She went to him and kissed him, a long kiss, the kind she gave him to tell him she both loved him and desired him. After the kiss was over, she began to button his waistcoat.
Her husband chuckled. “When you kiss me like that, I’d rather you be undressing me than dressing me.”
“Dinner first, Phineas. I know you must be hungry.”
He raised his eyebrows. “For you. Always.”
“For dinner, husband. Hungry for dinner.” She put her hands to his cravat. “I know I won’t tie it as well as Dashwood, but I must try.”
“I like you doing it, Caro. And I’m so relieved you’re not angry.”
“The only thing I’m angry about is that you kept the letter where I jilted you.”
“Now, see here.” He tried to make his face and his tone stern. “Lady Lutton told me that you and I did not have an understanding so there was no jilting involved. No one jilts Phineas Edge.” He could not maintain the sternness and broke into a grin.
She smiled, too. “I see.”
“Such a pretty smile. Shall I get rid of the letter, darling?”
“No.” She finished tying his cravat. “But I wrote another. I want you to put it in the box after you read it.”
“You wrote me a letter?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“You can have it when we go to bed.”
Her husband ate dinner with alacrity that night. He meant it to be funny, to exaggerate his impatience to get to bed. But his eagerness was real, she thought. He wanted to read her letter. He knew she still had difficulty expressing herself as she wanted to, even with him, and he wanted to know her thoughts.
And that was why she wasn’t angry about the diary. He had always wanted to know her. And his knowing her seventeen-year-old self had made him do enough of the right things to keep her from breaking her word about marrying him. And marrying him had turned into loving him, the most miraculous thing that had ever happened to her. Yes, reading the diary had made him do silly things—like pretending to know poetry—but he had also done wonderful, affectionate things, like falling in love with her dog.
When dinner was over, she made her way toward the drawing room.
“Darling?”
She turned. He was standing at the foot of the stairs.
“Aren’t we going to bed now, Caro?”
She gestured at the drawing room door. “My book.”
His face fell. “Oh.”
Her husband looked so disappointed she couldn’t twit him any longer. “I need something to read while you read my letter.”
He grinned. “I’ll wait.”
They climbed the stairs together, Lavinia bounding ahead of them. In Phineas’ bedchamber, she reached under a pillow and took out a sealed letter and gave it to him. He sat in a chair and broke the seal and unfolded the letter, Lavinia settling at his feet. Caroline sat on the edge of the bed and although she opened her book, she did not read it.
She watched her husband read instead.
To my husband, my friend, my own darling, my love:
Today, I discovered you know (and have known for a while) that you are not the man I thought I would marry when I was younger. But what you don’t know is that you are the man I didn’t dare to dream of.
Let me tell you first, to appease your vanity, you are far too good-looking for me to have thought of you as a husband. Husbands are meant to be plain, not so handsome and arousing that they make you think wicked thoughts all hours of the day and night.
