Page 114 of Go, Rogue

“And do you not think,” he goes on, his voice rising a little as if he knows he’s finally made some headway, “that I should get to choose which members of this bloody aristocracy I deal with and which ones I don’t? Or that Crawford can’t handle the whole damn lot of them if I never step foot in England again? Hell, that’s part of the reason he’s my partner.

“Money, power, station, and titles are only tools,” he says. “They can build a goddamned prison or they can build a ship or they can build a net. It’s our choice what we do with them. And if we use them together.”

She feels the crack widen, letting in a little more light. A little more hope. But she still keeps her eyes closed against it.

“Lass,” he says, “there is an entire world that lies beyond this ocean where the ton doesn’t even exist. We can have that world. Or we can have this one. We can have whatever we want as long as we choose it. Both of us.”

He releases her hand and turns her chin to his. “I choose you,” he says. “And to hell with everything else. But it only works if you choose me, too. Do you, Catherine? Can you trust in me? In us?”

She meets his eyes and feels her heart expand, so vast it cracks her wide open.

“Yes,” she says; she does trust him.

And she knows that if he understands all of what it means to choose her and does it anyway, she won’t fight him.

Because it’s his choice.

And because there’s nothing she wants in the world more than she wants him.

“Tell me,” he says. “Tell me you choose me over all the goddamned rest of it.”

She won’t lie to him. She can’t. “Of course I choose you,” she says. “I’ve never wanted anything more in the entire world than to choose you.”

“Lass,” he says, quietly. “I’m not sure there is anything more.”

“I still don’t see how it will work, Andrew. I love you and I will choose you until the end of my days but I don’t see how you have it all. Because I will not be Lady Catherine West again.”

“Of course not,” he says. “You’ll be my Duchess. And we’ll make a plan for the rest of it. Patience and planning, my love, are all that’s ever needed.”

She reaches for his hand and lets the feelings wash over her. His calloused palm against hers, the sway of the ship on water, the hope and the joy and the rush of love that envelops her whenever she’s near him.

And then she turns her head and nuzzles her face into his neck. There it is—his smell. Heaven help her, she adores it beyond reason.

She breathes it in and feels the bars of the cage breaking around her, like stays pulled so tight they finally snap.

“Yes,” she says. Yes to all of it. And then, “Andrew, will you kiss me now? Please.”

“Aye, love. I’ll kiss you however and whenever you like.”

He cradles her face in his hands and brushes his bear-paw thumb over her cheek. And then he leans in and presses his lips to hers. She feels the world around her tilt and swoon as she lets his tongue slide into her mouth, just as surely as she let his words slide into her heart.

“I love you,” she says and feels him smile. He pulls back from her, murmuring something that sounds a lot like “better than Christmas morning,” before he pulls her close again.

And she thinks that perhaps they really can bend the world to their will if they choose. Perhaps they can do anything, if they do it together.