Her eyes burned with tears, but she didn’t interrupt him.
“So I began to look for other flowers in my garden that represent you. Daisies mean loyalty, and you have so much of that you would die to protect those lucky enough to have earned your love,” he said.
She found the happy daisy in the magnificent bouquets.
“Hyacinth,” he continued, “for the playfulness you show with my sister. Lilies for your exquisite beauty. And of course, daffodils, because they represent a new beginning, which is what I desperately hope you will make with me tonight.”
She faced him, overwhelmed by the thought he had put into every flower that surrounded her. And by the patience he was displaying when she could see he wanted to kiss her. But it was more than a kiss in his stare. It was so much more.
“I have cocked this up,” he said with a shake of his head. “From the beginning to the end. I realize that. I was cowardly and even cruel in my dealings with you over the years. And then Meg said that perhaps I was jealous of what you were hoping to build with Simon and that blew my entire world apart.”
She stepped back in surprise. “You? Jealous of what I was trying to build with Simon? No, that cannot be true. You didn’t even notice me before that night.”
He gave a wry smile. “Ah, that is what I might have told you too. Before I found…this.”
He picked up a leather-bound book from the table beside the door and handed it over to her. She looked at it. “This looks like one of your father’s journals.”
“It is, in a way. But only of one subject. You and me.”
She opened it, and her eyes went wide as she read the words written in the duke’s hand. Stories of times Kit had mentioned her, for good or for bad, over years and years. Long before he caught her at her worst with Meg.
“I don’t understand.”
“When he died, one of the last things my father said to me was to let you be there for me.” Kit caught his breath. “And it’s because he already knew what I couldn’t see. That I love you, Sarah. I have loved you for a long time and put on blinders so the intensity of that emotion wouldn’t hurt me. But I feel it, and I know it, and it’s true.”
She felt her mouth gaping, her eyelids blinking endlessly as she stared at Kit. Took in what he was saying. “Is this…real?” she asked.
“Very real,” he said, stepping forward and taking her hand. “Yesterday morning, before Hannah Beckett came and nearly blew our world apart, I was trying to ask you to marry me. It had nothing to do with protecting Phoebe. But I did it wrong because I still wasn’t willing to open myself fully. I am now.”
He dropped to his knees, and her heart lurched as she looked down into his utterly handsome and completely open face.
“Sarah Carlton, you are everything that my world needs in order to be complete. I would be lost without you. I love you and I want to make you happy every single day until my last breath leaves my lungs. I want to take care of you and let you do the same for me. I want you to raise my sister with me, and our own children, and help me become the duke you seem to think I’m capable of becoming. I want a life with you. A messy, unseemly, entirely wonderful life. Will you please do me the honor of looking past my many, many faults and marrying me?”
Sarah was shaking as she looked down into his eyes. Eyes that held her whole future in their warm, brown depths. And she had no more doubts, no more fears, and no more reason not to smile.
“Yes,” she said. “Oh yes, I will marry you, Kit.”
He moved to his feet, catching her in his arms as he did so. Their mouths met, passionate at first, gentling as he cradled her against him, and she felt the overwhelming sense of being…home. And realizing that her home had never been a place, but a feeling. With Kit it was safety and joy, pleasure and passion, and a faith that he would stand with her, and for her when she needed that.
Forever.
She parted from him at last, staring up at him with a smile that felt like it could crack her cheeks with joy. His expression was just as jubilant.
“Oh,” she sighed, loving how his fingers clenched along her spine. “I should go back to my room.”
He chuckled, a low, possessive sound that settled in all her nerve endings. “I do not think so. I don’t think I shall ever have you leave my bed again.”
He drew her back and they fell together, into his bed, into each other’s arms, and she had never felt so happy than she did in that moment.
Epilogue
Summer 1814
Kit smiled as he looked out over the ballroom in his home in London and saw all of his friends looking back. They were together again, all of them for the first time since their gathering over a year ago when his father had died.
Tonight, of course, it was for a far happier moment. Sarah stepped forward, Phoebe at her side. She was holding their son, Adam, named after his late grandfather. The baby was still in his christening outfit from earlier in the day. Their friends all cooed as the baby made a tiny fist and let out a squawk so that no one could doubt his debut into the wide world.
As Phoebe slipped into the crowd to greet the other children in attendance, Sarah put her head on Kit’s shoulder and let out a little sigh.
