Edwina’s startled gaze slowly lifted to his. “What… what is this?”
A bloody flawless diamond ring, what does it look like?
But her cheeks were so pale he didn’t dare jest in this moment.
“I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “That it wasn’t just a kiss for me.”
He swallowed as she plucked the ring from its secure location.
This wasn’t how he’d planned any of this.
And she always did this to him. She always took all of his mad-dash plans and tore through them like a hurricane.
But for the first bloody time, he was going to be the one who controlled this situation. She might have ruined the surprise, but he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.
“I bought the ring three days ago.” He took a step toward her. “For you. And then I demanded that Lady Rathbourne allow me to escort you to Bletsoe when the case came in. That’s why I was playing billiards with Adrian Bishop. He’s the prime’s brother-in-law, and he owes me a favor. So I called it in. I wanted to be here with you, Edie, because I’m not ready to let you go.
“I don’t want you as my mistress. I don’t want you as my secretary, or a friend. I want you to be my wife. My partner. My lover. I want you to be there at my side, forever.”
Edwina’s eyes widened.
“Say something,” he demanded, his heart thick in his throat.
And then her eyes rolled back in her head and she toppled backward like a felled tree.
The world swallowed her whole as her psychometry rose to choke her.
She was one with the ring, and the ring was one with her.
“This one,” said a man’s voice and it sounded like Sterling, though a Sterling she’d never known before. He almost sounded nervous.
“The smoked diamond, sir?” A stranger’s voice. “Are you sure? I have diamonds with much better quality in the back. They’re enormous and cut superbly and?—”
“This one,” Sterling repeated. “The color of the stone perfectly matches the lady in question’s eyes.”
“A very lucky young woman, sir.”
Sterling laughed under his breath, though it was without humor. “We’ll see. I haven’t talked her into it yet, and she’s of a particularly stubborn mind.”
Edwina was drowning in the smoky depths of the diamond’s multi-faceted edges.
Echoes of his last few words ran through her on repeat.
And then the world was shifting again.
Her talent for clairvoyancy was not as great as her gift for psychometry, but when it hit, it tended to drive all else out of her mind.
She saw Lady Willoughby smile at her husband as he slid her wedding ring onto her finger in the chapel, even as a malevolent shadow watched over them.
But the ring was gone and in its place was a pall of pure darkness.
Edwina came to with a gasp, both her psychic senses warring within her even as her hand clutched the ring in her palm.
Sterling swung her up in his arms and grimly made his way toward the bed. “Well, if I’d known you were going to take it that well, I would have postponed this entire idea.”
“It’s the ring!”
“I know it’s a ring,” he said, his jaw locked tight as he lowered her onto the bed. “Here, sit still. You’ve taken a nasty knock?—”
