Page 68 of Vanquishing the Viscount

“What am I supposed to be asking you?” James queried. “You’re making it difficult to concentrate.”

Surely, he knew? “Don’t tease me, James. It isn’t fair!” she pleaded.

“Oh yes, I remember now. I’m meant to be asking you to marry me. Will you?”

Finally. She pulled him close, burying her face against his chest. “Yes, of course I will.”

“Excellent. Now, be a good girl and go back to bed.”

She blinked. Was that all?

No. She couldn’t possibly leave just yet. “Please let me stay a while. Aren’t you cold?”

“On a night like this? Why do you think I’m sleeping naked?”

She smiled. “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t…want me to warm you again.”

He took a sharp breath, grasped her by the shoulders, and looked down at her. “What do you mean, again?”

“Do you not remember? When you had the ague, while the cold paroxysm was upon you, you demanded I get into the bed and warm you.”

He let out a low whistle, and she wished there was enough light to make out his expression. He’d forgotten. Or did he really think she was Belinda that night? It mattered.

It mattered more than she cared to admit.

“So it wasn’t just a dream,” he said at length. “I couldn’t bring myself to believe it was true, that you’d risk your reputation for me.”

“You do remember. You knew it was me?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“You called me Belinda.”

His hands tensed on her shoulders. “How awful must you have felt when I said that. I’m so sorry. In my defense, I was delirious. But even if I couldn’t remember your name at the time, I knew exactly who you were. Why didn’t you say something? Why leave me thinking I’d imagined it? I would have offered for you straightaway.”

What a relief it was to hear those sweet words fall from his lips! She had longed to be able to treasure that moment, when they’d first come together so deliciously, but him calling her by the wrong name had ruined it completely.

Now, at last, she could hope to experience more of that delectable intimacy. With a man who truly loved her.

“Oh, my darling, how horrid you must have thought me.” He drew her against him and wrapped his arms around her, resting his cheek against her hair. “But I fear you already disliked me. In fact, I think you hated me.”

“No more than you hated me,” she said, remembering with a shudder the way he’d looked at her when he first saw her at Figheldene.

“I could never hate you. I was angry, yes, but I soon got over that. You’re so special, so precious to me. To think I nearly lost you to Charles!”

Poor, silly, foolish James! If he was as deeply in love with her as he professed to be, he must have been devastated when she showed him the announcement in the newspaper.

She snaked her arms around his flanks and held him tightly. “Charles was never a threat to you,” she said, enjoying the sumptuous scent of James’s skin as she burrowed closer. She could hold him like this forever and never tire of it. “You’re a hundred times the man he is,” she assured him. “A thousand times.”

He responded with a low growl. “Before you find out just how much of a man I am, dearest one, I think you’d better get back to your own bed.”

Couldn’t she just stay here with him? She wanted to hold him closer, feel more of him, extend this stolen moment to make up for all the time they’d wasted in foolish misunderstandings and blinkered pride.

“It’s all right,” she said, letting her lips brush tantalizingly across his skin. “I won’t be missed. Jemima sleeps like a log. And anyway, I couldn’t sleep.”

“Nor could I. It’s too hot, and it’s been a very…stimulating day.”

It had been stimulating. And in her opinion, it still was. “You were very much the hero, James,” she said, full of pride for him.