Page 70 of The Lady’s Deception

“About last night…” he began.

“Yes?”

“I’ve been thinking.” He stepped toward her, stretched out his hands for hers. “About the past. And the future. When you said I’d been hiding, you were right.”

“From your family?”

“From the mistakes I’d made—many of which involved them. It was foolish of me. If I hadn’t already begun to see how foolish, Erica made sure I knew.” He smiled and brushed his thumb across her knuckles. “And this trip has shown me I can’t go on hiding from the people I love.”

“Your family.”

He did not know how to read the look in her eyes. “And you. Ah, Roisín,” he whispered, stepping closer still. “I don’t know how it happened. I wanted a governess to escape the responsibility of caring for my family. Instead, you gave them back to me. I was lost. But now I know what I want.” Gathering his courage, he dropped onto one knee. Years of experience had taught him never to ask a question to which he didn’t already know the answer. But he was determined to do it anyway. “Rosamund Gorse, will you be my bride?”

His heart raced as a welter of emotions crossed her face. Words started to her lips and were withdrawn. Finally, she set them in that prim little line he’d grown to love. “On the way to London, Mr. Burke, you told me that you believed your brothers-in-law could solve my problems. Without diminishing the important contributions of Lord Ashborough and the Duke of Raynham to today’s proceedings, I’d like the record to reflect that I was right all along. I needed a lawyer, didn’t I? I needed—need—you.”

“Is that—is that a yes, love?”

Again, she hesitated. “I love you, Paris. I love Tavisham, too, though I never thought I’d see it again. Oh, I thought I was so clever, wanting to make all my own choices. But now I don’t know how to choose”

He’d known as soon as he read the will that her inheritance could be the end of his hopes. In a matter of weeks, she would be quite independent. If she wished, eventually, for marriage and a family, the landed daughter of a viscount could do far better than a Dublin barrister.

But persuasion was his stock in trade. “Then don’t. You’ve read my sister’s book?” he asked. Rosamund nodded, a trifle warily. “So you know that at the end, the heroine proposes her own act of union, so to speak. Between an English gentleman and Irish lady. I despised it when I first read it. It was giving up, I thought. Giving in. But lately, I’ve begun to think Cami might have been right. Union might be a way forward, though I don’t say it will be perfect, or easy.”

“I suppose there’s no reason to think it couldn’t work just as well the other way around, an Irish gentleman and an English lady?” Her teasing smile gave him hope. “Could you be happy at Tavisham, Paris?”

He was sure of only one thing. “I cannot be happy anywhere without you. But I’ve got to go back to Dublin, first,” he warned, “to see things settled there.”

Her smile grew into something marvelously wicked. “When you return, I’ve got a job for you.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve recently discovered I’ve got a parliamentary seat in my pocket,” she said, patting her hip.

He laughed at first, but her eyes were serious. An M.P.? A huge responsibility—was he ready to face it? Once he’d dreamed of serving his country thus, but he thought that dream had died with all the rest. Now a new future opened before him. He might do more for Ireland at Westminster than he ever could have at home.

He tilted his head to the side and tried to muster a bit of his old savage mood. “Well, now,” he growled. “I’m not quite sure how I feel about being your pet Irishman.”

At that, she laughed and freed one hand to brush the hair from his eyes. And then she was in his arms and kissing him and there were only the two of them in all the world. A perfect union, indeed.

For a moment, at least. Somewhere in the house a door slammed and a moment later, a dog the size of a small pony ran into the room, being chased by a tiny white kitten. Behind them Bell squealed and Daphne said, “I knew it, Miss Gorse. I knew you were going to marry my brother.” Erica smiled a knowing smile.

Soon after that, his father appeared in the doorway. “Worked it all out, eh?”

Rosamund freed herself from Paris’s arms to go to him. “Oh, Mr. Burke. I owe you my thanks. You were the one who found the will—that was the paper you asked your daughter to give to Paris, wasn’t it? That was what you meant yesterday when you assured me the matter was well in hand.”

His father shrugged away her gratitude. “It wasn’t much, really. When I got Paris’s letter, I called in a favor from an old Oxford chum. And when I saw what was in the will, I knew your brother didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

Paris thought for a moment. “What if Erica had forgotten to give it to me? Or I had neglected to read it?” What if, in other words, he’d failed Rosamund too?

His father smiled. “Ask your clever governess.”

Rosamund tipped her head, considering her answer. “Based on what I know of your sisters’ education, I’d say your father trusts his children’s ability to sort things out for themselves. And from what I’ve seen, that trust is not misplaced.”

“Never yet,” his father agreed. “But I confess I kept a second copy of the will,” he added with a knowing wink, patting his breast pocket. “Just in case you got, er, distracted.”

Paris threw back his head and started to laugh, but stopped abruptly when Ashborough staggered into the room looking dazed. Despite the presence of ladies, he sank into the nearest chair and dropped his head into his hands.

“Is Cami all right?” Erica demanded.