Danny shook her head, the idea mortifying. “Could you imagine the conversation over tea?Lovely biscuits, Your Grace, and did I mention I get wet when a knife slides across my skin?” She buried her face in his chest. “They’d be appalled.”
Percy laughed. “You’ve not spent enough time with the Duchess of Camine. She’d ask for details while hosting a royal dinner party. And besides, you fret for no reason. No one need know,” he said. “It is, after all, not anyone’s business.”
She rolled her face to the side to be heard. “You’re right.” And he was. But she couldn’t release the tension in her chest. In her heart, she knew she wouldn’t breathe easy until she’d shared the words out loud. “It feels like a lie, hiding as I do. What I like, how I feel, is who I am.Youaccepted me.” Was it so inconceivable to think others would too?
He leaned down and kissed her on the nose. “There is nothing wrong with you.”
She frowned, disbelieving. “Just everyone else?”
“Exactly!”
She rolled her eyes. “Arrogant as always, believing your opinion is the only one that matters?”
His smiling expression sobered. Taking her hand in his, all trace of humor was gone from his voice when he said, “No, my love. The only opinion that should count is yours. How you feel and what you like is who you are.” She smiled at the reference as he continued. “You must learn to accept yourself, and if you need to confide in someone—other than your fabulous husband—then do what you must, for you and no one else. I would never presume to get in the way of what you need to be happy.”
Danny felt the tears running down her cheeks before she acknowledged the overflow of gratitude. Not just gratitude. She sat up and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth, letting her actions speak of the feelings she had yet to voice. There was no need to state her love; Percy was a man of action, and actions always spoke volumes louder than mere words.
Percy ran his palms down her arms until both their hands were twined together, feeling the same warmth of emotion. “I love you.” His voice was quiet, but his expression brooked no denial.
Danny’s legs had fallen asleep during their awkward positioning minutes ago and the chill from the banked hearth had seeped into her bones, but her husband’s nearness now flooded her body with warmth... and wicked heat all over again. They hadn’t yet coupled on the window seat, an oversight to be rectified as she regained feeling in her toes.
“I know you don’t share my feelings yet,” Percy said, interrupting her fantasies of ruining the window seat stuffing with a brutal pounding of their bodies.
“I mean to change that,” he continued. “For now, I’ll love enough for the both of us until you find a way to open your heart to me.”
Blinking, Danny drew back, sure the cleverest man she’d ever known had said the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. “Since when don’t I love you?”
He smiled. “I meant as more than friends and partners.”
“So did I.”
He stilled. “You love me?” His expression pinched. “Since when?”
She shrugged. “Since you kissed me at the Leishires’ ball or thereabouts.”
For whatever reason, her answer seemed to anger him. “You mean you’ve loved me forthree years? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Danny scoffed. “I spoke through my actions.”
“That’s not how this works,” he said. “You. Never. Said. A. Word.”
“I didn’t see a need.”
“Of course there was a need!” He ran a hand through his hair. “How else am I supposed to know?”
Danny rolled her eyes. “Men.” Really, the creatures were impossible. “Then let me be perfectly clear, sir. I, Daniella Cole, Duchess of Grandfellow, friend to hopeless criminals and winner of archery wagers, love you.” And then for good measure... “I love you, Percy.” She shook her head. “Frankly, if being willing to strip naked and pass myself off as a hired mercenary for you isn’t enough of a statement, there’s nothing else I can do.”
*
Percy blinked, dumbfounded.She loved him. “Why?” He was ornery and a liar. Yes, they’d shared a heightened emotional situation surviving a near splatting of their persons all over Fellow Hall by a sadistic madman, but that had been days ago.
“I don’t understand,” he said in all seriousness. “I won’t dance and refuse to eat anything resembling a potato.” Aside from keeping the male population from offering for her hand every other minute, his only redeemable quality was an encyclopedia of erotic positions and the stamina of a racehorse. “Why on Earth would you fall in love with me?”
Idiot!Why was he probing for reasons when he should be kissing her senselessly before she changed her mind?
Expression bland, she must have garnered his disbelief and unwillingness to listen to insipid nothings because she said in all seriousness, “Why else? You fuck like a tiger.”
Laughter burst between his teeth, great bellows he hadn’t realized he could produce. Composing himself with effort he said, “A tiger?”
