“Yes.”
She shook her head as if she still didn’t believe him. He grabbed both of her hands.
“I love you more than ever, Helen Boyd. Your last letter. I want your heart. I’ll do anything I can to get it.”
“Do ye know I love you?”
His breath seized in his chest. “No.”
“Well, then ye are a very stupid man. Because I do love ye. I have loved ye ever since ye named me. Ye called me a thistle and then I knew ye knew me, Jack Pike.”
The thing he had said to her in her bed, his impulsive truth she had accused him of rehearsing. Now, he knew what that look in her eyes had meant. And she was giving him that same look now.
“I don’t deserve your love, little thistle.” He reached up and put his hand over her heart again. It was racing, beating a tattoo against her chest.
“It dinnae matter if ye deserve it. Ye have it and ye cannae give it away.”
Here it was. He hadn’t planned for it to be this way. On his long trip north, he had developed some harebrained notion of coming to her cottage at four in the morning and bundling her up and putting her on a horse in front of him and taking her up one of the Benrancree mountains to see the summer stars and then the sunrise.
But maybe this was more fitting. The rain. Both of them soaking wet. The mud on their faces. Her sitting on top of him.
“Will you marry me, Helen Boyd, Countess of Kinmarloch?”
She squinted at him, suddenly prickly. “Who is asking me? Jack Pike, the most beautiful man in the world, or John MacNaughton, the Duke of Dunmore, the man who promises to save the people of Kinmarloch?”
“Whichever one is going to get yes for an answer.”
“And I will agree to marry whichever one promises to be a good husband.”
He sat up and took her face in his hands.
“I thought you would hate me.”
“I never hated ye. Never. Ye know that. I hated that I wanted ye and I thought I couldnae have ye.”
“You’re not angry about my deception?”
“Aye. I was angry at first.”
“At first? For how long? Three seconds?”
Her brow furrowed into a scowl. “Do ye think ye are marrying a fool? I have known Jack Pike was John MacNaughton ever since that letter came to me. In London. From the duke. Where ye said ye widnae marry. Ye used that wordpurported. A purported scoundrel. Said ye widnae be a good husband. It was in a different hand than yers, but I knew Jack Pike had written that letter.”
She had known in London. It was why she had told him she couldn’t be Jack Pike’s lover any longer. Because she knew he was talking about himself in the letter.
“Why didn’t you say something then? Punish me? Rip me to shreds for lying to you?”
“I knew I loved ye. But ye dinnae want to marry me, and I thought I would have to marry some other man. But if I let ye continue as ye were, being Jack Pike, I could keep ye out of Scotland as long as ye thought ye were fooling me. ’Twas selfish because the duchy needs its duke here. But. I. Couldnae . . .” Her eyes filled with tears and she trembled. “I couldnae bear the thought ye would be so near me, in the future, here. It was painful to hide my thoughts from ye. ’Tis nae my way. And ’twas hard nae to lie with ye again, to touch ye and kiss ye. But I knew it would be far more painful and hard to have ye near me for the rest of my life when I would be married to some other man I dinnae love. Ye must forgive me for lying to ye.” Her tears ran down her face, streaking the mud on her cheeks.
“Helen, only you would ask for forgiveness for going along with my lie. I’m the one who should be begging for your forgiveness. For the lies, for not knowing my own heart sooner, for sending you to that ball—”
Her fingers came up and pressed against his lips.
“Hush. I forgive ye. If ye’ll kiss me.”
He leaned forward. Her fingers fell away. He kissed that cider-flavored mouth he thought he would never get to kiss again. He kissed her softly and slowly, making sure he took her lips from every possible angle, their tongues sliding over each other in a dance far more intimate than a waltz.
He kissed her as if kissing was all they would ever share. He kissed her as if she had not yet accepted him and he might convince her with his kiss. He kissed her as if time had stopped and they were the only two people in the world. Because it had. And they were.
