Emotion thickened his next words. “If matters had been different between us, I would have asked you to take me to your mother’s grave.”
“A gracious gesture.”
Gracious.Few would accuse him of that.
Light flickered across her lovely profile, her expression poignant. “I have regrets of my own in regard to us, including the night I surprised you in your bedchamber.”
“When I behaved badly.”
Her voice was so low it was nearly lost beneath the music. “I thought you behaved very well indeed.”
He leaned in to hear her and caught the teasing lilt in her voice.
“I’d never been kissed before,” she said, looking up at him. “And I enjoyed every moment of kissing you back.”
“But your response—”
“My reaction was far from a refusal—or distaste. In those moments we seemed to have found a way forward, and then...”
“And then I ended the matter because I misread you.”
“Which I deeply regret at so tender a time,” she said, making him want to kiss her all over again.
He stared into the darkness. Regrets, so many of them, on both sides. But she admitted she enjoyed his kisses? He’d never been so lost for words.
As if sensing his struggle, she turned toward him slightly and placed a hand over his as it gripped the stone terrace railing. “Perhaps—together—we can right any wrongs done.”
He swallowed past the thickness in his throat. “How so?”
“By not being strangers. By taking time for each other—for the children, at least.”
Could it be? Would she rejoice that he’d made the decision to be more at home? “You want to see more of me?”
“I do. ‘Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.’”
“Clever, Juliet.”
She squeezed his hand. “I didn’t say it. Martin Luther did.”
“The monk turned preacher who married a nun.”
“He had many things to say about marriage. ‘There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage.’ But I like this best—‘The Christian is supposed to love his neighbor, and since his wife is his nearest neighbor, she should be his deepest love.’”
His deepest love. He swallowed hard. “A high standard.”
She faced him, as resolute as she was romantic. “Then we shall start small.”
We.His gladness in the word was tempered bysmall.His feelings for her weren’t small. They were staggering. Did she not suspect it? In that light, might he mean more to her than he realized? Mightn’t it spur him past his fears and move him forward?
At midnight they opened the door of the nursery and entered, the only sound the silken swish of Juliet’s skirts. Leith held a candle, and they looked into the miniature beds that held the twins. Fast asleep. Both wore linen nightgowns and caps, the sound of their easy, relaxed breathing reassuring. Bending low, she kissed them both. Though Leith didn’t follow, at least he’d come.
“I missed saying bedtime prayers with them,” she whispered, lifting a blanket over Bella.
He looked down at Cole, whose boyish features reminded him increasingly of Niall. In the hall outside, he heard Juliet’sfather and stepmother make their way to their bedchamber, followed by Loveday. Paisley’s parties were especially agreeable given they ended early.
They left the nursery and traveled the length of the long corridor, past portraits and mirrors and wall sconces and then the main landing with the central stair to their rooms. Leith paused at Juliet’s closed door. Behind it he could hear a recovered Minette moving about, waiting to help her undress and ready for bed.
“I suppose this is not only good night but goodbye,” she said softly but matter-of-factly. “May Edinburgh treat you well.”
