Page 16 of Nice Earls Do

“You can’t be spotted standing there,” she reasoned. It would be shockingly improper for the master of the house to be seen conversing with a lady guest in dishabille.

After an impossibly long moment, Kit nodded. “I wanted to see you—though, of course, I hadn’t any notion I’d see quite so much....” With a twitch of his upper body, as if the movement required effort, he shifted his focus to something on the far side of the room. “My apologies.”

“I take it you’ve spoken with Oliver.”

“I have.”

Though she’d been expecting the answer, those two words still sent little spikes of pain into her heart. Now he knew she’d been deceiving him; no wonder he was acting so strange. “I’m sorry, Kit. Please believe, I never meant to—I’ve been his protector for twenty years. I had to do this for him. But I never imagined that keeping him from harm would hurt...you. Oliver and I will go, just as you asked. At first light. You needn’t—”

“Twenty-one years, seven months,” he murmured, still not looking at her.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Twenty-one years, seven months: that’s what he said. The precision of it struck me. I had the distinct feeling he could have rattled off the tally, right down to the day. But until just now, I didn’t fully understand the significance.” His shoulders tautened beneath his coat. “From what, exactly, did he need your protection?”

She had to moisten her lips to reply. “His father. Oliver was a grave disappointment to him. As was I, in my way. I never managed to give him another son, you see. Worse, I insisted on standing up for the one he had.”

Kit nodded heavily, a gesture that conveyed understanding rather than agreement. “My God, Beth,” he breathed, and despite the despair in his voice, she relished the sound of her name on his lips. “I was appalled when your father insisted on your marrying Manwaring. But I never imagined... If only I’d—”

“What could you have done?” she protested, trying to reassure him. “We were young—and I, at least, was foolish. I convinced myself Papa was right: it would be charming to be addressed as Lady Manwaring. I—I never stopped to think it might mean the end of Beth.”

“Twenty-one years, seven months,” he repeated incredulously. “It must have seemed an eternity.” At last his gaze snapped to her, and a self-deprecating laugh gusted from his chest. “But it’s still only a fraction of the time I’ve spent hopelessly in love with you.”

The pop! of her mouth flying open was audible in the stillness of the room. The sudden pounding of her heart seemed to get in the way of thought, of words. Eventually, she got enough control over the muscles of her jaw to whisper, “Hopelessly?”

“Yes, and there’s no sense in you denying it. You thought of me as a bothersome older brother, always spoiling your fun. I was nobody, the son of the steward. No match for Miss Holt. I could never have convinced you, or your father—”

“No,” she agreed. “You’re right. It was perfectly hopeless.” Oh, how she longed to step closer to him, to soften the blow of those words, but she feared her legs might not hold her up. “It does not therefore follow that the situation is still without hope.”

Kit sucked in a ragged breath, like a drowning man starved for air and saved in the nick of time. “Beth?” he rasped.

“This afternoon, when I kissed you, I made an unexpected discovery. The seed must have been planted so long ago, buried so deep, I never even knew it was here”—she laid her hand over her heart—“waiting....”

Kit closed the few steps that separated them and settled his hand over hers. “That’s how you keep a seed safe until it’s ready to bloom.”

She searched his face, his eyes, such a curious, wonderful mix of the familiar and the new. “I’m afraid I’ll wake up and all this will have been a dream. I—I’m afraid you’ll discover I’m not really the woman you need. I’m no Mrs. Goode, after all.”

“I don’t want Mrs. Goode. I want you, Beth. Will you marry me? Let me spend the rest of my life being what you need?”

Do what makes you happy, Oliver had said. She had been shying away from thoughts of marriage and domesticity and a house in the country because she’d been so miserable before. But the problem hadn’t been with those things; the problem had been her late husband.

How different the prospect of such a life looked now, when she imagined Kit beside her.

“Oh, Kit.” Freeing her hand, she flung herself against his chest. “Yes. Yes.”

And then her mouth was on his, communicating what words could not.

His answering kiss was both a reminder that he had always known her and a quest to learn more. While he pressed his palms to either side of her head and skated his fingertips along her scalp, she rose up on her toes to bring them closer, to help him plumb her depths.

Earlier that day, wrapped in his arms, she’d been aware of the solidity of his body, the heat of him, even through layers of clothing. But now, dressed in almost nothing, she could think of little else but the moment when there would be even less between them. Slipping her fingers beneath his coat, she slid the garment over his shoulders. A satisfied grin curled her lips when he shook it free of his arms and she heard it settle against the carpet with a soft whump.

One of his hands trailed from her cheek, along her throat, and over her collarbone, tracing the valley between her breasts to tangle in the silk tie at her waist.

“Am I moving too fast, Beth?” he murmured against her lips. “I don’t want to rush this—rush you.”

Her chest was heaving as if she’d just run up three flights of stairs. “We’ve waited more than twenty years. I don’t think anyone could describe that as rushing.”

She felt his smile. “No. I suppose not.” With the slightest movement of his fingers, the tie, already loose, gave up all pretense of holding the sides of the dressing gown closed.