“Guess what I have in my pocket,” he said.
“I don’t know.” She circled his neck with her arms and smiled at him. “A priceless jewel you bought for me.”
“No,” he said. “Try again.”
“A snuffbox,” she said.
“I don’t use the stuff,” he said. “You are not even close.”
“A linen handkerchief,” she said.
“My other pocket.” He was laughing again, and she with him. “What do I have in my other pocket?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “How am I supposed to guess?”
“You should know,” he said. “What, of all other things, would I be sure to bring with me when I came for you at last?”
She shook her head, her smile fading.
“A special license,” he said, suddenly serious too. “A special license, my love, so that I can make you mine without delay once I have got you to say yes.”
“Adam,” she said, touching his scarred cheek. “Oh, Adam.”
“Will you?” he said. “Will you marry me, Fleur? I know I am no prize, and you know some unsavory things about me. But you would have my undivided love and devotion for the rest ofa lifetime. And you would be a duchess, if that is any lure, and mistress of Willoughby. Will you, Fleur?”
“Adam,” she said, tracing the line of the scar downward from his eye to the corner of his mouth. “Think carefully, do. Think of what you know about me, about what I was, what I am.”
“A whore?” he said so that her eyes flew to his in shock and her face flushed painfully. “I am going to tell you something, Fleur, and I want you to listen very carefully. Sybil had consumption. It is very unlikely that she would have survived this year. But she could have had that year or part of it, anyway. She could have had my support and even affection and all of Pamela’s love. But she had had one cruel disappointment in life and another lesser one last summer. She lost her will to live. She would not accept the comfort I tried to give her. She almost totally ignored Pamela. And finally, when she had word of Thomas’ death—before I did—she took what little remained of her life.”
“The poor lady,” Fleur said. “I do feel desperately sorry for her, Adam.”
“So did I,” he said. “But listen to me, Fleur. You were put into a dreadful situation over a year ago. You faced either a noose about your neck or a nightmare of a marriage if you went back home, or starvation if you stayed in hiding. But did you give in to self-pity? No. You fought, doing everything you had to do to survive. You did the ultimate, Fleur. You became a whore. I pity my wife. I honor you more than I can say in words.”
She swallowed. “Perhaps because you know you were the only one,” she said. “How would you feel if there had been a dozen others? Two dozen? More?”
“Fit to kill,” he said. “Before my marriage, Fleur, I slept with more than a dozen women. I could not possibly put a number on them, the women I bedded. How do you feel about that?”
She was silent for a while. “Fit to kill,” she said.
“Does it make you stop loving me?” he asked.
“No.” She laid a palm against his cheek. “That is in the past,Adam. I have no control over that and you cannot change it. I don’t care about your past.”
“And I don’t care about yours,” he said. “Will you be my duchess, Fleur?”
“Pamela?” she said.
“She seemed a little troubled that I was willing to sacrifice myself by making you my wife just so that I could also make you her mama,” he said. “I had to assure her that it was what I wanted too.” He smiled.
“She adored her mother,” she said.
“Yes, and always will,” he said. “We will have to make sure that she never forgets Sybil, Fleur. And we will hope that memory somewhat distorts the truth. We will hope that she remembers Sybil as a constantly attentive mother as well as a beautiful and indulgent one. You will never be her mother, but you can be her stepmother. And I can tell you from experience that it is possible for her to love both. I have faint, flashing images of my mother and have always associated those images with unconditional love. But I was dearly fond of my stepmother, Thomas’ mother.”
She lowered her head to his shoulder.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said, and closed her eyes. There were no other words to say. How could one put into words a happiness that filled one so full to the brim that it was almost a pain?
