Lucas rubbed a hand down the side of his face. “We ought to see the solicitor.”
“You think it may be true?” She looked up at him with wonder.
“This man certainly believes it is so.”
One hand was still fisted in his sleeve; the other clung to the paper. “Why would he not have told me? Why would he have—Lucas, will you go with me?”
“I offered to take you to Gretna Green, Lydia, I think a trip to Bond Street ought to be easily arranged.”
She seemed full of nervous energy as she crossed the room to grab her gloves and bonnet, passing the letter from her hand to under her arm to her hand again, as if she were loath to set it down. Lucas watched her with fascination. At last, she appeared ready. She turned back to him, face shining with anticipation. “Shall we?”
He held out his arm.
Just before she took it, her brow suddenly furrowed, and her upturned face revealed narrowed eyes. “You do realize that Gretna Green is where people go to be married, do you not?”
Lucas pushed out a humorous breath. “Yes, I am well aware.”
“Then you were . . .”
“Offering to marry you? It is not the most romantic of proposals, but I intended to make it more official soon.”
Her mouth was parted with some emotion he could not fully identify. She had not taken his arm, but at long last, she grasped it. It may have been his imagination, but he thought she seemed to pull herself closer than usual. “I request that we complete this conversation as soon as we learn if I am a baroness. I would feel much better accepting a proposal from you if I were not so far beneath you, to own the truth.”
Lucas had begun escorting her down the hall, but at this, he stopped. “No.”
“No?” She looked up in confusion.
“I will not allow you to belittle yourself in such a manner. You, Lydia Faraday, are far above me in nearly everything except height.”
She snorted. “Height and social standing.”
“That does not matter one jot to me, and it should not to you either. In fact—hold on.”
“What are you doing?”
He was backing up several steps to be better situated and no longer have the distraction of her hand on his arm. After leaving her room the night before, he’d come up with many magnificent speeches he ought to have delivered. Unfortunate that they seemed to flee his mind at that moment.
“Lydia Faraday,” he began, hoping the words would come when he started. “You inconvenienced me when you first came into my life.”
“My, you paint a pretty picture,” she said, laughing.
He shook his head ruefully. “I mean you inconvenienced my way of living. You disrupted my plans and lit a fire in my heart that had long grown used to being cold. Each moment I see you, my spirits rise. Each smile you give me makes me wish to make you smile always. Lydia”—his voice became rougher with emotion—“you brought the sun back into my life.”
She bit her lips together, and he had to rush through the rest of his words, as he could hardly wait to return to her side. “You are far more than a title or a past, and I desire nothing more than to be your future. I do not need whatever information we will receive at the solicitor’s. I only need to know that I love you and you love me. Will you marry me?”
She was nodding, closing the gap between them. He met her willingly, taking her face in his hands.
“Society may judge our match. I do not even know who my family is,” she murmured.
“Iwill be your family.”
A watery smile formed on her face. “I have admired you from the start, Lucas. Love was not far behind, though I tried my hardest to keep it at bay.”
One of the broken, unused portions of his heart seemed in that moment to mend. He brushed aside a tear escaping from her eye with the pad of his thumb. “I love you.”
She pushed up on her tiptoes, pressing soft lips to his. The pleasure of it touched every inch of him. His hands slipped to the nape of her neck as her eyes met his.
They spent several long moments like that, foreheads together, her hands grasping his wrists as he held her face, until he said, with a quick kiss to the tip of her nose, “Come. Now we can see your solicitor.” She heaved a sigh of long-suffering but released his hands.
