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“What I’d like most in the world is for you to stay here with me, just like this,” he said.

That wasn’t true. What he truly wanted was for Ina to confess she’d loved him for years. Then they could put the whole awkward, damaging last month behind them. But he couldn’t say any of that. Yet.

“Will you do that for me?” he asked quietly. “Stay just a little while longer like this?”

He watched her toy with the hair on his chest before spreading all five fingers out as though reassuring herself that this was all real.

“If that’s what you want,” she said.

He swallowed and took the first little step into his future with her. “I’d rather it be what you want as well.”

She caught his eyes and nodded.

“Perhaps we should use this,” he said, pulling free her cloak from the bundle of clothing on the floor. With one arm, he tried to cast it out over them, succeeding only in half covering her right shoulder and his left toes.

A little laugh bubbled up on Ina’s lips. “Can I help?”

He nodded, and she scrambled to turn sideways on his lap, grabbing the other end of the coat and pulling it over them. Then she settled back against his chest.

He began to stroke a hand up and down her arm as his thoughts crept in. There were things she needed to know. Things he’d waited too long to tell her so that they’d grown into unavoidable monsters lurking just below the surface. Now was the time.

“You’ve asked me several times before about my family,” he said.

She didn’t move, but he could feel her become alert under his touch. “I’m curious about where you came from. Will you tell me about them?” she asked, looking up at him.

He absentmindedly brushed some of her hair over her shoulder. “I think it’s time you know. I’ve waited too long to tell you things you should’ve known long ago because . . . you’re important to me.”

“You know so much about my life and my family,” she said. “I just wanted a little bit of that part of you too.”

“And you deserve it. No one else has ever believed in me the way that you do, Ina.”

She lifted her head to press a kiss to the underside of his chin.

“You do yourself a disservice,” she said.

“My family doesn’t share your confidence in me.”

“Why?” she demanded. His heart clenched at the defensiveness in her voice.

“You know that I’m the second son,” he said. “I’ve certainly told enough stories about Richard today for you to have guessed that our brotherhood wasn’t always an amicable one.”

“I’d assumed as much,” she said, “although I must confess I’ve always been envious that you have a sibling at all.”

“Sometimes it was a joy to have a brother. I always had someone to make mischief with, and together we were a team against the tutors and nurses that my parents hired in our childhood years. However, when Richard went off to school, he began to change. Our bickering became full-on fighting. He once hit me so hard in the back of the head during an argument that I lost consciousness before I hit the ground.”

“Oh, Gavin,” she gasped. “But that’s just cruel.”

“Richard can be cruel. When I joined him at school, I was the focus of him and his group of friends when they needed a scapegoat. Kier was one of them,” he added.

“That ass,” she growled with a protectiveness he found intensely satisfying.

“The older we got, the clearer it became that Richard thought me nothing but a spare heir in case he were to die unexpectedly. I daresay my father encouraged that belief.”

“Whyever would you say that?” she asked.

“I overheard them once when I was walking by my father’s study during a summer holiday. He and my brother were speaking about the land and responsibility that would one day be Richard’s. When my brother inquired what I was expected to do during all of this, my father said, ‘Clergy. Army. Navy. He has three choices, and whether he likes them is of little consequence to me.’ ”

“Gavin, that’s terrible.”