Her laughter was forced. “It was very honorable of you to offer your good name for having ruined me, but I did not want you to marry me out of duty, or pity.”
“Will you please look at me?” As she raised her head, Alex’s amber eyes darkened with the struggle to find the words he needed. “Christa, I am not very good at saying what is most important to me. But you overrate my sense of duty if you can believe that I wished to marry you from any sense of obligation. I thought you had some idea of how I felt about you.”
Her heart started hammering. “You had wanted me to be your mistress. The circumstances of your marriage offer made it seem that it came from your remorse for what had happened.”
He said mildly, “Surely you noticed that my mood at the time was happiness, not guilt.”
Christa shrugged. “You looked pleased enough, but my mother once told me never to hold a man to anything said just before or after making love. She said men are incapable of logic then and it would be unsporting to take advantage of that fact.”
Alex gave his head a small exasperated shake. “I have had quite enough of your French cynicism, young lady! I may be slow to find the right words, but I meant exactly what I said then, as I do now.” He lifted her chin with one finger and looked deep into the clear gray eyes.
Speaking with deliberation, he said, “I have never been in love before, and I didn’t recognize the symptoms. I enjoyed your bright spirit, your intelligence, yourjoie de vivre, and I certainly wanted to make love to you. But through a combination of obtuseness and class prejudice, it simply didn’t occur to me that I could marry you until Stornaway.
“After that”—the amber eyes searched hers—“the unthinkable became the inevitable. I loved you when I thought you were a maid, and I love you now. More than anything on earth I want to marry you. I should have said that in Stornaway, but it was all so new, and I was hardly at my best.”
He stopped, then finished in a low voice, “Perhaps I thought there was so much love between us that morning that you must feel it too.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I did, but I thought all the love was on my side.”
Alex bent his head to hers, tasting the salt of tears on her lips. After a long wordless interval, he drew back enough to say, “I am asking you again, will you marry me? Or are you holding out for a rank more suitable to a countess?”
Ignoring the thrust, Christa asked warily, “What about Miss Debenham?”
He unexpectedly laughed. “Yesterday she informed me that her heart belonged to another and terminated our engagement. It seems that she was in love with a lord who was given up for dead two years ago, only to miraculously return recently.”
“What!” Christa jerked upright on his lap.
“Yes, quite,” Alex said with amusement. “I am developing a passionate desire to meet the mysterious Lord Radcliffe. He seems to have been very busy with my sister, my former fiancée”—he placed a quick kiss on her forehead—“and my beloved.”
Her lips parted with a small exclamation of happiness as she raised them to his. Eventually she sat up in a doomed attempt at dignity and said regretfully, “You are going away to sea next month.”
Alex grinned. “I have just changed my mind. Admiral Hutchinson can make some other post captain wildly happy by giving him theInvicta. I prefer to serve the navy ashore and sail only for pleasure.”
“Oh, Alex!” Christa wrapped her arms around his neck, and for quite some time they both forgot to breathe.
* * *
Charles and Annabelle waited in the reception room opposite the salon, hovering near the door as they wondered how their experiment in matchmaking would be resolved. The earl was pacing anxiously, until Annabelle finally laid a hand on his arm and said, “We’ve done the best we can. Now it’s up to them.”
Charles ran his fingers through his thick blond hair and smiled at her ruefully. “I know you’re right, but the waiting is hard to take.” He sighed. “At first, our conspiracy seemed like a good sort of game, but now all I can think of is how much it might mean to the happiness of Christa and your brother. When we began, I didn’t really appreciate quite what love meant. Now . . .” He gave one of the Gallic shrugs that made him look so much like Christa. Annabelle stared at him, wondering if she dared guess what he was implying.
They both jumped when the heavy chair crashed through the double doors of the salon and spun across the polished marble floor until it banged to a stop against the opposite wall. “Does your brother throw things often?” Charles inquired. “I assume that wasn’t Christa.”
Annabelle watched as the broken doors swung shut, cutting off the brief sound of raised voices. “I never saw Alex do anything likethat. Perhaps we’d better go in.” She started forward but Charles stopped her.
“As long as he is just breaking the furniture, Christa is safe enough. My sister has occasionally made me want to smash a few things myself; she has no talent for obeying orders. We needn’t worry unless we hear screams—either hersorhis,” Charles added with a faint smile.
Annabelle sighed. “You’re right. Alex would never hurt her, no matter how angry he was. But whatisgoing on?”
They waited with increasing impatience until Charles finally said, “I think it’s time to face the consequences of our meddling,” and marched across the foyer to the salon, Annabelle a step behind him.
The sight that met their eyes had nothing to do with violence. Christa was in Alex’s lap, her arms entwined around his neck, both of them oblivious of the world.
“Ahem!” Charles repeated himself twice before he was noticed. They both looked up; Christa tried to assume a more proper sitting position, but Alex held her firmly in his lap.
“I hope you will excuse me for not rising, Radcliffe, but I’m afraid that if I let go of your sister, she might run away again. She seems to have a habit of doing that.”
While Christa blushed, the earl said, “I trust your intentions to my sister are honorable.”
