“I’ve missed you.”
He settled her in the crook of his arm, walking with her slowly toward the back terrace. “I have missed you as well, my dear.”
“Without you here, there was no one to talk with. No one to walk with me in the gardens. No one to sit with in the library or laugh with about the oddities of life.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. Though she had done that on occasion before, there was something different in it now. “There was no you, and I didn’t like that at all.”
Please let this be more than her pining for myfriendship.
“There has been no one here to hold my hand or to put an arm around me when I was afraid.”
He stopped up short. “You’ve been afraid? What has frightened you?”
“You.” She was so much more at ease with him than she had been in the weeks before that even that answer didn’t overly concern him. “I worried that you were marrying me for the wrong reasons. And, then, I worried that I was marrying you for the wrong reasons. And I worried that all of those wrong reasons meant that our marriage was ill-fated, and that if our marriage fell apart, I would lose you.”
“Is that why you were so opposed to this match?” He turned to face her. “Because you thought it would. . . ruin our friendship?”
“I couldn’t bear the thought of losing that, of losing you.”
He slipped an arm around her waist. “And what do you think now?”
“This will change things between us, but it doesn’t have to be a bad change. You will still be a wonderful, lovely, integral part of my life.”
George pressed a kiss to her forehead. “And you will always be the best part of mine.”
“I love you, George Carlton.”
Those five words froze him on the spot, his lips still pressed to her forehead.
“Not, perhaps, in an earth-shattering or life-changing way,” she added. “But I’ve only just begun allowing myself to think of you as anything other than my friend. I understand these things take time.”
“Are you saying that you believe youcouldlove me in that way?”
She pressed her hands to his chest. “I am saying I believe I might already, I simply have no practice in recognizing it.”
That was not a terribly difficult obstacle to overcome. “Then allow me to show you every day of our lives what it is to be loved and cherished and treasured. Allow me the opportunity to make that experience so clear that you need never doubt it.”
“I would like that very much.”
Was she saying what he thought she was saying? He pulled back and studied her face, her smiling, contented, perfectly happy face. “Does this mean you intend to carry on with the ball?” That seemed a safer way of ascertaining her intentions than asking right out.
“Only if you will dance with me the first dance, and the last, and all the dances in between.”
He brushed a hand along her cheek. “If I do that there will be little point in making a betrothal announcement, we will have made it by our actions.”
Her smile grew tenfold. “How very lower-class of us.”
“So long as we are treading that path, I believe I shall kiss you. And I do not at all mean a staid, brotherly sort of kiss.”
She set her hands on his shoulders once more. “I am ready to be thoroughly scandalized, George.”
He leaned in, savoring the long-awaited moment and the promise it held. His lips brushed hers once, twice. Breathing proved a chore, as did hearing anything above the pounding of his own pulse. But the feel of her tucked up to him, in his arms at last, wiped away any doubt, any worry.
He kissed her just as he’d promised he would, right there in the corridor. And long afterward, he simply held her, blessing fate and the heavens for bringing her into his life.
His sweet, loving Caroline.
His darling, wonderful friend.
Bonus Epilogue
