Her naïveté had been almost total. “Do you?” she had asked him, and she feared there had been some surprise in her voice.
“Win.” He had groaned.
She had understood then. He wanted her.Wanted.And that was just what she had been feeling, what she still felt. She just had not understood or known the words. Shewanted. She could not put into ordered thought quite what she wanted andhewanted, but she knew it was something sexual, a word that had always been quite foreign to her vocabulary.
Shewantedhim with all of herself. Every part of her. Every part of her body.We had better save the rest for our wedding night.
He wasColonel Nicholas Ware, she reminded herself in some wonder. Helovedher. How could that possibly be? He wanted to marry her. Hewantedher. He—
“Of all things,” she said, sitting up and looking at him.
His head was resting against the soft, upholstered back of the sofa. He opened his eyes. In the dim light of the moon and stars beyond the summerhouse, he looked more than handsome. He looked languid and comfortable and…Oh,whatwas the word? Desirable? She was so inexperienced in all this. But she picked up her train of thought.
“Of all things, I have not wanted anything to do with the military life, even though I have always understood that military men are far more than just killers. Theyarekillers, nevertheless. How many men have you killed, Nicholas?”
He had not moved, but his eyes were more alert.
“Me personally?” he asked her. “Or me as an officer who commands other men to kill?”
She huffed. “How many? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?”
“I hope not thousands,” he said.
But he did not deny dozens—or even hundreds.
“War is brutal, Win,” he said. “But often it is a brutal necessity.”
“And how many lives have you saved?” she asked him. “You and your men.”
“Thousands,” he said without hesitation. “Now that you have had some time to reflect, are you finding that you cannot, as a matter of principle, marry a military man? Would you always, whatever the circumstances, see me as a killer?”
Two of her uncles—Uncle Gil, who was married to Aunt Abby, her mother’s sister, and Uncle Harry, her mother’s brother—had fought as officers in the wars. She loved them both dearly. They were not still in active service, however. Did that make a difference?
“I do not have the faintest idea how to be an officer’s wife,” she said. “Specifically, acolonel’swife.”
“Can you bemywife?” he asked her. “Nicholas Ware’s? Can you marry the man and not the colonel?”
“Can they be separated?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said.
She did not know how.
“I have never wanted to live in London,” she said. “It would…It would kill my soul.”
“I know,” he said. “And I would not want my wife living there with me. Even less would I want our children to grow up there.”
Oh, that was such a strange thought.Children. WithNicholas.
“I have always wanted children of my own,” she said. “It has been a cause of considerable sadness to me whenever I think that I will probably never marry because I will never find someone who will love me for myself despite all the disqualifications.”
“I love you sufficiently and then in an overflowing abundance,” he said.
“You do like to exaggerate.” She touched the fingertips of one hand to his cheek, and he caught her hand in his to turn it and kiss her palm.
“My ever prosaic Win, who will always keep my feet firmly on the ground,” he said, folding her fingers one at a time over the place he had just kissed.
She sighed. “It is an impossibility,” she said.
