“That,” he said roughly, “was long overdue.”
She laughed softly, still close enough that her breath brushed his lips. “You have no idea.”
He rested his forehead against hers, trying to collect himself. “We’ve wasted an unconscionable amount of time.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to waste another day.”
Her eyes lifted to his. “I was thinking the same.”
He huffed out a quiet, incredulous laugh. “Good. Because if we attempt a respectable six-month engagement, I cannot promise we’ll survive it without causing a scandal.”
“We will absolutely cause a scandal,” she said. “And not a subtle one.”
“Then we marry quickly.”
“Yes.”
“A special license,” he said.
She nodded. “As soon as possible. Before either of us does something reckless.”
He smiled. “Too late.”
“Reckless in a more public sense,” she amended, though the color rising in her cheeks suggested she was not entirely displeased by the distinction.
He bent to kiss her again. This time there was no uncertainty in him, no careful testing of boundaries. The kiss was slow and assured, shaped by the promise they had just made and the long familiarity that had always existed between them. It was not the startled wonder of discovery, nor the hungry urgency that had overtaken them moments before, but something steadier and deeper — a recognition, at last, of what had always been waiting beneath the surface of their friendship.
When he lifted his head, he did not release her at once. His hands remained at her waist, as though he were reluctant to surrender even an inch of the closeness he had only just claimed.
“You know,” he said quietly, “I once convinced myself I would lose Julien if I ever allowed myself to admit just how much I desired you… how much I cared for you in a very non-familial way.”
She looked up at him, her expression soft with affection and amusement both. “You were an idiot.”
“Yes,” he agreed easily. “I was.”
She slipped her hand into his, their fingers fitting together with an ease that felt both new and entirely familiar.
“You are not anymore,” she said.
He lifted her hand to his lips, brushing a kiss across her knuckles with a tenderness that made her breath catch. Then he drew her closer once more, not with urgency now but with quiet certainty, as though the future had shifted into alignment and there was no longer any reason to stand apart.
Outside the tall windows the day continued as it always had — carriages passing, voices in the street, the distant rhythm of ordinary life — yet within the small circle of his arms everything felt irrevocably altered.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, he was not bracing himself against change. He was stepping willingly into it.And this time, he did not intend to let her go.
Chapter
Seventeen
It had been two weeks since Adrian had proposed. Four days since the Banns had been read for the second time. And the Ton was ablaze with gossip and speculation. Why, they wondered? Why after all this time? Why had it taken so many years for these people who had been so much in one another’s company to discover that they suddenly possessed romantic feelings for one another? There was less kind speculation, as well. Had something inappropriate transpired? Was there some scandalous reason that they needed to wed and so hastily?
For her part, Eleanor simply didn’t care. Let them gossip, she thought. Let them all speculate to their hearts’ content. In the end, she had what she’d never dared dream of. Adrian Grant was in love with her, just as she had always been in love with him. But then the unthinkable happened. Something so terribly salacious that the gossip shifted from the pair of them to someone quite adjacent to them. To Miss Caroline Ashworth. The paragon of society, had been jilted. Not at the altar. She had not even made it that far. After three years of courtship and six long years of being almost betrothed, waiting for him to ask the question, her beaux had finally done so—but to someoneelse. He’d run off with his mistress. An actress of many talents apparently, not limited to the stage.
“It seems wrong to be so happy when Caroline is so painfully miserable,” Eleanor remarked to Adrian as they strolled in Hyde Park. It had become a routine of theirs almost every afternoon.
“Caroline is your friend and would never begrudge your happiness simply because her own has become tarnished,” he replied reasonably. “I am not unsympathetic to her plight, however.The Toncan be merciless. They love nothing more than to watch one of their own soar high and fall so very, very far. Like all scandals, it will eventually fade when something more titillating occurs,”
