Blood hammered through his temples. What if that had not been an isolated incident in his mother’s life—as she had sworn to him it was?
What if his mother had driven Osbourne to his death?
And here he was holding Osbourne’s daughter in his arms. He had just made love to her. He was determined to marry her if she would have him.
She was awake. She had opened her eyes and tipped back her head and was looking at him sleepily, her cheeks slightly flushed.
Lord, but he loved her. The realization—and the force of his feelings—shook him.
If she had known about this all along, even before reading her letter—ifhis thoughts had led him down the right path, that was—was it why…
Lord bless him,of courseit was why. And what was it he had said to her—his very first words to her?
Miss Osbourne, an already glorious summer day suddenly seems even warmer and brighter.
He could almost hear himself say those exact words.
What a consummate ass!
At the same moment she had been recognizing his name and recoiling from him.
“Mmm,” she said now and kissed his chin and then his mouth when he lowered his head.
She was not recoiling from him now, though. Perhaps his guesses were way wide of the mark.
“Mmm to you too,” he said, rubbing his nose across hers.
“Ought we to go back yet?” she asked him with a sigh. “We must have been gone for an age.”
He had been going to propose marriage to her again after they were finished with the sex. He had decided that downstairs as soon as she had said yes. He would love her silly and then, before she could recover her wits and harden her heart, he would slip the question into their waking conversation. And then during the Christmas ball he would make the grand announcement.
She would not marry him in a million years if his mother had been her father’s lover and had then tried blackmailing him and driven him to despair and death.
Not to mention how his mother would react if he presented William Osbourne’s daughter to her as his prospective bride.
Somehow—perhaps because he did not want to believe it—he knew that his guess was correct.
“They know you are with me,” he said. “They probably know too that we left in the curricle. They will assume that I have brought you over to Sidley and that you have stayed for luncheon and an afternoon visit.”
“Why is it,” she asked, snuggling closer, “that I so often imagine myself running away and running free? I ran away once and it now seems that I must have done the wrong thing. Except that running away took me to Bath, and I have been happy there. Why do I want to run from happiness?”
“Because it is not everything you want or need or dream of?” he suggested. “I would run away with you to the end of the world now if I thought that doing so would bring us to that mythical state of happily-ever-after. I think I was actually serious during the summer, Susanna, when I suggested we go off walking in Wales together. Indeed, IknowI was. But I would not ask you to do anything like that again.”
“Oh,” she said softly.
“Because there is no such state,” he said. “Thereisno happily-ever-after to run to. We have toworkfor happiness. I am going to do things the right way from now on. I decided that as soon as I left Bath. Don’t ask me what I am going to do or how I am going to do it. I don’t know. But at the end of all this I am going to have slain a dragon or two, and I am going tolikemyself. Then perhaps I’ll have more to offer the world—and you—than simple gallantry.”
She gazed at him and her eyes filled with tears, though she smiled too.
“I am not sorry I ran away that first time,” she said. “I like what happened to my life. And if I had not run, I would not have met you again, would I? But I won’t run again. I’ll go back to Fincham and meet my grandparents, though for some reason it will be one of the hardest things I have ever done. And then after Christmas I will go home to Bath and continue striving to be the best teacher I can possibly be.”
“You are not sorry we met again during the summer, then?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Neither am I,” he said.
“But I must get back to Fincham,” she said. “Soon.”
