Page 126 of The Muse of Maiden Lane

“Our wedding night,” she corrected him. “And we’ve already proven that we do as we please. I don’t see why we must resort to being conventional now.”

“This evening promises to be nothing if not unconventional.” He captured her mouth again.

She kissed him back with half-parted lips. He drew her closer, perilously closer, his hands curving at her waist and pressing at her hips, bringing her firmly against him. Any thought she’d had of their consummation being postponed evaporated into the ether.

“But, Teddy—” she broke off on a gasp, her earlier concerns emerging despite herself. “Are you really out of pain now? You’re not just…being chivalrous?”

“Me? Chivalrous? Hardly. It’s plain speaking I value, not artifice. As evidenced by the fact that I scared you off the first several times we met.”

“You didn’t scare me. I scared myself. I was too curious about you.”

“Curious. Hmm. I’d rather it had been besotted, but—”

“Teddy, really.”

“Really, sweetheart,” he said. “The pain has eased. You have a magic touch. Jennings usually has to work on me for half an hour. With you, I felt relief within minutes. That’s how the muscle spasms go—here one moment, seeming like the agony will never end, and gone twenty minutes later, a distant memory. It happened in Hampshire, too, when the weather changed.”

“I didn’t think you could feel anything in your legs anymore.”

He held her close. His cheek brushed the top of her head as she cuddled against him. “It’s not exactly a feeling. Not the way it was before my illness.”

“What, then?”

“The muscles still move. They jump. Cramp. In the beginning I thought it meant my legs were waking up. But it doesn’t mean anything except pain.”

“I’m sorry.” She smoothed her hand over his chest. “Have you—”

“Yes,” he answered the question before she summoned the nerve to ask it. “We tried all manner of treatments when we moved to France. There were doctors in Paris touting electricity machines, surgical procedures, and tonics, salves, and tinctures. Needless to say, none of them had the desired effect.”

Stella drew back to meet his eyes, indignant on his behalf. “Did your family make you endure such things?”

“No. They thought most of it claptrap. It was me. I was searching.” His expression turned rueful. “When you’re desperate, you’ll believe anything, and there are countless swindlers whose business it is to promise you the world. I gave up soon after. I realized that nothing could be done. So…if you have any illusions that I’ll be walking off with you into some glorious happily-ever-after…” A bleak vulnerability entered his gaze. “This is how it ends for me,” he said. “Just me, in that chair, until the day I die.”

Stella’s throat closed with emotion. “Foolish beyond permission, as usual,” she said. “It’s not the end. And it’s not just you, either. It’s you and me. Forever.”

Teddy bowed his head to hers. His throat worked on a swallow.

“Forever,” she said again, touching his jaw. She forced him to look her in the eyes. “You can’t be rid of me, Teddy Hayes. Not for any ridiculous reason like that. I’ll still be here with you, even when you finish your masterpiece. I’ll never leave you, not unless you tell me that you no longer want me—”

“I love you,” he said gruffly.

Stella’s heart stopped, uncertain if she’d heard him correctly. He’d spoken so deep. So low. She wondered briefly if it was possible to dream words into existence. She’d imagined him saying them so many times.

“I love you,” he repeated. “I know you vowed to fall in love with me first, but it isn’t necessary. You needn’t make the effort. I love you just the same—I have since the day I asked you to marry me. And if all you can offer in return is friendship, I shall learn to be content.”

Stella’s eyes blurred with tears. “How can you speak of such things? Of mere contentment—of friendship!—when you’ve had the whole of my heart for months? I don’t need to make an effort to fall in love with you. I already love you. I love you so much that I—”

Teddy seized her before she could finish. The rest was muffled by his lips. He kissed her. Held her. Expressed how desperately he loved her in words—

And without them, too.

A long while later, Stella lay, sated in Teddy’s arms. They were both breathing heavily, still murmuring sweet nothings in the darkness and touching each other in lazy passes.

The sun had long set, the house all closed up and quiet. She was absent her chemise. He couldn’t recall when he’d stripped it off of her.

He supposed, in hindsight, he’d behaved rather like a love-addled madman. But Stella hadn’t seemed to mind his impatient enthusiasm. She’d been rather impatient herself. Bold and fearless, only the fleeting shyness she’d exhibited at the ultimate moment betraying her innocence and insecurity. He’d recognized it in her because he’d felt it, too.

“There were no Parisienne muses,” he’d told her then, looking deep into her eyes. “Not like this. There’s never been anyone but you.”