“Caleb,” he said. “Cal.”
“I love you, Cal,” she said. “Now, will you return to the ball? I am ready for bed.” She looked distressed. “Alone. Will you leave?”
“Yes,” he said, and her heart plummeted right down inside her slippers and she realized how much damage his visit had already done and just how sleepless a night she was facing. “In a little while. There are some matters to be dealt with first.” He felt rather like whooping with joy, but it was too soon yet. And that misery was back in her eyes.
“What?” she said.
“This, for a start,” he said, and lowered his head and kissed her.
Yes, it was true. Even if she had not said it in words, he would have felt it in her body and tasted it on her lips and in her mouth. She was his. Hot and passionate with physical need, but warm and tender too with love. Her fingers dealt gently with his hair even as her body pressed to his own from shoulders to knees and then drew back from the waist up to allow his hands to cover her breasts.
It was true. He kissed her, held her, fondled her, and fought to keep the control that would prevent him from making this evening merely a repeat experience of eight years before for her. He wanted her on their marriage bed, his ring on her finger, his signature beside hers in a church register before he took final possession of her body. Before he impregnated her with the first of their children.
She did not care any longer. She was in his arms and they were warm and strong about her, and his mouth was hot and demanding over hers, his tongue firm and seeking. And she could feel his need as powerful as her own. She did not care. For she had spoken the simple truth. If he asked, she would say yes. And he was asking. Demanding. Soon, in a moment, he would lift his head and either lay her down on the carpet or lead her upstairs to the greater comfort of her bed. And either way she would lie down with him.
Perhaps she deserved that label after all. But label or no label, she did not care. Not any longer. He had said that he loved her. She loved him. That was all that mattered.
He lifted his head and she opened her eyes slowly. And she wondered even at that late moment if she would have the will to send him away.
“And this, second,” he said. “Will you marry me, Barbara? Your single state and Zach’s existence aside, and your mental image of my father beating us both about the head with a big stick and of society gasping in horror. All those things aside, my love, because really, they do not matter at all. Not one iota of one iota. Will you marry me?”
“Cal,” she said. “Cal, it is a fairy tale. Fairy tales are not reality.”
“This one can be,” he said. “With one little word, Barbara. Yes. Say it. If you do not, you know, I will build me a willow cabin at your gate. Do you know Shakespeare?”
“And camp there until I do say yes?” she said. “Yes, I know the play. “
“You said yes,” he said, grinning down at her and tightening his arms possessively about her.
“I did not,” she said.
“You said ‘Yes, I know the play.’ ”
“Cal.”
He rubbed his nose across hers. “The sunshine has started to come back into my life,” he said. “Don’t take it away again, my love. Not unless I cannot bring it back into yours.”
“Oh,” she said, and she hid her face against his shoulder.
“What does anything else matter?” he asked. “Only the sunshine, Barbara. That is all that matters.”
“And you will not one day regret that you have chosen to wed a fallen woman?” she said. Her voice was muffled against his coat.
“How could I regret turning my face to the sunshine?” he said.
“And you will never regret taking on Zachary?”
“The puppy will doubtless have stopped making puddles by the time we are married and Zach turns him loose on my carpets,” he said. “That is the only detail that might have me a little anxious.”
She laughed against his shoulder.
“This is better,” he said.
She looked up at him, and he was dazzled suddenly by the sunshine.
“Well?” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
