“So, we marry,” she said softly.
He allowed a relieved breath to release from his lungs.
She extended her hand. He took it in a handshake but held on a beat too long. It was simply that her hand was so much smaller than his, the bones delicate, but not fragile. This hand was capable and strong. Yet he felt the sudden resolve to protect it. With great reluctance, he let go.
“And after you have Rafe?” she asked.
“You can lead whatever life you choose.” He didn’t like the pang in his gut.
“As can you.”
He had to clamp his mouth shut, or risk scaring her away. He might say something like the life he’d chosen before he met her wasn’t much of one.
That his life was better with her in it.
But he couldn’t say that.
The carriage began slowing. They were approaching 11 Little Peter Street. “Shall I hold on to the tiara?” he asked.
She nodded. “Return for me three days hence.”
“Why not tomorrow?”
“I have affairs to put in order, and you have a special license to procure. Settle that tomorrow and let the news circulate a few days before Wellington’s supper party. It should attach a good bit of notoriety to us by the time we make our debut as the Marquess and his new Marchioness of Clare.”
He saw the soundness of her reasoning, but he hadn’t gone a single day without seeing her since they’d met. Now it would be three? “Then, Saturday?” he asked, albeit reluctantly.
“Sir Bacon and I shall be ready.” She reached for the door handle and hesitated. “One more matter before I go.”
“Yes?”
“The drink at Doyle’s…”
Like that, he could smell it, taste it…craveit. “I’d thought never to touch the stuff again.”
“Sometimes one drink leads to the need for another,” she said. “Has the need returned?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you want—”
“Do I want what?”
“Do you want someone to sit up the night with you?”
The question hit Jamie flat-footed. Its content. The concern in her eyes. He could say yes and keep her with him. But he didn’t want her that way. He wanted her of her free will.
In more ways than one.
He’d been avoiding it in himself for days, but he could no longer. He wanted Hortense. No qualifications to the statement.
Which, of course, didn’t mean he would have her. He’d assured her of that, and he wouldn’t break a promise to her. No matter what it cost him.
“I shall see you three days hence,” he stated.
“Until Saturday.” She pushed the hackney door open, hopped to the ground, and was off.
The night went gray without her presence. For that was what he’d noticed these last several days. When she left, she took all the vividness of life with her, leaving behind a world gone drab at the edges.
