Page 73 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

“But...” She froze. “Why?”

“Because I do not want to go.”

Rosalie blinked. Her head hurt as well as her eyes. She hid her face in her hands so he could not see her confusion, her pain. “Why are you doing this?”

His hands came gently around hers, the leather squeaking softly by her ears as he removed them from her face. He held them tight, bringing them to his lips, kissing them.

“Because I...” He held his fingers to his mouth, his eyes pressed shut. “Because I love you. I have told myself, erroneously, that I was protecting you by denying it. But I cannot protect you from this, and I should not protect myself. You must know, Ros... You must know...”

“I...”

Did she know? How many weeks had she spent convincing herself he could not love her? How many times had he said something to that effect? Unless, she thought, my own prejudices against myself blinded me to the truth, all this time. It was never me. It was him. It has only ever been him.

“I could not offer you an easy life with an easy man. You know this,” he said. His hands traveled up her arm, clutching her, bringing her closer. “The things I have felt... The promises I made to myself about a life lived alone... But I want to make new promises now, to you. To never hurt or disappoint you. To not leave.” His hands were on her shoulders. “Don’t leave.”

She looked at him, so in love with him that it hurt. “You terrify me. You confound me.”

“Then I would not be good company. But you are what I want, nonetheless. And I must tell you.”

A short, unwilling laugh escaped her. “How can I know this is not just another charade?” She held him by the wrists, as his forehead came against hers. She was smiling—terrified but smiling. “We have been performing for so long...”

He laughed under his breath, and he dropped to his knees. He held her by the hips, knees in the dirt, and looked up at her. His whole face was bright in the sun, his eyes turned an ethereal clear blue.

“Marry me, Ros. Marry me in earnest, you and me, not for anyone else. I cannot rescue you. I want only to be with you. I have chosen you. I love you.”

“Chosen?” She repeated the word in awe. He pressed his face to her stomach and nodded.

“Before I even knew I could, I chose you.”

She smiled and stroked his hair. This was like a dream come true. Better than a dream. This was real.

“I choose you,” she said. “Yes, Gabriel. I will marry you.”

He looked up. His eyes shone with tears. He could have risen, but she met him instead, kneeling with him between the fields, where they were not hidden but not seen either. His mouth crashed against hers, and he kissed her, and he held her.

When they broke apart, she pressed her face to his, catching her breath, the ache in her chest blessedly easing with his promise, his presence.

“The first kiss was mine...” she said, stroking his cheek. “But this was yours.”

“So long as every kiss after this one belongs to both of us,” he kissed her hand, “I will be happy.”

Epilogue

Three Months Later

“Come now, Rosie. You cannot possibly cry more than you already have today,” Anna said, though she was dabbing at her own eyes with a handkerchief, as she came outdoors. “There are hours left of this breakfast. We have not even seen the cake!”

“Need I remind you how much you cried at your wedding?” Rosalie remarked, only crying a little, and only because the morning thus far—the church, the vows, her father delivering her down the aisle—had proven to be exactly what she had dreamed. She sobbed again as she looked out toward the cliffs. “It has just been... a very lovely day.”

“Cornwall in July...” Anna said, coming down the steps to join her. “It was a fine choice, no matter what the papers wrote. Much nicer than London. Somewhere new... Albeit not to us. Does he like it?”

Rosalie smiled. “Yes. He likes it very much.”

“I should have expected nothing less, the way he dotes on you. It is sickeningly sweet. Who would have thought?”

They stood a little apart from the rest of the gathering on the terrace of their ancestral house outside of Truro, the sea just visible in a long gray-blue line past the hedgerows. Rosalie had missed this view more than she had properly admitted to herself. The air was different here, clear and familiar.

Anna and William had come down from Scotland a week earlier; Anna’s condition was now advanced enough that she moved through the garden with one hand braced against the small of her back. She complained about her pregnancy constantly, but she had never once looked happier and more fulfilled.