“Aren’t you the one who told me that Julianna wanted a man who’d climb onto a sideboard for her?”
“A sideboard, yes, a second-story window? That’s risking death.”
Rhys glowered again. “Are you saying you wouldn’t try to scale the wall if Frances was up there and you had no other way of getting to her?”
Kendall cursed under his breath. “Damn it. You’re right.” He jumped back down to help Rhys contemplate the wall.
The two of them were staring at the sheer flatness of the thing, their heads cocked in opposite directions, when a noise to their left caught their attention.
“Rhys,” Julianna’s voice rang out.
He swiveled around, at first doubting his sight. But Julianna was there. She had on a dressing gown and was wearing slippers. “What are you doing out here?” Rhys asked. “Did you hear us fighting in the corridor?”
“No.” Julianna shook her head. “Mary woke me. She said I had a visitor and I’d better hurry because Papa had thrown him out.”
Rhys threw back his head and laughed. “Remind me to buy Mary a hothouse full of buttercups.”
Tears sparkled in Julianna’s eyes. She took a step closer to him. “Why are you here, Rhys?”
Rhys limped over to her and took her hands in his, rubbing his thumbs across her knuckles. His gaze caught hers. “I may not have had the chance to climb up on a sideboard, but I came to tell you I love you, Julianna. I know I should have said it sooner, but I’m saying it now. And if you’ll forgive me for being a damn fool not once but twice, I want to ask you to be my wife.”
“Let me assure you, Lady Julianna, he was quite prepared to attempt to scale the wall,” Kendall added, leaning from inside of the coach.
“You were going to climb up the wall?” Julianna asked, searching his face. “Up to my bedchamber?”
“That’s right,” Rhys replied. “I was just about to ask Kendall here if he happened to have a length of rope in his coach.”
“The answer is no,” Kendall chimed in.
Julianna squeezed Rhys’s hands. “Oh, Rhys, evencontemplatingscaling a wall is better than jumping up on a sideboard as far as I’m concerned. And I heard you wrestled with Papa over me.”
Rhys limped one step closer to her.
Julianna looked down at his foot, worry lining her countenance. “You’re limping. Your injury from France?”
“Yes, that and the toss into the street, courtesy of two of your father’s footmen. But I haven’t slept in days. I couldn’t stop thinking about you getting married to the wrong man.” Rhys dropped to one knee. “Julianna, here, in front of your father’s house, I am asking you to please become my wife.”
Tears slid down Julianna’s cheeks. “You do know my wedding is in a few hours?”
Rhys shook his head. “No, your wedding wassupposedto be in a few hours. Now, I hope, it’s cancelled.”
“I’ll have to toss over Murdock, you know?” She stared at him intently.
“I know. But Murdock will live, and according to my friend Kendall, here, he’ll be better off for it.”
“He will. He truly will,” Kendall dutifully agreed, in a muffled voice from inside the coach.
Julianna pulled Rhys up, jumped into his arms, and hugged him. He lifted and spun her around in a somewhat lopsided circle and kissed her passionately.
“The truth is, I was going to call off the wedding this morning and come looking for you,” Julianna said as he kissed her.
He lowered her back to the ground and grabbed her hands again. “You were?”
“Yes, we’re both obviously too stubborn for our own good. We never should have let it go this long.”
“Agreed,” came Kendall’s voice.
“I love you, Rhys. I love you and I should have told you as much that day at the gamekeeper’s cottage.”
