He listened to her little hiccup of breath and felt her lips curve against the bare skin of his throat. “I did,” she confessed, in little more than a squeak. “And I liked it.”
“I expect I should not say I like it as well? Knowing you were misbehaving solely for me, that you are not above such petty emotions as jealousy?” he said, lifting a hand to toy with the soft folds of that silky turban. “I assume I am not to enjoy your pie-based rage?”
“Ah, very clever,” she said, peeking up at him. “I always knew I’d fall in love with an intelligent man.”
He held his breath for a moment, looking down at her face like this, haloed in lantern light. He ran the pad of his thumb over the three beauty marks on her cheek. “You love me,” he said, softly and with no small amount of wonder.
She gave him a tiny shrug and a sheepish smile. “You love me too.”
He nodded.
And he kissed her.
Carefully and sweetly, like it was the first time. The first real time.
Her fingers came up to trace lightly over his jaw, over the lines of his face and the edges of his hair. She was just as careful. Just as sweet.
“So,” she said when they broke apart, foreheads touching and breath mingling on the pillow. “Marriage? Or simply living in sin?”
“Marriage,” he said immediately. “Your name?”
“Will stay the same on stage,” she answered, toying with the ends of his hair. “But can change legally, once again. Names are like that, you know. They change when you do.”
“Mine never has,” he pointed out.
“Hm,” she replied. “Not yet.”
It made him laugh. He pulled back slightly to look down at her, relaxed and half-lidded and smiling. “I don’t know how to get married,” he admitted. “I never actually thought I would. What do I do? Go ask old Ulysses for his blessing?”
She snorted, dark eyes rolling. “Certainly not,” she said with amusement. “Ask Malcolm. And maybe Hattie.”
“All right.” He leaned down to kiss her again, unable to resist the temptation of it, the fact that he could, so easily and without preamble. “I’ll ask the whole of Brighton if I must. Shall I start with your troupe?”
“Oh, my troupe,” she said, blinking in realization. “I do have to tell them. Not that I’m getting married. That’s none of their bloody business. But that we are not going to return to London at the end of the bequeathment year. They will each need to decide if they wish to stay in Brighton or not. Forever is quite a different ask than a year.”
“If you want to travel between Brighton and London,” he said carefully, “you could. I do not want to shrink your world, Lib.”
“If I wanted to, I’d appreciate that,” she told him. “I don’t think I do. Or at least not for a very long time. Why? Do you want to go to London?”
He smiled at her. “No.”
“No,” she agreed. “This is home.”
“This is home,” he echoed.
And this time, when he drifted off to sleep, he did so with intention.
*
Libba awoke threetimes in the night.
The first, she was overly warm and simply wanted to shrug off her dressing gown.
The second, she was thirsty and had to put the thing back on to escape into the house at large to retrieve a carafe and cups to keep in the room.
Hattie was awake, sitting in the parlor with a triple slice of rhubarb hazelnut cake, a glass of milk, and her little pig. She gave a lazy wave when Libba passed and did not comment about the direction from which she’d come.
When Libba walked past again, returning to the guest wing, she saw that Elias had joined his wife, and they were whispering quietly to each other over the crumbs of the now-decimated cake.
