“If you were distressed,” he continued, “then you must have some feelings for me…or so it stands to reason.”
“I…I can see how you might have been led to such a conclusion,” she said now in a voice no more than a whisper. “But you’re wrong—”
“Am I, Marguerite?”
He’d near whispered, too, his lips finding hers before she could think to wrest herself away from him…though no such thought even entered her mind.
Instead the warm pressure of his mouth upon hers was the most wondrous thing she’d ever known. Without a moment’s hesitation she leaned into him, sighing softly.
She couldn’t say if he kissed her for long or only for a moment, she was so lost to the sensation of his lips moving over hers, their breaths melding, her heart racing in her breast. Only when she fluttered open her eyes, not even aware that she’d closed them, did she find him once more staring down at her.
Her body flush against his, her arms wound around his neck. And a look upon his face that wasn’t roguish at all, but boyishly vulnerable in a most unexpected way that flew straight to her heart.
“I wasn’t happy when you left so abruptly last night, so I must have some feelings for you, too. More than I’d ever thought possible. Marry me, Marguerite Easton.”
Her breath stopped. She could but blink at him, the words at first not sinking in. Had he just asked her to…?
“Be my wife…my duchess one day.”
She couldn’t have been more stunned, and she was certain for an instant she’d misheard him—a second time! “Y-your duchess?”
His sudden smile warmed her, and he nodded as he held her tighter. “You’re the woman I want and no other. I knew it last night from the moment I saw you. When I decided to return to England, I wondered what might have become of you…that you might already be married—”
“No, not married,” Marguerite breathed, finally finding her voice. She’d begun to tremble, everything happening so fast, her mind spinning. He smiled again as if he’d read her mind, and bent down to nuzzle her cheek.
“I know it’s unexpected…and we’ll have to wait until my father—well, he’s very ill and hasn’t much longer to live—”
“I…I don’t understand,” she began, but when he raised his head to gaze at her, Marguerite saw that his expression had darkened.
“He has forbidden me to marry anyone but a woman of noble family—”
“Oh, no, please, no!” Marguerite’s outburst sent another startled pair of mourning doves fluttering from their perch as somehow she managed to wrest herself from Walker’s arms. Yet he caught her before she had run two steps from him and pulled her back into his arms.
“Marguerite, what’s wrong?”
She shook her head, tears biting her eyes, and pressed her balled fists against his chest. “Please, let me go! I cannot marry you, it would never work between us! Thetonwould never accept you with me by your side. The women here were so cruel to me last Season, slighting me at every turn. I’m only a vicar’s daughter and you are the son of a duke! I would never have come back to London if not for Corie wanting me to stay here as company for Lindsay—no, no, I cannot!”
Now she struggled mightily, sobbing, but Walker gathered her even closer into his arms, his husky voice lowered to a fierce whisper.
“Woman, I’ll not live without you. My decision has been made. We are more suited to each other than you could ever imagine, and I’d sooner take a vicar’s daughter to wife than any titled wench!”
“Wench?” Marguerite had abruptly ceased her struggling, a giggle rising in her throat even as she hiccupped through her tears. To hear Walker call a woman of the nobility a wench was so ridiculous, so absurd…
Walker began to laugh, too, a low rumbling from deep in his chest as he cupped Marguerite’s face and gently caressed her tear-stained cheeks with his thumbs.
Laughing with him now, she reached up to clasp his hands and together their mounting mirth echoed around the garden.
“L-Lady Belinda…a…a wench?” Marguerite barely choked out, her sides aching now from laughter as she imagined what that blond beauty might think of Walker’s unlikely description.
His firm nod and engaging grin only made her smile so broadly, too, that she couldn’t believe she’d been crying only moments ago.
Yet within the next instant Walker grew quiet and she did as well, the two of them staring at each other again in that lovely garden filled with fragrant blooms, budding trees, and chirping birds.
He laced his fingers with hers and brought them to his lips, kissing them, his voice once more grown husky and low.
“Say you’ll marry me, Marguerite…whenever that might be, whatever might come. We’ll face all of it together, you and I—”
“Yes, Walker, I’ll marry you.”
