“Will you help it come true?” He pressed her fingers to his lips, the gesture making her heart stutter. Something warm erupted in her belly. “You’ve been taking care of yourself and everyone else for far too long. Let me take care of you.” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “So long as you don’t object to living in sin first.”
Tucking her hand in his arm, she led the way back to his carriage. If they remained in place much longer, she wouldn’t be able to resist throwing herself in his arms, and thatwouldmake people talk. “What about your father?”
“I’ll tell Forbes—his butler—to send me another list of eligible females. He’ll be delighted that I’ve come around.” His voice was dry. “Meanwhile, I will feed you strawberries and wake up beside you every morning. What more could a man want?”
“I can think of several things,” she murmured, sending him a speaking glance that made his eyes flare. A delicious burst of heat crawled across her skin.
There was no way she could deny him now. No further reason she could think of to want to.
“Did you come here in a coach?” he asked.
“I rode.”
“Excellent.” As they reached his carriage, he clicked his fingers. “Warwick?”
A head poked out from the other side of the horses. “Yes, sir?”
“Lady Augustus has a horse stabled here. Arrange for it to be taken back to Lady Rowland’s stables.” He reached into his pocket and tossed a coin bag at the man. “Cost is no object.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you see Jacqueline?” George asked as he handed her up into the carriage.
Caroline swallowed the thick, heavy feeling in her throat. “I did.”
“And?”
“She looks happy.”
“Good.” He squeezed her hand. “Then you won’t object to bringing her to London next year to stay with us?”
“George—”
“I won’t hear any opposition, you know,” he said, closing the door behind them and shutting the curtains. “I know you love me.”
And she had tried so very hard not to let it show. “You are insufferable,” she told him, attempting to make her voice severe.
“Absolutely.” He kissed her knuckles again. “But I’m insufferably yours. Now, what do you think to ten thousand?”
“Excuse me?”
“Jacqueline’s dowry. Respectable, but not so much that she falls prey to fortune hunters. But enough to overcome any significant doubts about her birth.”
“Tenthousand?”
“I can afford to, you know,” he said.
“It’s not a question of whether or not you can afford it, George, but—” She hardly knew where her opposition was coming from. This was everything she had every dreamt of. The security she had not allowed herself to crave.
His smile fell away, and he reached for her, bringing her onto his lap and holding her tight against him. “Let me make one thing plain,” he said, kissing her cheek. “If she is yours, then I will love her; and if you wish to provide for her, then I will hand you the means to do so. That is love, Caro.”
When Lord Berkley, young and handsome, had whispered lines of adoration to her in the orchard, as he pushed up her skirts and took her against a tree, she had believed it was love. Yet at the first obstacle, when pleasure dissolved into obligation, he fled.
Somehow, George was still here, pressing tender kisses to the side of her face, brushing away her tears with gentle fingers.
“There is nothing you could do to persuade me not to love you,” he said, and Caroline gave into the inevitable. She turned her face into his, catching his mouth with her lips, and his handcame to her jaw, holding her against him with just the right amount of pressure.
“How can I say no now?” she asked.
