you.”
The words hung in the air between them, and he half wished he could stuff them back inside his mouth.
She shook her head. “You are not enough.”
His heart plummeted to his toes.
“You are merely the sun rising in the east and setting in the west,” she said. “You are merely the moon in the night sky and the stars in my veins when I feel your touch. You aren’t merely enough. You are merely everything.”
He wasn’t sure he would ever draw breath again. Thatshewould feel this way abouthim…
It could defy belief. But he wouldn’t let it. Somehow, it was the truth.
She was his.
And he was hers.
They simply were. And it filled him with an awe from which he would never recover.
“Must I add poetess to the list of your extraordinary qualities?” he asked, a light murmur. “I love you and all parts of you, my marchioness, my Hortense, my Amelie.”
“And I love you, my lord marquess, my lover, my Jamie.”
He angled his head and pressed his lips to hers, all the words that needed to be spoken, spoken. He wrapped her in his embrace, vowing never to let her go. The universe could try to insert its form of chaos, but it wouldn’t succeed.
For together, he and his Amelie Hortense were subjects to no world but the one of their making.
Epilogue
Scotland
August
