“Hoping for another interruption?” he teased. “By the by, what did your mother want with you yesterday that was so pressing she sent your father to fetch you?”
She snorted delicately. “It wasn’t pressing a’tall, she just needed someone to complain to about my father.”
“She’s not pleased that he’s back?”
“Oh, she is, she just hoped for a different sort of reunion with him.”
“I see,” he said.
She smiled to herself. He didn’t nor would he unless she finally told him the whole of it, but that still wasn’t her secret to share.
And then he added with a sigh, “My guardianship has ended.”
Her brows furrowed. “Why does that sound like you’re leaving us?”
“Because my excuse to be here is leaving us.”
He briefly explained that their companions had told the truth about royal blood, but not about who had it.
“Arlo is a king? Really? But he looks so unassuming!”
“That was the point.”
“And you kept that secret all this time?”
“No, I bloody well didn’t know, either, until last night,” he grumbled.
She laughed. “It suddenly feels like we’ve been in a theater all this time. Charley—Sebastian is it?—even asked me for advice about how to act like a commoner! And he said it was to please you!”
“You know he was laughing at us all the while for falling for his performance.”
“I doubt that. If anything he was having fun being someone so different from who he really is. Don’t begrudge him. I find it highly amusing now. But you don’t need to leave when he does. Aren’t you still avoiding duels here in the city—and axes?”
“Sebastian was able to hide in plain sight here, but I wasn’t. However, I did straighten out that mess I had been avoiding, enough so that the respective husbands no longer think I’m quite the culprit and have backed off. So you see, my excuses really are gone to remain tucked away in your home. While I won’t miss Charley, I will miss you. I can’t imagine a better traveling companion on a lifelong journey.”
It was the look he gave her when he picked a flower and handed it to her that made her heart race. Hope was a tricky thing, but in this case, it was suddenly soaring.
Until he asked her, “So you’re going to finish off the Season and find another groom?”
There was hesitancy in that question. And she wasn’t letting go of her hope yet. She moved a little closer to him until their shoulders brushed as they walked.
“No, someone else has already proposed,” she said.
He stopped abruptly and demanded, “Who?”
“You did,” she replied nonchalantly, and then put it out there to win her dream or lose it. “So you’re going to marry me.”
“I am?” he said with a very big smile.
“Yes, you did actually ask, twice I believe, so don’t even think of wiggling out of it.”
“Don’t know how to wiggle. I suppose you could teach me, but I’d rather you didn’t.”
She shoved him back when he started to lean closer. “That wasn’t an answer.”
“Of course it was. I love you, sweetheart, so much that I nearly lost you. I accept your proposal.”
“But I didn’t propose, you did. I was the one accepting.”
