She tossed her head. “I have a fancy to be a princess, and if a good solicitor is what that takes, then I will pay for it. If it makes you feel better, you can reimburse me out of that lovely royal dowry once we are wed. All my money will be yours then, anyway.”
A disbelieving smile crossed his face. “That is the part that I find hardest to truly believe. That you will be my wife. I have been so certain it was impossible, so careful to brace myself for losing you, to hear the news someday that you were marrying someone else.”
She bumped her fist lightly against his cheek in a mock punch. “Foolish man! I had no intention of giving you up. If I could not marry you,I would not marry.”
His eyes widened, as if he could not believe her. “I should not be so glad to hear it, but I am.” Then an unexpected weight entered his voice. “I hope you will not regret it.”
She stared at him. “Why? Do you think I do not know my own heart?”
He stopped tracing his lips along her skin and instead laced his fingers with hers. “I think it is easy for you to love me at Pemberley, in a beautiful house, with the way of life you are accustomed to. Will you still be glad when you are sharing a smaller, humbler dwelling with my parents, my brothers and sisters? Where you will be expected to know all the servants' names and who their families are? Will you resent me when you have to dirty your hands during the spring cleaning, because everyone pitches in?” He shook his head. “I should have warned you more about how different life is there before you agreed to this.”
Quickly she knelt beside him. “Good heavens, Roderick, did it ever occur to you toaskme how I would feel about living that way? I am not a spoilt child who pouts at the first hint of adversity.”
“You do not understand,” he insisted. “My family can speak English when they choose, but most of the local people do not. And they will not be predisposed to like you.”
“Then I suppose I shall have to learn Welsh. It sounds pretty, when you speak it to your horse.”
He huffed in frustration. “There are no fashionable stores or milliners, only village shops, and few of those. Nothing you would recognize as a town short of Caernarfon, and even that is provincial by English standards.”
“Did you see me complaining about the lack of fancy shops in Derbyshire? I assume that, like most ladies who live far from cities, I will make occasional journeys to buy what I need.”
“This is different. And much farther away. Welsh roads are not up to your usual standards.”
He was not listening to her.
Which was odd, because one of the things she loved about him was how well he attended to what everyone said. Was he so worried about how she would judge his home, then? Or was he afraid she would reject him?
Had anyone ever cared for her enough to fear losing her?
She gathered his hands in her own. “Roderick, my love, has it never occurred to you that I have not been particularly happy in my very luxurious life? That I hate pretense and like being useful? That I am accustomed to people disliking me for something that is not my own fault? There are no guarantees in life, but perhaps I will end up liking your valley very much.”
“And if not?” His eyes were wide.
“If not, we will find a way to make it work. I am certain something there will appeal to me,” she said firmly. “Now, teach me to say something in Welsh. I must start somewhere.”
A slow smile bloomed on his face, and he said something that sounded like “Ruin duh garry dee.”
She concentrated on the words and repeated it back to him. “Ruin duh garry dee. What does it mean?”
He leaned forward and caught her lips with his own, deepening the kiss until threads of desire caught her in their nest and left her breathless. Then he whispered, “It means 'I love you.'”
Chapter 34
DarcysqueezedElizabeth’shandas they climbed the hill. “A penny for your thoughts.”
Her eyes were laughing. “Do you remember when no one came this way?”
“It is much changed.” The path to the Dragon Stones clearing had been overgrown and narrow when Darcy had first made his way there last year, back when he still believed dragons long extinct in England. Then it had only been an isolated spot for practicing his illusion-casting in private.
Now it was a well-trodden lane, one where he and Elizabeth could walk hand in hand together, just the way he liked it. Pemberley gardeners kept it well-trimmed.
When they entered the clearing, a handful of nestlings were basking at the base of the standing stones. Darcy nodded to them as he and Elizabeth made their way across the grassy sward to where Coquelicot gleamed red in the morning light. Her wordless welcome greeted him warmly.
He smiled down at Elizabeth, and then reached up and patted the dragon’s flank in the way she liked. “I am here, as you requested. I hope all is well.”
“Yes. Your egg wishes to see you.”
He blinked in surprise. His egg? She must mean the one he had convinced to become smaller, so that it might be born instead of broken, and whose shell bore the markings of his magical touch. “Youtalkto the eggs?”
