“I love you. I’m not afraid of those words. I’ve loved you for so long I forget a time when you weren’t in my heart. I was afraid I was too old for you. Then I finally realized age wasn’t important compared to the way I feel about you. God, sweetheart. You’re so complex and full of indescribable colours.”
“Oh James.” Her eyes stung at the perfection of his words. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Tell me what you feel, Letitia. Tell me what you feel right now, here, with me holding you in the snow.” He put his arms around her and tucked her into his cloak, sheltering her.
“I feel…safe.”
“And…?”
She paused. “And…protected.”
“And…?”
“My feet are getting cold?”
James sputtered, a sound that was half a laugh and half an exclamation of annoyance. He reached down, yanked up her skirts beneath her cloak and clasped his hands around her buttocks, pulling her roughly against him. “And now your arse will get cold too. Be honest, sweetheart. Be honest with yourself.” He kissed her, a quick hard meeting of their mouths. “Neither of us are children. And we need to live our lives not just survive them. Look at Paul and Harriet. A foot either way and we might have lost one of them.”
She shivered at his words even as his hands on her bare flesh sent shivers of a different kind through her body. “God, James, don’t.”
“Then tell me what you’re really feeling, love. I see it when I look in your eyes. Don’t be afraid of it. Just accept it, because I will die before I ever let another man touch you like this.”
Letitia leaned her forehead against him, relishing the sensation of his cool hands beneath her skirts and his heart beating beneath his shirt. She considered his words, wondering if Max Seton-Mowbray’s hands would feel like this. To her surprise, she couldn’t even imagine such a thing. Every time she tried, it was James.
It came to her slowly, like a strange emotional sunrise.
It was James.
It hadalwaysbeen James, but she’d never allowed herself the chance to realize it. She’d clung to her belief that she would never love as a form of protection, and all the time it had been too late, because it had already happened. Over the year or so they’d known each other, through the laughter and the tears, the little adventures and the big ones, he’d always been there, becoming more and more vital to her life and her happiness.
And the finalcoup de grassmacked her hard upside the head.
She couldn’t imagine life without him.
She pulled away a little and looked up at him. “Ohbollocks.”
“I’m going to take that as a yes.”
James kissed her before she could say another word.
