She shook her head, letting it drop forward so he had no hope of divining the expression in her eyes. “You have seen me, yet not seen me, for nigh on twenty summers.” Her voice held a tremor.
She spoke the truth.
“I cannot deny it. I have been a fool. But I see you now, Mirrie.”
She made a noise he could not identify.
“I see you when I wake. I see you before I go to sleep. You haunt my every waking moment. I am like a blind man who suddenly can see the light.” He spoke directly from his heart, his words tumbling over one another.
She shook her head again, but he could see some of the tension had gone out of her. “You speak with the legendary charm of the de Nevilles.”
His breath caught as she leaned against him, just as he had wanted. Small waves rushed over his boots, no doubt ruining the leather, but he did not care.
“I must use the gifts God gave me.” Slowly, greatly daring, he moved aside her plait and dropped his lips to where her neck met her shoulder. When she did not resist, he held her tighter, and kissed her there again.
Now she sighed heavily and lolled against him. “I should not allow you to do this.”
He stilled. “If you say the word, I will stop.”
Part of him wanted her to stop him, for he had come here to talk, as his mother had urged and as Mirrie herself had wished. He recalled her words in her bedchamber at Wolvesley.
“Trying, to me, means conversation and getting to know one another, all over again. It must be something finer and deeper than physical desire.”
Back in Wolvesley, he had decided to take his mother’s advice and formally court the young woman who had stolen his heart.
But the trouble was, Tristan’s physical desire for the woman in his arms was finer and deeper than aught he had ever known before.
He traced a line of kisses to her shoulder, nudging his lips beneath the loose material of her tunic. Then he retraced his path, paying special attention to her jawline and nibblinggently on her earlobe. Mirrie responded to him with equivalent sensuality to that soaring within him, clutching at his hand as it curved over her belly and bracing her shoulders against his chest as the withdrawing tide pulled at their feet.
He helped her step up the shore, away from the dragging waves, and turned her towards him. Her eyes were half closed with pleasure, her body still pliant in his hands.
“I am falling in love with you,” he said.
Words he had ne’er said to another. A sentiment that had ne’er before come to his mind.
She opened her eyes and tilted her chin so she was looking directly at him. He cupped her cheeks and held her gaze; and he saw doubt written across her lovely face.
“Truly.” He firmed his stance against the shingle. “Mirabel Duval. I believe I am in love with you.”
Her lips parted and he seized the opportunity to claim her mouth with his own, pulling her to him with urgency and running his hands the length of her spine. He knew a surge of victory when she responded to his kiss, wrapping her hands around his shoulders and pressing herself against the hardness of his bare chest. His tongue probed past her lower lip, delighting in her small gasps of pleasure. In another moment, he met her tongue with his, exalting in the jolt of connection which reverberated through them both.
He was hardening with desire for her. With the way her slim hips were crushed against him, she must feel it, through the thin fabric of her tunic. Just as he could feel the softness of her curves. His hands skimmed over her breasts and he groaned as the liquid need inside him grew stronger.
She felt right in his arms. Just as she was right in his life. She was the part that made him whole. The part that helped everything to make sense.
His mother was right, about this as about everything. Life had been naught without Mirrie.
“You must decide if you truly love Mirrie. And if the answer is yes, I ask you this. What are you going to do about it?”
He heard her words clearly, above the crashing of the waves and the calling of the gulls. And suddenly, he knew exactly what he was going to do about it.
He had come here to talk, so that he and Mirrie could begin to get to know one another, all over again. But such a courtship was unnecessary, for he already knew her, truly and deeply. Just as she truly knew him.
He broke apart from their kiss and held her away from him so he might look properly into her hazel eyes. Eyes that had darkened with desire, just like his.
Her breath came heavy and quick, just like his.
“Mirabel,” he said, “will you marry me?”
