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“Sara bid me give it to you,” she said, pulling the box from him and taking the ring back out. “And I’ve just done so. You’d not be so churlish to refuse a gift from me, would you?”

Though she teased, her words held more than a question about a ring. She asked if her opinion meant something to him.

He didn’t hesitate when she handed the ring to him once again.

“I’d not refuse anything from you,” he said, turning it around in his fingers. “Why does Geoffrey not wear it?”

Emma frowned. “I wondered the same.”

He handed it back to her, and Emma returned the ring to its box.

“Thank you,” he said. “I shall wear it with great pride.”

Emma put the box on the stand beside the bed and turned back to him. God, she was lovely.

“Did you know him well?” Emma asked.

“Aye, we sometimes wondered if he and my father were actually brothers. They looked similar, in build at least, and both spent their lives devoted to their people, to Northumbria, and to their families. He was a good man. One of the best.”

He spoke of Richard, but of his own father too.

And he could tell Emma knew it. She reached for his hand and squeezed it as she laid her head on his shoulder. What would his father have thought of Emma?

“He’d have liked you,” he said. “Immensely.”

“Richard?”

“Nay. Well, aye, I’m sure he would have. But I meant my father. He deferred to my mother in many things, save one.”

She shifted but did not look up.

“Everything about him was ‘large.’ Not just his stature, but his movements. His speech. When he walked into a room, you knew he was there.”

“Is that a kind way of saying your father was not very dignified?”

“It is.” Garrick couldn’t see her face but forged ahead anyway. “My mother often chided him, but he never changed his ways. She eventually gave up on him and concentrated instead on ‘civilizing’ the sixth Earl of Clave.”

“You?”

“Aye.”

Emma looked up at him then. “And they respected him still?”

He cupped her face in his hands. “They did, my love. Those of us who knew him best respected him more for his willingness to defy convention. He would have been proud to call you his daughter.”

Garrick swept his lips across hers, careful to keep the touch chaste lest he forget his vow to allow her to heal.

“As proud as I will be to call you my wife,” he said when he pulled away. “And now, I fear, I really must leave. Perhaps then you can get some rest.”

She yawned and shifted down, under the coverlet. Garrick kissed her forehead and dressed, glad at least one of them would sleep this night.

* * *

“Lady Emma!”

Emma sat up in her bed as the door burst open.

“’Tis so very exciting,” Edith said, nearly running to the hearth. “Everyone is talking about it. I am so very happy for you.”