They regarded each other in silence across a little distance. She was envious of the breeze that lifted his hair. She wanted to be touching him, too.
“I know I’ve bungled things badly.” His voice was graveled. His breath came a little short, with nerves. With newness. “I’ve hurt you, and somehow in my selfishness, I’ve made you feel cheap, when you are...” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You are soindescribablyprecious to me. Mariana, I knew I loved you before I ever touched you. I was afraid to call it that. All I knew was that I was happy. And something in me couldn’t believe I would ever be allowed to keep that kind of love.”
His beautiful face, saying these astonishing things, suddenly swam before her. She pushed the tears away with her fingertips.
“Am I bungling this?” he asked urgently. “I’ve no experience at this, Mariana.”
She shook her head slowly.
“All I know is that I would rather die than hurt you ever again. All I want to do is show you how much I love you. If you would be so kind as to marry me, it would be the greatest honor of my life.”
Her knees were about to give way, and he knew. He was there at once, arms around her, holdingher up. She held his face in her hands, then looped her arms around his neck, met his lips with hers.
But only lightly, at first.
She had already told him with her body and with her eyes. But now, with a blessed new freedom to say whatever she liked and whatever she felt, she could say it aloud.
“I love you, too.” Those words felt like a language she’d never stop learning.
His arms tightened around her. “And you will be my wife?”
“Oh, yes,” she said softly. “Thank you. I think I will be so kind.”
They commenced to slowly kiss each other senseless.
And when they finally took a moment to breathe, they turned to admire the green pasture and their woolly occupants. And their future.
“The sheep look like little clouds,” she told him.
“Le pecore sono nostre,”he said. “The sheep are ours.”
Epilogue
Because the Archbishop of Canterbury, like everyone else, was in awe of the Duke of Valkirk and felt he owed him a debt of gratitude, a special license was at once granted. Mariana and James were married promptly by the local vicar, modestly and quietly beneath a bower of blossoms on a farm in Sussex. In attendance was nearly everyone who presently lived at The Grand Palace on the Thames and Valkirk’s son, Arthur, and his wife, Lady Cathryn, and some observant sheep.
“With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” The duke’s voice thrummed with emotion when he said the words. He’d never fully understood how outrageously passionate they sounded, tucked in surreptitiously as they were amidst the solemnity of the rest of the vows from the Book of Common Prayer. But it was true: his bodywashers. He would lay down his life for her. He would give her the world, if he could. Or at least, as many pairs of shiny satin slippers as she wanted.
There was nothing modest about the picnic that followed. It was supplied by Helga and the kitchenstaff, paid for by the duke, and talked about with misty reverence by Mr. Delacorte for years to come.
(Mr. Delacorte had sold a few impotency cures to a viscount and a baron, respectively, during the intermission of the Night of the Nightingale.)
Angelique and Delilah and Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt were not shocked, though, when the duke informed them, quite calmly, of his impending nuptials, they did pretend to be surprised.
“One could almost have predicted it,” Angelique said. “Do you suppose we’re to blame?”
“I think one might say we’re to thank,” Captain Hardy countered.
Both he and Lucien felt protective of the duke’s happiness. The unknowable man had found someone who knew and loved him. They had both experienced this sort of miracle at The Grand Palace on the Thames, and had been transformed.
“Do you suppose they broke the rules while they were there?” Delilah asked.
They were all quiet, imagining how and when it had all happened. The tiptoeing to the duke’s suite in the dead of night, because that’s what must have happened. The tiptoeing back again.
Then again... Delilah and Angelique had stolen moments with their husbands against their own rules, too.
Of course, it was possible it had been the world’s most chaste affair. A meeting of hearts and minds over Italian lessons.
Looking at the two quietly besotted people, they really didn’t think that was the case at all.
