“A choice about what?”
“Are you going to accept the earldom?” My question was barely audible.
His eyes slipped shut on a deep inhale and his forehead found my neck. The whisper of his breath against my skin sent my heart pattering.
“’S not a choice.”’
“What do you mean?”
“There is no choice. Not accepting it is only hurting other people. And I’d already made my decision.”
“You had?”
One by one the muscles of his back uncoiled.
“When?” I pressed.
Cold settled over the skin of my neck, abrupt and unpleasant, when he pulled away to meet my gaze. “You know, Davina. You know.”
I had known, he wasn’t wrong about that. But the irrefutable certainty... I hated it. I couldn’t be the reason he abandoned everything he’d worked for. Especially when I couldn’t—wouldn’t—be what he wanted.
“Kit—”
“Don’t. It’s my choice.”
“Not for me?—”
“It’s for a hundred reasons. Obviously, pretending it will go away if I ignore it isn’t working. You’re only one of the reasons. Admittedly my favorite reason but still only one. I know you don’t want to marry, I haven’t forgotten. But I wouldn’t have proposed if I didn’t understand what it means to be your husband.”
“What does it mean?” The question escaped in a breathy whisper. I’d never, not once, needed an answer more desperately.
He took a moment, his gaze searching my face. “You’re not an ordinary woman. An ordinary marriage would never satisfy you. No, I imagine I would spend the rest of my life chasing you all across the globe to keep you from being killed. Or from taking over a small principality. It’s even odds, I expect.”
Words from more than a decade ago came back to me with a barely concealed gasp. Gabriel, in the throes of denying his attraction to Celine, once told me that I should find a man who knew the things I was capable of and adored meforthem, rather than in spite of them. He may have been a terrible man, but he was a good brother to me.
“And you would be all right with that?”
Kit shrugged. “I’d prefer finer conveyance—I don’t fancy another head wound. And I suspect I wouldn’t do well atop an elephant or in one of those air balloon things, or whatever fantastical idea you’re considering now.”
My heart clenched pitifully. “It would be a large principality,” I retorted, refusing to consider the way my blood rushed. “It would not do to underestimate me.”
“Never,” he said, his forehead finding mine. “Perhaps a continent?”
“A large one,” I said and broke away to cover an indelicate yawn.
“Only the largest,” he vowed, then slipped a hand under my knees and tightened his hold around my ribs.
He stood without warning, leaving me to cling to his neck. “Kit!”
“Davina!” he squeaked, mocking the high pitch of my cry as he stepped around the desk and made for the door.
“We need to put everything away,” I protested.
“The benefit of accepting fate? Those are my things, I do not need to put them away.”
“But—”
“Come, we need to leave early tomorrow if we’re to reach Scotland before winter. You need to rest.” He swooped me down to grab one of the candles while he blew out the other.
