She pressed her lips together.
“I am not good at this,” he said. “I want you to have a realistic understanding of what that means going forward. I will haveopinions about things and I will express them more firmly than is always necessary. I will arrange things without consulting you and have to be reminded that this is not how things work between us, and I will probably have to be reminded more than once.” He looked at her steadily. “But I love you.”
“You…” Temperance could hardly believe the words she was hearing.
And I want you to stay because this house is better with you in it and my son is better for knowing you.”
There was a pause, and they locked gazes.
“I am better, too, in ways I did not plan for and could not have predicted. I would like for that to continue.” He paused. “Permanently. if you are willing.”
“Are you proposing to me?” tears stung at her eyes but they were not born out of any sadness. “It was not a very conventional one, if so.”
“I prioritized clarity over convention,” he said. “So you will have to forgive me for that.”
“Most proposals involve getting down on one knee,” she said.
“I considered it,” he said. “I decided against as the gesture would have distracted from what I was trying to say.”
“Very practical of you,” she said, smiling.
“Consistently,” he said, and there was something in his voice that was dry and warm at the same time, the version of him she had been looking for since she sat down, and she felt it settle in the room between them like something that had been waiting to arrive.
She looked at him. At the candlelight on his face and the dark blue of his eyes and the scar at his wrist that she understood now, and she thought about everything that had accumulated between the night he arrived in her hallway with mud on his shoes and this evening, and she thought about Albina saying do not make the same mistake.
“Yes,” she confirmed, and smiled at him. “Oh, heavens. The answer was always going to be yes.”
Something in him relaxed.
The next course arrived before either of them found another word. And just like that, Harper gathered himself again. His shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly, his expression settled into something composed and deliberate, and when he reached for his wineglass it was with that same quiet precision that defined everything he did when he wished to be entirely in control of himself.
Once, that version of him had felt distant.
Now, it felt intimate in a way she could not quite explain.
She realized that she liked him far more this way, the quiet tension of watching a man who could be both entirely composed and completely undone.
When he glanced up and caught her watching him, the faintest hint of a smile touched his mouth, as though he understood exactly what she was thinking and had chosen not to remark upon it.
“I suppose,” he said after the footman had stepped away, “there are certain practical matters that we ought to discuss.”
“Practical matters?” she repeated, lifting her brows slightly as she reached for her glass. “That sounds rather ominous, I think.”
“It is not intended to be,” he said, though there was a trace of amusement in his voice that softened the statement.
“No?” she asked lightly. “Because it sounds very much like I am about to be informed of how things are done in this house, and I should like to know whether I am expected to agree with all of it in advance.”
“That would certainly be the most efficient arrangement,” he said, his expression steady, though she could see the humor he was not quite allowing himself.
She leaned back slightly, the warmth of the moment settling easily between them.
“And if I refuse to agree?”
“Then,” he said, pausing just long enough to make her wait for it, “we will discuss the matter further.”
She laughed softly.
“That is not nearly as reassuring as you think it is.”
