There was nothing here for her. She wouldn't stick around while he was marrying one of those horrible shrews, or gleefully going off to war.
“I’m not so sure I could survive here, Your Grace.”
“I’ll see that you do,” he insisted.
“How? By keeping me as your servant?”
“You were never my servant.”
She wouldn’t try to figure out his meaning. If he felt something let him tell her, but only if he meant to remain with her.
“He’s here and I’m afraid of him,” she told him, staying on the important topic. “I don’t think he came from the twenty-first century originally. His clothes looked more like he came from here. And he had a sword with blood on it.”
The duke left the chair and sat in bed with her. When he opened his arms to her, she sank into them. “Before he brought me here, he asked me if I knew his wife. He said the pocket watch had eaten her up. I don’t know what he meant except that she traveled through time with it. First he asked me if I knew her, then he asked me if I knew you. At first, I felt bad for him. Crazy, you know? But when the police came, he held his sword to my throat.”
“If he wants to live,” Ben growled above her, “he better not show his face near you ever again.”
Fable closed her eyes and let herself take comfort in his strong arms and warm promises.
“Ben?” she asked, happy that he hadn’t blown out all the candles. When she opened her eyes, she could see him as well as feel him in her arms. “There’s something you should know about me. I used to cheat people out of their money in card games, dice–”
“Chess,” he added, sounding stern.
She stared at his neck in his untied shirt. “What do you think of me now?”
“Why did you do it?”
“To eat.”
He stroked her back and caught her gaze when she raised it to him. “Fable, I think the same thing about you that I thought this morning. You’re a wonder to my senses. You’re treading where none before you have ever dared go.”
She thought of the audacity of herself to attend his sister’s ball as an uninvited guest. “I’m sorry for involving myself in your private affairs.”
He smiled, staring into her eyes in the dim light. “Miss, you’re welcome in every part of my life.”
Was she?
“What about your war? What about your father’s wishes?”
He took in a deep breath, then let it out. “I was afraid you might have left Colchester after what I told you. Your absence made me certain that I don’t want you to leave. Mayhap I should try living my life and give being happy a try. Finally. The only way to be happy is to be with you.”
She was sure there were hearts floating from her eyes at his words. She wanted to laugh…and giggle…and cry tears of happiness. Was he real? Were her prayers for a different, safer life finally answered? And not only answered, but added to? “I want to be happy too,” she told him softly.
He closed his arms around her and held her tighter, closer. “Let me be the one to make you happy, Fable.”
She wanted it to be him. Could it be? “You’re the person in my life I didn’t know I needed. Or maybe I did know it and that’s why it was so tragic. You didn’t exist in that time.”
“I’m here now.”
With her ear pressed to his chest, his voice echoed through her as deep as the shadows.
“What about your sister?” she asked. Prudence West was a force to be reckoned with. She would be against anything they did. “Why does it seem she cares more about money than your happiness?”
“Likely because she believes money makes us happy.” He stroked her hair down her back while he spoke, lulling Fable to the brink of utter comfort. “She was thirteen when our parents were killed. She was our father’s only daughter, and the apple of his eye. His last wish means everything to her. As for my father, he knew I was a bit sentimental and he worried that I would marry for love and lose the fortune he took years to build. So he added a clause to his will that his last wish was for me to wed into a powerful family. My sister is determined to see his wish fulfilled.”
“What about you?” she asked then yawned. “You feel strongly about his last wish, don’t you?”
He shook his head. “The last thing I’ve given any thought to is taking a wife. I never really thought to live past the age of thirty years.” He smiled warmly when she gave his arm a slight slap.
