He’d not planned to say this, not yet—but why not? Love was not enough for her. Fine. He knew the reasons, love aloneshouldn’tbe enough. It wasn’t. She deserved it all.
“You deserve my name,” he told her. “You deserve tobe duchess, God help you. Why you’d want this bit, I have no idea, but if you’ll do it . . .”
Isobel shoved herself back with a splash and began to tread water two feet away. She was shaking her head. The tears were falling faster now.
“Why are you crying?” he asked. He shoved from the rock and swam to her, collecting her. He kissed her ear, her jaw, her eye. “Isobel, I love you. Is this—?Whydoes this distress you?”
Isobel held on to his shoulders with a death grip.
Please don’t go, she thought.
Please don’t take the words away.
Please comprehend how afraid I am.
Please don’t go.
“I’m sorry,” she said, speaking to the wet skin of his neck.
“Sorry?” he demanded. “But what does that mean? There is no sorrow here. There is only joy and love and, if we’re quick and can manage some form of it, possibly sex.”
She laughed through her tears but shook her head.
“You do not feel the same,” he guessed.
Another laugh. She loved him so much she ached with it. She could heat this pool and illuminate the sky with how much she loved him.
“I do love you,” she whispered.
It deserved to be said. If nothing else.
A love this strong could not be denied or kept secret. She could say the words.
He gave her another shake. “Then what is it?”
In a burst of frustrated energy, she pushed away again. She swam to the rocks at the side of the pool. She stared up at the green swirls in the sky.
“What you’ve just . . . said—what you’ve proposed—will be so very difficult and complicated when we are back in England,” she said, speaking to the horizon. “It’s easily proclaimed here, but it will not be simple there.”
“I don’t care aboutsimple,” he said.
“You don’t have to care about anything at all,” she said. “Youare a duke. Your world is assured and provided. I, on the other hand, am a girl in a shop. I am responsible for my mother. I feel responsible for Samantha. She lives with her father but she finds purpose in the shop, and honestly, they use the small salary I pay her. I am responsible for my own very tenuous future. My aunt and uncle love me in good faith, and I would die before I disgraced them. I don’t merelycareabout ‘simple,’ I fight for it. I strive for simple, and straightforward, and the expected. Anything more feels like the first step to chaos and heartbreak.”
She heard splashing. He swam up behind her. She could feel him floating, an inch from her back.
She swallowed hard and continued. “For me to accept your declaration of love? To trust it? To guard my heart? This is a colossal leap of faith that threatens everything that has sustained me since returning to England. And it terrifies me. I want to believe it—I’m cryingbecause I want to believe it so much. But, Jason?”
“Yes?”
She shook her head, unable to finish.
He pressed himself against her back, caging her on either side with his arms. He kissed her neck, setting off an upward stream of fizzy shimmers inside her.
“Can you not admit,” she whispered, closing her eyes, “that the excitement of this mission, the spectacle of this sky, the remoteness of this country, of our verywet, very tingly proximity in this pool . . . all of this worked together to make your declarations seem probable? Of course you professed love amid all of this.”
“I will not admit that,” he said simply, kissing her jaw. “I’ve lived my life on the road, Isobel. I’ve experienced wild, remote, beautiful things in every corner of the planet. For me,real lifeis remote—it’s seeing different things, it’s spent in the field, on a mission. This is—”
“But that will all change at Syon Hall,” she insisted, spinning around.
