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“I shall join you downstairs shortly, so that I can begin to make arrangements for our move,” she said, implicitly giving in.
“I shall bring my butler and footmen to help Jarvis tomorrow. There’s no need for you to bother about anything.”
He was such a man.
The complexities of dissolving a household were overwhelming: Where would the furniture go? What about her father’s books? She had little clothing, but what of her mother’s rocking chair and the contents of the nursery? She couldn’t imagine bringing up that delicate subject.
“Perhaps Josephina’s babies came while we were gone,” Ella said, pushing open the attic door. “I couldn’t coax her out of her nest this morning.”
“That squirrel couldn’t get much rounder,” Fiennes remarked, walking in behind her.
“I left Starlight curled up outside the nest, as if she were keeping Josephina company.” Ella turned around and discovered Fiennes grinning at her. His eyes were mischievous.
Wicked, even. Anticipatory.
Desirous.
“Not that I’m unexcited by the prospect of squirrel babies,” he said, strolling toward her, “but you do realize that we are marrying tomorrow morning?” He paused and added with obvious reluctance, “Unless you’d rather wait for the pomp and circumstance in St. Paul’s Cathedral.”
“Not particularly.” Ella shook her head.
“I’ve already sent a groom to buy a license. He’ll have a priest waiting for us at eight in the morning tomorrow.”
She cleared her throat. “I do not—” She stopped, unable to construct the right sentence.
“I do not plan to consummate a marriage that we haven’t consecrated in a narrow attic bed,” Fiennes told her, sounding amused.
“Of course not,” she said hurriedly.
He took a last step that brought their bodies together. “May I kiss you?”
Ella swallowed hard, looking up at Fiennes’s sculpted face. Sun was pouring in the window, and Starlight was winding around both of their feet, purring in a way that suggested she would like a sausage roll. The world felt …
It felt safe.
His hands settled so gently on her back that she could hardly feel them.
“Why me?” she blurted out. “I’m nothing special. Just a girl, a girl in an attic, moreover.”
“Just a girl.” His eyes were alight with laughter. “One of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen.”
She shook her head, a kernel of disappointment in her heart at his praise. “Fulvia is far more beautiful.”
Fiennes ran a finger over her lower lip. “Do you really not see yourself, Ella?”
She put her hands on his chest, spreading her fingers to feel the uncompromising breadth of his body. “I find myself uninteresting.”
“Your features are exquisite, and your hair has me dreaming of amber ringlets. But it’s what’s in your eyes that makes you far more exquisite than Fulvia. Your sense of humor and your intelligence. The way you fence with me without giving a damn about my fortune.” He frowned. “You have never even tried to flirt with me, have you?”
He almost sounded offended, so Ella smiled. “I don’t know how.”
“Look at me as if you’d like to be kissed,” Fiennes said, his voice dropping an octave. “Show me that you want me, not my name or my fortune or my
title.”
Ella slid her hands slowly up his chest, over his shoulders, around his neck. “You said that you can read my eyes.”
He nodded.
