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He glanced at her and frowned. “Your teeth are chattering. Why didn’t you go home? One of the constables could’ve escorted you.”

And miss her chance of seeing him—maybe for the last time? She wished she could’ve walked away. It would have been easier than this gnawing doubt.

“Come here.” He pulled her into his arms, slipping his inexplicably warm hands inside the blanket, and hugged her to him.

“Your hands were always warm no matter what time of year,” she said. “It seems a funny thing to remember after all this time.”

“I thought I remembered everything, but it wasn’t until I was around you that I recalled all of the little details.”

“Like what?” she said, the sting of unshed tears making the bridge of her nose tingle. She wouldn’t cry. Not right now.

“The scent of your hair and the way you worry your lip when you’re thinking about something unpleasant. How you straighten your back just a little when you’re about to tell me I’m wrong.”

“You were wrong about not giving me a weapon,” she said with a little laugh.

“You seemed to improvise just fine. What was that you stabbed Mrs. Wark with?”

“A cloak pin.”

Andrew threw back his head to laugh but winced immediately.

“Where does it hurt?” she asked.

“Everywhere.”

She started to pull away, not wanting to contribute to his pain, but he hugged her tighter. “I want to touch you. It reminds me how fortunate I am.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Lavinia watching the last of the officers close up their notebooks and tuck away their pencils. The weight of the words she needed to say was a millstone around her neck. She had to say them now, or she would live a life of two regrets.

“Andrew—” she said at the same time he said, “When you—”

He smiled. “You first.”

She drew in a deep breath and nodded. “When we argued in the carriage, I meant all the things I said. I was furious with you. I’d never hoped for a second chance, because I didn’t think one would ever manifest, but then you walked into my shop and I realized it might happen. But then you made it clear there was no room in your life for me, and that I was a detriment rather than an asset to your operation. I lashed out and said things I wouldn’t have said under other circumstances, but I need you to understand that I meant them.”

He toed a clod of dirt in front of them, his expression unreadable.

“It would’ve been too hard to watch you turn from me if you knew the truth, but I want you to know,” she continued. “I love you. I’ve loved you since we were children and too young to understand what love was. I loved you when you asked me to marry you and when you sailed away. I loved you when I thought you’d died, and on my wedding day, and that terrible day when you came back. Every day my love has been a fundamental truth, even when I didn’t understand that it was still vital and real. I didn’t want you to leave without knowing that. It felt too important.”

She watched him scrub a hand over his chin, narrowly missing a cut on his jaw.

“You make this sound like you’re expecting this to be good-bye,” he said.

Her head snapped up, and she found him looking at her, his blue eyes soft.

“I won’t lie and tell you that this has been straightforward for me,” he said. “I spent years convincing myself that I hated you. It was easier than pining after a woman who had gone to another man—willingly, I’d thought. But I never could hate you, Lavinia. Not the true heart of me.

“All my life has been about trying to prove that I’m good enough to have the privilege of loving you. Even the last twelve years when I thought I’d never see you again, I tried to show that I could be the man I set out to be. But I never reconciled myself to how deep my distrust for you ran. A distrust you proved to me was wrong over and over again, long before you staged my rescue tonight.

“I’ve been wrong about so many things in my life, but my biggest regret is not having asked or understood what it was that you wanted. I’m ashamed that I wasted so much time I could’ve spent with the best woman I know.”

The dimming hope she’d been nurturing began to glow a little bit brighter.

“I’m going to have to go to London for a debriefing at Home, but then I intend to come right back to Edinburgh, because you’re where I want to be,” he said. “The place I live matters to me far less than whether I’m with you. If you’ll take me.”

“What are you saying?” she asked around the rising emotion thickening her throat.

When she twisted in his arms, he pulled her onto his lap and rested his head in the crook of her neck. Carefully, he placed a kiss on the delicate skin, making her shiver.