She went very still.
“Watching your carriage roll through the gates, losing you…” he rasped. “It was worse.”
The library was very quiet.
“I want to keep stepping closer. I want to do it correctly this time, and I want to keep doing it for… for a very long time.”
Cecily thought about the girl who had sat under a yew tree in her mother’s garden and writtenI will only marry for lovein a violet notebook, convinced and afraid in equal measure that she was being foolish.
That girl knew something.
“I never needed you to be perfect,” she said. “I want you to understand that. I didn’t need a man without fear, or without mistakes, or who never said the wrong thing. I needed someone who would stand beside me, not in front of me. Not a man who would manage me or protect me or be responsible for me, as though I were something that required handling.” She paused. “Just beside me. As an equal. As a partner.”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“And I need you to stay there,” she continued. “When it is difficult and when it isn’t. When the fear arrives. I don’t need you to not be afraid. I need you to tell me when you are.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
“I can do that,” he relented.
She gave him a watery smile.
“I love you,” she said.
He kissed her.
He brought his hand up to her jaw, tilted her face, and kissed her with a thoroughness that was entirely deliberate, entirely his with the warmth of his mouth, the steadiness of his hands, the weight of his full attention brought to bear on exactly this and nothing else.
She felt him breathe her in. She felt the unhurried certainty of it, the tenderness of a man who had decided he did not need to hold back and was not going to.
She kissed him back with everything she had.
He pulled back just enough to rest his forehead against hers. She felt him smile against her mouth.
She pulled back just enough to look at him.
“Hello,” she said.
His green eyes were open and entirely hers.
“Hello,” he returned.
His hands were still in her hair, and he was looking at her with an expression that was simply reserved for her—only ever for her.
“I love you,” he murmured.
The house with the baby asleep upstairs and his sisters three floors above them was exactly what it was supposed to be.
“Good,” she said. “I intend to make regular use of that.”
He laughed and kissed her again, and she rose on her tiptoes, and the library was the only room in the world.
EPILOGUE
BRIGHTON, FEBRUARY
“She’s going to scream,” Edward said.
