“If he had,” Grace said, pursing her lips in haughty condescension, “perhaps I would already have married him.”
“I’ll hit him again.”
“Henry. What has become of you?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” he said on a heavy sigh. “Perhaps I know what it is, now, to be truly desperate.” Still his fingers stretched toward hers, an open invitation. “I promise you that I do appreciate you, and I will love you for the rest of my life if you will only give me the opportunity to prove it to you.”
Grace shifted in her seat and chewed at her lower lip. “I won’t do your reputation any favors,” she said. “We’re still scandalous, my family, and we’re not particularly repentant about it. People will say you’re marrying beneath you.”
“We can’t control what people say,” he said, parroting her own words back to her. “I know that you’ll know better. And I have come to understand that what people say is not nearly so consequential as what we know to be true.”
Once again her eyes flicked to her hands. She shifted just a little in her seat, and the pad of her thumb slid along the edge of one card. The queen of hearts he’d returned to her at last, eminently recognizable by the pattern printed upon its back, different from the rest of the cards. “You’re giving this back to me?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” he said. “That is a temporary loan. It’s mine, now.”
“Yours!” she said, on a short, incredulous laugh. “It’s mine. You’ve ruined a whole deck, you know.”
“I’ll replace the deck if you like,” he said. “But the queen is mine. It’s my good-luck token.”
Grace gave a dismissive little snort. “You don’t believe in such things, do you?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “But I do now. I’ve gotten accustomed to keeping it in my pocket. It gives me comfort to know it is there, so I must have it back.” His fingertips tapped out an anxious rhythm upon the surface of the table. “Besides,” he said, “it’s only fair that I should steal your queen, when you stole my heart.”
Her mouth popped open. “I did no such thing!”
“Oh, yes, you did. Perhaps it’s not your fault; you’re such a proficient little thief that probably you weren’t even aware you were doing it. But you did, and now—now it is yours. And you cannot return it, for I’ll only give it back to you again.”
Her eyes misted over, vibrant green glistening in the lamplight. Her lashes lowered, her lips trembled faintly—and she lowered her cards to the table at last. “Well,” she said. “It seems you’ve gotten the best of me. I have only seventeen points.”
He didn’t know when she had made the switch; probably he would never be competent enough to catch her at it. But the ace he’d dealt her had been replaced at some point, and the winning hand he knew she had once had was now reduced to only a queen and a seven.
Relief swept over him in a great, crashing wave. He reached for her across the small table, and this time, emptied at last of their cards, her hands slid neatly into his, her small, soft fingers intertwining with his own. “Does this mean—”
“Yes.” She leaned across the table, her lips catching at his.
He released a shuddering breath, drew in another that wasfragrant with the alluring jasmine scent she wore. “And you will—”
A soft sound curled in her throat as her lips parted beneath the pressure of his. “Oh, yes,” she breathed, releasing one of his hands to slide her fingers into his hair.
He hadn’t a ring for her. The estate jewelry was entailed; it was unlikely that even Mother would be allowed to keep so much as her wedding ring, much less that he would be permitted to retain the use of any others. But he would find something for her, something that suited her. Something she would be proud to wear, even if she would be only his wife and not his countess. “I have got to get you a ring,” he said. “And we have got to tell your family—”
“Not tonight.” Her fingers drifted down his chest, her palm coming to rest over his heart. “Tonight is for Danny and Hannah. They shouldn’t have to share it.” A light scratch of her nails. “But you can stay for the party.”
“They’ll shoot dried peas at me.”
A little laugh, light and airy and delighted. “Probably they will. Will you mind terribly?”
“No.” He hesitated. “Will your family suspect, do you think? Will they be…displeased?”
“They won’t suspect; they’ll know. But they want me to be happy, so it’s possible they’ll even be cordial.” She pressed a last quick kiss to his lips as she disentangled her fingers from his and rose to her feet. “Let’s go, shall we?”
“One moment. I need—” He paused as he glanced down at the cards upon the table, which had become rather scrambled about in the last few moments. He shuffled them about with his fingertips, searching through them. “Grace?”
“What?” she inquired innocently as she backed toward the door.
“This,” he said, as he lifted the queen she’d revealed in herhand from the table and held it up for her perusal, “is the queen ofdiamonds.”
A guileless blink. “Is it, then?”
