Her hands were shaking, so he held them in his own, because if he was going to make promises, he had to start fulfilling them, too. He said he would support and protect her. That started now.
“I know I’m likely not good enough for you, princess,” he said. These words were harder to get out. “But I will try. And if you let me, you will never be alone again. Because I—I love you, Clio. I love you in a way I didn’t know Icouldlove someone. So, yes. I’ve gone mad. And I’m not sorry about it in the least.”
Clio stared at him for the longest seconds of his life. He had just started to fear that this was going to go very, very badly for him, when she let out a sharp, shocked burst of laughter?—
And then threw her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth to his so suddenly that he barely caught her in time.
Thank God, Hector thought. And then,Oh, bollocks.
Because they were still standing in plain view of the party. And he had promised to protect Clio. Which, right now, might mean protecting her from herself.
“Princess,” he murmured against her lips, hating himself for doing it, “people are watching. They can see.”
Clio pulled back for a moment, glancing at the curious eyes watching them from inside. Then she rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“Let them,” she said. “I don’t care what they think.”
She pressed her lips to his again.
EPILOGUE
For all her talk, Clio learned that shedidhave an upper tolerance level for half of Society watching her kiss her husband, and that level struck after about six seconds.
But she wasnotdone kissing him, so she grabbed him by the hand and said, “We’re leaving.”
There was surely something comedic in her broad-shouldered mass of a husband letting her pull him along like a pup on a leash, but Clio was too full up of bubbling happiness to worry about any such thing.
Helovedher. He wanted a life with her.
She wanted those things, too, but she also wanted to be kissing him immediately, if not sooner.
Their coachman had been leaning against the carriage casually, eating an apple with an intense focus. He jolted with surprise when Hector and Clio approached the carriage where it was parked in the queue, rather than summoning it from the front of the house, as was conventional.
“Ah—good evening, Your Graces,” he said, chucking the apple into the nearby bushes and wiping his hands discreetly on his pants. “I’m sorry that I didn’t realize you would be leaving so early; I would have?—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Hector said, offering a casual gesture of recognition that was not at allde rigeurfor dukes. It made Clio want him even more desperately. He wasn’t some perfect, polished gentleman, and she didn’t want him to be. She just wanted him to behim.
“Just get us home,” Clio added, and Hector turned to beam at her at the wordhome.
He hauled her up into the coach with urgent, grasping hands. They closed the door behind them, and, after that, Clio noticed little that wasn’t the man before her. They kissed like they’d been starving for it, like they would drown without it. Her hands wandered everywhere she could reach, traveling over his cheeks and down his jaw, over the breadth of his shoulders and down his arms until their fingers laced together.
“I hate these bloody clothes,” Hector grumbled as he yanked at his cravat. An inch of throat was exposed, and Clio kissed that, too.
“I love them,” she said. “Or, I loved seeing them on you before. Now, I’m coming around to your way of thinking.”
“You liked how I looked?” he asked, and there was a tiny thread of vulnerability in there. It was a question straight from the boy who had always been called a monster.
She gripped his face between her palms.
“I always love how you look,” she told him matter-of-factly. “I promise you that one of the very first things that annoyed me about you was how handsome you are. Do you know how hard it is to get angry with someone when they are so lovely to look at?”
He gave a pointed look at her, not that he could see very much from where she was perched on his lap. Her skirts were goddamneverywhere.
“I have some idea,” he said.
She kissed him. “I love that youtried,” she said, not quite removing her lips from his. “I love that you did it for me.”
“I would doanythingfor you,” he vowed.
