“Odd,” he murmured, stroking her face with such gentleness it near broke her heart. “You rarely speak to me.”
“What are you talking about?”
His eyes had none of the sharpness she associated with him. They were still unfocused, looking half through her. “Kiss me, Louisa, and let us forget.”
“Forget what?”
“Everything.”
She sat up on him, taking his wrists so he did not reach for her again. “This is not a dream, Henry.”
He gave a lopsided smile, so relaxed and easy—so different from the man she knew him to be while wakeful and alert. “Of course not.”
“I mean it. Wake up.”
“I would rather kiss you again.”
There was nothing else for it. “I love you,” she told him, and slapped him across the cheek.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Henry’s dream had been by far the best he’d had of her. He tried to hold on to the feeling, but it slipped away as wakefulness, and the remainder of his hangover, crashed back over him. He blinked, eyes gritty, resigned to spending the rest of the day in the study and meeting with the steward.
That was, until he became aware of a weight on his stomach. He blinked again and brought his gaze to focus on the sight in front of him. Louisa was perched on his stomach, knees on either side of his hips, flexing her fingers.
Could it be he was still dreaming?
She raised her brows at him. “Will I be obliged to strike you again?”
Dazedly, he rubbed his cheek where he still felt the lingering sting of her last blow. “I would rather you didn’t.”
“Then do me the honour of believing I exist this time around.” Her words were prim, but there was a dancing, mischievous light in her eyes that made his head spin.
“Did we kiss?” he asked.
“Strictly speaking, you kissed me.”
He pushed into a sitting position, but although she slid down his body and into his lap, she made no effort to extricate herself from him. “I think,” he said, “I must be dreaming.”
“Perfectly real, I assure you.”
“But how did you come to be here?”
She reached up to pinch his cheek, her mouth twitching. “There is a wonderful thing called a carriage—truly a miracle of modern ingenuity—that conveyed me to—”
“Wretch,” he said, taking her hand and bringing it to his mouth before his beleaguered brain thought perhaps she would not want him to. But she was showing no signs of being averse to such treatment: she merely smiled and shuffled a little closer. “Why are you here? Did you receive the painting?”
“And your note.”
His brow wrinkled. “I left a note?”
“Avery was right,” she said with some delight. “Youweredrunk. Heavens, I thought I would never see the day where you proved beyond doubt that you are human.” Her laugh died as she frowned. “I should begin with an apology.”
“I don’t mind being woken in this way,” he assured her.
“Not about that, although it bodes well for what I’m about to say.” She took a breath. “You did me the honour of asking for my hand in marriage, and I was . . . less than kind in return.” Her smile was oddly, unusually shy, and he thought with dazed certainty that he could have looked at her for the rest of his life and not tired of it. “The problem is, Henry, I made an error in refusing you, and I only realised the extent of it when I saw the lengths you went to in order to retrieve my damn painting.”
“You have a foul mouth,” he said, unable to prevent himself from kissing her jaw.
