She slowly shook her head. “Not you.”
“You will keep me?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Victor didn’t think that Charlotte would reject him, but a part of him feared that she would. “That is a relief,” he admitted. “I have grown rather attached to you,” he teased, then grew serious. “I love you, Charlotte.”
Again, her eyes watered.
“Why did you step in front of me?” He needed to know. It couldn’t have been the money, even though that is what she had said, because with her gone, he would get nothing, so there had to be another reason.
“Because I love you. I could not let her kill you because of me.”
“Oh, Charlotte.” Victor leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. “It was not you. It was not me. It was greed.”
“I know,” she whispered.
Then Victor grinned. “And you love me.”
“Of course.”
“You say that as if I should know.”
Charlotte frowned. “You did not?”
“You never told me before.”
A blush spread across her cheeks. “I have loved you for a very long time, Victor. When we first married, it was an infatuation. When you returned, when I stopped being a fool and hiding who I was, and you accepted me, that is when I really fell in love with you.” She looked away. “I never told you because I did not believe that you would love me in return or that you wanted the burden.”
That was his failing and Victor placed his fingers on her chin and nudged so that she was looking at him again. “I have loved you too, Charlotte. I just never realized how deeply until I nearly lost you. Please do not step in front of a bullet again, especially for me, because I may not survive it.”
“Do people often shoot at you?” she asked with humor.
“Only my sister, but she won’t be bothering us any longer.”
Charlotte grew sober and bit her bottom lip. “What is going to happen to her?”
“We have not yet decided, but she and Mother will be dealt with.”
Epilogue
Charlotteglanceddownatthe cooing infant in her arms, her heart full of so much love that it might burst.
Last year had been so difficult with her worry about Victor’s return, the loss of a child, her father’s murder and being shot. The only thing that had gotten her through was Victor and his love.
She smiled. He loved her. He truly did. Charlotte never dreamed someone would love her as fully and as deeply as she loved him, and this beautiful little girl, born exactly a year after Maria and her mother had been forced to board a ship.
Maria had been charged with manslaughter, and not murder, and only because she was the daughter of a viscount and married to one as well. She had claimed the privilege of peerage and escaped punishment. Her husband divorced her soon after. Victor, after asking for Charlotte’s blessing, offered his mother a reasonable settlement to take Maria from England and never return. His mother had seen the wisdom of such since both were now shunned in Society, yet Victor remained unscathed by his sister’s actions. Marcus had escorted them to a ship bound for Canada and provided an address of where they could find lodgings and begin anew.
The reason Maria had destroyed the dam and set the fire was so that Victor would return to the estate and not be available to accompany Charlotte when she returned to her former home because of the death of her father. She had also counted on Charlotte not traveling to Thornhill Park with Victor, thus the two would be separate, which would allow Maria to bring about Charlotte’s demise without Victor’s interference and return home without anyone being the wiser.
It still gave her chills how calculating her sister-in-law had been. The only thing that had saved Charlotte from being Maria’s target had been her father’s Will.
Charlotte shook her head. She did not want to think of Maria, her mother or that horrible time and the weeks it took her to recover. It was much too fine a day and her daughter was smiling at her.
A beautiful little girl who may just inherit her father’s green eyes.
A delicious thrill trilled through her body when warm lips met her neck.
