He had sent the collections he had gathered in his travels separately, not realizing that they would be so delayed in their arrival. Thankfully, nothing had been damaged, and all the pieces had arrived in excellent condition.
“How mysterious,” she said, matching his strides as they reached the staircase, beginning their ascent.
“By necessity,” he quipped. “If I tell you what it is, the surprise will be spoiled.”
“I am more curious than ever.”
“You’ve always been curious, Vivi.”
A strange sensation filled his chest as they went up the stairs together, and Court had to blink at the surprising sting of tears threatening to fall. Tears of gratitude that he was here at last, with the woman he loved at his side. That she had lowered her guard enough to allow him back into her life, into her bed, and, God willing one day, back into the most important place of all: her heart.
“I suppose I have,” she allowed grudgingly. “Particularly where you are concerned, it would seem.”
She said the last reluctantly, as if the admission cost her greatly. But Court was pleased by the revelation.
“Is that why you were always spying on Percy and me when we were trying to swim?” he teased, just to watch her cheeks turn pink.
She didn’t disappoint him; Vivi averted her gaze, a becoming flush stealing over her creamy skin as they reached the top of the stairs.
They had known each other for so long. Vivi had been a spirited girl of fourteen when they had met, a hoyden who was never far from her brother’s side. When Court had entered their lives, Vivi and Percy had welcomed him in a way his own family never had. His father had been icy and aloof, uninterested in his son aside from the annual interviews the duke conducted between affairs with opera singers and actresses. Mother had been scarcely better, seemingly suffering his presence as a duty. With Percy and Vivi, Court had laughed, adventured, and grown into a man.
Then had come the day that Vivi had matured into a beautiful young woman, and everything had changed. He’d been a careless rakehell in his day, but from the moment he had seen Vivi across the ballroom after her debut, no other woman had ever compared. He understood now that no woman ever could. She was his, and he was hers.
He could only hope like hell that she might one day return that love, or that, at the very least, he hadn’t ruined their future by allowing himself to be weighed down by the past, his sense of honor, and a promise that he never bloody well should have made to Percy in the first place. Friend or not, he ought to have told Percy to go to the devil when he’d demanded the promise from him to stay away from Vivi.
Court couldn’t change the past. But he could forge a future with Vivi—the future they both deserved.
“You are quite wretched to remind me of that,” she said tartly, recovering her self-possession with remarkable speed as they passed through the picture gallery on their way to his chamber.
“I do believe we caught you on no fewer than five occasions,” he couldn’t resist adding. “At the time, I thought you were merely nettled that we didn’t invite you to swim with us. Now, I wonder if there was perhaps another reason.”
Vivi’s spying had begun a few years into his friendship with Percy and subsequent visits to their country house. He reckoned she would have been about seventeen at the time.
“Hush,” she said, looking about for servants, the tips of her ears even pink now. “Someone will hear you, and my dignity shall never recover.”
Court chuckled as they reached his chamber, grateful for the momentary lightness between them, which would necessarily be banished as soon as he said what he had to say. His gut clenched at the thought. He had to hope there would be forgiveness for him in her heart.
That she wouldn’t entirely hate him.
He opened the door, gesturing for her to precede him. She swept over the threshold and into the room that didn’t feel like his and perhaps never would. Unlike many of the areas in Sherborne Manor, this chamber had gone untouched by Vivi. He hadn’t yet thought to ask her why, but the question rose now, with the two of them alone in the afternoon light sifting through the windows.
“You didn’t alter this chamber,” he observed, studying her expressive face.
“No,” she agreed quietly. Sadly. “I didn’t.”
“The reason?” he dared to ask.
“It was my fondest hope that you would return one day and make it your own,” she said, looking pensive. “And now, here you are.”
“Here I am,” he repeated, wishing the barriers between them didn’t feel so insurmountable. When they made love, time, past pain and heartache, guilt and grief were suspended. But their days were a waterfall of memories. And there remained the soul-deep guilt eating at him still. “I hope you don’t regret it.”
“I could never regret you being here with me,” she said. “It is all I have wanted this last year, the chance to be your wife.”
Her words stunned him. For a heartbeat, Court could do nothing other than stare at her, this gorgeous woman he had once promised his best friend he would never touch. This woman who was now his wife.
And then he was moving, retrieving the small box from atop his dresser where he had left his gift, turning back to her. “This is for you.”
He offered it to her, feeling slightly foolish now, hoping she would recall the significance. It had been some ten years since she had lost the box in the library fire at Edmonds House.
