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“Aye,” she said, hardly listening. Instead, she stared at his chest, wondering what it looked like bare. What it would feel like pressed against her.
Cait was not ignorant of the ways of men and women, having been raised with two brothers. Neither did she know precisely what lovemaking was like. But she intended to learn.
With him.
“I am not going back,” she said, with all the authority she imagined an earl’s wife would muster. “I am staying with you, just as the other women are staying with their husbands.”
One final step closed the distance between them.
“’Tis true, you prepare for a fight. Perhaps the biggest of your life. But I am also preparing, and will not be waylaid.”
They were so close now Cait had to lift her chin to continue looking into his eyes.
“What,” he asked dryly, “are you preparing for, Cait?”
Last eve, she’d stopped short of saying all of what she’d intended to say. She would not make that same mistake again. This was her chance, finally, to fight for what she wanted. If she allowed it to pass her by, she might find herself back in the prison that was Bradon Moor, thinking of what might have been.
“I am preparing to become your wife.”
His eyes widened.
“To learn how to please you. To rediscover the man I once knew, and learn how he’s changed. But mostly, I am preparing—I am prepared—to love you. As I have from the start. By giving you all of me, Conrad. As I should have done years ago.”
Oddly, the words did not stick in her mouth. Nor did they make her feel exposed. Vulnerable. Although the feelings of unworthiness that had made her pull away from him still assailed her, she realized she had made a grave mistake by punishing herself, and in turn, punishing him.
“Let me love you, Conrad.”
At first, she thought he’d deny her. Send her back as crushed as he had likely been when she’d stopped responding to his letters. One moment, she looked up at him, waiting. The next, she was hauled against his chest so quickly Cait lost her breath.
His kiss was hard, maybe even punishing for the years they’d lost. Ones she had thrown away. But as he claimed her mouth, Cait could not regret that lost time because she was in his arms now.
“I will not go,” she whispered between fevered kisses.
He kissed her again.
She allowed it, but she’d let too many words stay unspoken, for too long. The time for silence had ended. “I will not, Conrad. Unless you say you do not want me. If I go, I return to Bradon Moor. Not Licheford.”
Cait held her breath. Although she hadn’t intended to make such a statement, she was surprised to realize she meant it. If he sent her away now, this was the end of their long journey together.
His jaw flexed, and Cait’s heart leapt in his moment of indecision. She didn’t regret the words, but every bit of her understood what his answer would mean to them both.
When he spoke, she resisted the urge to grip onto his shirt as if the ground would swallow her otherwise.
