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Rafe swallowed. This was the half of the equation he hadn’t accounted for. Bound to a bed in Hampshire, it hadn’t seemed important. But this was the real world. Here, now, it was glaringly important.

“We will reside in Sussex. My father, the Honorable Viscount St. Quinton, has been so kind as to settle a small property on us there.” She flicked a glance at him. “It would be a most excellent place for a child to grow up, and there is no want, there, for skilled teachers who might bring along his education.”

For an instant, Rafe wondered what the devil he had missed. The thought was quickly superseded by awe for the woman beside him.

The elder director only nodded, but his eyebrows lifted, taking the very best kind of notice. The group of them uttered some quiet words to one another, until a pensioner stationed at the door was summoned and given instruction.

“We are to leave the decision in the boy’s hands,” said the wiry one. “If you would like a moment to confer?” He gestured toward a small arrangement of chairs along the far wall.

Before Rafe had fully offered his elbow, Sophie’s fingers twined around it, squeezing hard. She had said she never intended for him to leave her side again. God, the swell of pride that put in a man’s chest! She was exaggerating a bit, no doubt—and he believed, perhaps, she’d actually said he’d not be permitted to leave, on second recollection.

But heaven and earth. He was smiling like a bloody fool, ready to lap up every last one of her sweet commands until the day he died.

They sat in the hard, straight-backed chairs and the directors summoned up their next inquiry, lending the room a quiet lull and a vague sense of privacy.

Yesterday could have been the day he died. It seemed almost unfathomable now, with he and Chenoweth returned safely home and Russ left in a cold, rudimentary grave—notably on Thomas Balfour’s property, should anyone seek to cause trouble—but it was so. Rafe still felt the frailty of his own body: aching behind his eyes, scorching in the cuts on his thighs, opening in the great hollow of his stomach.

“We have a lot to catch up on, it seems,” Sophie whispered in his ear, her breath warm against his unshaven cheek. She still gripped his arm with falcon-like strength.

“Yes.” He leant nearer to her until their shoulders bumped; he couldn’t help it. “I’d like to start with this bit about ‘our property,’ if you don’t mind.”

Her eyes glimmered. “It was a minor scheme, really.”

“Did it involve brandy and blackmail?”

She elbowed him lightly—in the left ribs. He winced.

“Oh, blast! Rafe, I—” She stopped short, her attention leaping to the directors. They were engaged entirely by their next request. “I’m sorry,” Sophie whispered, dropping her voice even lower. “I had forgotten.”

He nudged her back. “All’s forgiven.”

There was so much unsaid, a great deal communicated by the tender strength of that hand-to-elbow connection between them. It was as though their love was too large to confine, as if it had taken on a life force all its own and magnetized the air around them.

“It may go upon the record that schemes involving brandy and blackmail are not considered minor,” Sophie whispered.

Rafe kept his eyes forward now; he could see in his periphery that she was doing the same. If one of the damned directors looked up, they’d doubtless wonder why he stared at them like a besotted beast. “Oh? Have you undertaken many such a scheme?”

“Just one. I daresay I would categorize it as colossal.”

“Ah. I should have thought major the obvious answer.”

“Major”—she lightened her grip marginally, swept her fingers up the inside of his arm—“does not constitute the gravity of what you’ve done to me, Rafe. You—you’ve given me my heart back.”

That was it. He couldn’t not look at her. Her breaths trembled beneath her breastbone, and he wanted desperately, more than anything, to pull her against him.

“You’ve given me a home,” he said. “The first.”

She grinned, dipping her chin slightly. “The cottage isn’t much, I’m afraid, but I do hope you’ll be fond of it. If living in town suits you better, I am sure with time—”

“Let it be known that I am not talking about the cottage, Sophie.”

“Oh.” Her features fell, and then lifted. “Oh.”

“Oh.”

Ten seconds or ten hours might have passed before the elder director’s voice interrupted. “Mr. and Mrs. Balfour, if you please.”

Neither of them corrected him as they rose and returned to the front of the room. Barnard had entered at some point; he was by the door, staring at them with the rapt, guileless attention of an assessing child. How long had he been watching? He looked smaller here. Thinner, in that crooked coat and without a hat, standing beside a fellow pensioner that surely was of age to be his grandfather.