Adrian Hastings stood at the threshold. Her husband. A man she had once known as Robin. Handsome and tall, noble and strong, steadfast and good. He had overcome more than she could comprehend, and still, he had found his way back to her. By any name, this man was hers. His heart was hers. And her heart…well, it had always belonged to him.
His deep-blue gaze seared hers. “Mrs. Hastings.”
NoDuchesstonight.
Good. She did not want to be the Duchess of Longleigh. All she wanted was to be this man’s wife. His love. His lover. His friend. Everything to him. All he had thought. All he had yet to think. Whatever he needed. Forever.
She dipped into a deep curtsy, all too aware of her half-undone dressing gown. The fall of her hair. She told herself it did not matter, but she also wanted him to recall this night, this recognition between them. It seemed the division between all that had come before and all that was yet to come.
They were bidding farewell to bitterness, misery, and doubt.
And in so doing, they were welcoming love. Only love.
“Mr. Hastings,” she said in belated greeting, before rising and stepping back, allowing his entry.
He was wearing a dressing gown as well, she noted as he crossed the threshold and entered her chamber for the first time since they had wed. For a moment, she was catapulted back in time, to their brief, beautiful idyll together in London. When they had been reckless and wild in their bid to force Longleigh to sue her for divorce, spending days in her chamber without leaving, ringing for trays of sustenance. They had been naked as Adam and Eve, never leaving her apartments at first. Until time had worn on, and Longleigh had ceased sending communications.
She had allowed herself to grow comfortable. To forget about him.
What a mistake that had proven. He had been planning his vengeance all along, as he had been seemingly distracted by his yachts. She understood that now. What had seemed his disengagement and diversion had ultimately been a lie. In truth, he had been plotting against them from the start. Most specifically against Adrian, his own son.
But she would not think about Longleigh now. He could not hurt them from the grave. He belonged in the past. And Adrian was her present, her future. The door clicked closed behind him. He stood opposite her, hand clenched tight on the handle of his walking stick.
“You are beautiful,” he said.
Her heart. It pounded. Flipped. Performed all manner of nonsensical feats.
“As are you.” She bit her lip, feeling silly. Feeling nervous, too. And awkward. Oh so very awkward. Why? She could not say. Her emotions were upended. Everything was new.Theywere new, together, as husband and wife in truth. Beautifully, wonderfully, happily new. “You are handsome, I mean. Not beautiful. Although, in fairness, you do have a masculine beauty as well…”
Stop talking, Tilly. You sound like a nervous dolt.
She paused, heeding her own advice, and swallowed.
He was in her room. Her private space. The chambers he had not entered since they had been here together before he had been taken from her. And he had told her he loved her. He had said he trusted her. The past no longer seemed to hold them in its furious grasp.
Is this a dream? Shall I pinch myself to make certain I am awake?
Surely, it was too good to be true. How many times had she dreamt of this, of him?
His sensual lips molded into a smile. “You have a great deal of buttons which are sprung free of their moorings.”
So much for hoping he would fail to notice her frenzied attempts at removing her dressing gown. Her fingers clasped the twain ends of her robe pulling them together, one crossed over the other. “I was attempting to remove it before you knocked.”
“Garment removal is always an excellent course of action.” He winked.
When was the last time she had seen him exuding such easy, carefree levity? For a moment, it was as if everything fell away. All the hurts, the pain, the separation, the distance.
Gone.
They were once more settled within the easy camaraderie they had enjoyed at Coddington Hall. A man and a woman, in love. Together, just as they had always been meant to be.
“Perhaps you should aid me,” she suggested, raising her brows in suggestion.
“With pleasure.” He moved nearer, bringing with him the delicious, beloved scents of shaving soap, musk, and man.
She wanted to throw herself at him, wrap her arms and legs about him. To drown herself in him.
Patience, Tilly. Patience.
