“No. But I’m rethinking that now. They have a right to know about you.”
“I’d be honored for them to know me. And the other girls.”
“The problem comes not with the girls. But because of Evangelina, and between us, as it always has.”
“Bedelia, forgive my interruption. But I came here to say something.” He put down his glass, swiveled his long legs to the side facing her, and moved the table out of the way. He put her glass aside too and took her hands. “When you ran me off, I was still young for a Mithran. Hot-headed. Difficult. Selfish. I was full of piss and vinegar, and I believed any woman should be tickled pink to be with me. I did not regard you with the respect and honor I should have. And you left.” He went silent, staring down at their hands, his thumbs rubbing over her knuckles.
“When you left me, I fell into the vampire ways for all I was worth, thinking that if you thought I was horrible, then I’d just go ahead and be horrible. I hated myself for every single one of those moments. I missed you every single one of those moments. I regretted what I had done and who I had become every single moment. Then one night I woke up and… I was done being a man without honor.
“In the last fifteen years, I have neither slept with nor had sexual relations with another person, not a Mithran, not human, not anyone. I came dangerously close with your Evangelina, under her compulsion, but I did not consummate with her.” I was able to keep that much of myself from her, because of my love for you. Because you didn’t want a man who couldn’t be true to you. I have been faithful to my love for you for fifteen years. I do not deserve the love of a woman like you. But I profess my love to you, forever, for as long as you shall live. Bedelia Everhart Shaddock, will you allow me to court you once again? To show you, to prove to you that I am yours now and always?”
The bond between them was open, free, and she knew he spoke the truth. Bedelia was smiling softly, her eyes on their joined hands. “Yes.”
Linc leaned over and kissed her hands, one and then the other. Moving slowly, in case she might pull away, he leaned in and kissed her gently on mouth. He was smiling and so was she when he eased away.
“Linc,” she said, softly. “We still have a lot of talking to do. But. Something you might ought to know. You can’t live here because mama would turn you into a toad if she knew we were taking up again, but I never did sign the divorce papers. We are still, legally, married.”
She yelped at the sudden motion, and then she was in his arms, being held like a baby, or like a starlet in an old a movie, and he was twirling them. Laughing. That laughter twined through her own heart and set her soul free. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held on tight.
