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He was amused. ‘Don’t look so shocked. You should hear what Taz has to say about it. But I have learned these last few days that you have to risk everything to gain what you truly desire.’
‘But why for me?’
He took her hands again in his. ‘I wished you to have the freedom to marry or not as you pleased. I did not want you to feel you had to accept Mr Flynn’s offer in order to have a home and the necessary freedoms.’
Eliza’s shock was replaced with a wave of love as she realised the enormity of what he had done. Suddenly she was sheepish. ‘I hope you won’t withdraw your offer when you learn I never had any intention of marrying Mr Flynn.’ She looked up into his eyes, so dark and fathomless in the shadows.
He drew her closer. ‘I am inordinately pleased to hear that.’ And a deep generous laugh made her realise how seldom his lordship laughed. ‘But does this mean you’re against the idea of marriage on principle?’
Eliza was standing so close she had to resist resting her head on the expanse of his chest. ‘No, not on principle.’ She felt unexpectedly shy as she glanced up at him. ‘It depends who is offering.’
Lord Purfoy folded her in his arms and muttered into her hair, ‘I would be honoured, Miss Gray, if you would accept my hand in marriage.’
She looked up, offering her face like a flower to the sun. ‘Did you not know I loved you from the moment I first saw you? I knew one day you would come for me. I would listen for your footfall on the stair and know it was you.’ She stood on tiptoe as he cupped her face in his hand and tenderly kissed her on the lips.
The warmth, the feel, the scent of him intoxicated her. The intimacy of that first kiss filled her senses. His skin smelt of leather and woodsmoke and horses and a masculine aroma distinctly his own, for her the most seductive scent in the world. At last Eliza knew the merging for which she had longed all her life, the meeting of bodies, the blending of souls, and she held him close, prolonging the pleasure. ‘What can I do with the joy that bubbles up in me?’ she whispered in the dark.
‘Bring it to our new life.’ His arm tightened across her back as he continued, ‘A great grief stole my youth – all hope, all happiness fled. But then you arrived in a gust of wind that blew away the ashes of the past. You were cast into my path, my winged goddess, and gave me back my soul.’
‘Every winged goddess needs her winged horse. Will your miraculous gift of the Bathwick inheritance allow me to buy Percy from Prebbles?’
‘I always knew wherever you go, Percy comes too.’ He held her away from him with a serious expression. ‘He’s a very fine-looking horse, though I couldn’t give him the attention he required because I was incapable of dragging my eyes away from the beauty on his back.’ Then he dropped his voice and said, ‘Having you so close, I’m bewitched by you; all I wish is to peel off those ridiculous clothes that encase you like a chrysalis. You are a butterfly about to emerge. You already have wings!’
Eliza laughed with sheer happiness. She met his eyes with a mischievous gleam. ‘Lord Purfoy, do you think you might kiss me again?’
‘I think before I do, you probably should call me by my given name. What think you, my Eliza?’
She had imagined him calling her name but when she finally heard his voice, rich and soft, say Eliza with a lazy, elongated second syllable, her knees went weak. He caught her by the elbows as she lifted her face and said, ‘Lord Purfoy, Raven, Raven, Raven, could you bear to kiss me again?’
‘First, you need to answer my question. Eliza, you know I love you. Will you marry me? Will you be happy to be my countess and rule my domain?’
Eliza slipped her arms around his neck and on tiptoe whispered in his ear, ‘Oh, my lord, yes, yes, yes!’ She turned her head to meet his lips in a kiss she never wanted to end. Then taking his hand, she led him out into the now empty yard, under a heaven full of stars. They both looked up into the eternal night and Raven Purfoy turned to her and said, ‘A star burned bright at your birth, brave and fierce and beautiful.’ He pulled her closer in the chill air. ‘All my world is in your hands; my horses, my land, my heart, my soul, all yours.’
With his arm holding her to him, Eliza felt his life force radiate through her body. Under that canopy of stars they stood in silence, listening to the night, the only two people in the world, absorbed in the timeless mystery of love.
EPILOGUE
MY HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
Eliza was awoken by her husband’s kiss. She opened her eyes to watch him tousled-haired and naked walk away from her to pour out two glasses of champagne. He carried them back to their bed, the wine sparkling in the slanting morning light. As he crossed the room through shafts of early sun, she thought him as beautiful as Orpheus on his return from the Underworld. She laughed, still amazed at her good fortune in being loved by him. Words bubbled unbidden to her mind: I love, I am loved, he is mine.
Raven passed Eliza a glass and she asked, ‘What are we celebrating, my lord?’
‘Shame on you for not remembering.’
‘Well it’s ten months since we married, ten months since we made Hartfield Castle our home. Is that what we’re marking?’
He had climbed back into bed. ‘No! We’re celebrating the first time I kissed you, when the world stopped turning and I asked you to marry me. You, of course, were more concerned about bringing your great horse with you. Do you recall, my daring wild countess?’
‘I think I might need a reminder,’ Eliza said with a giggle as she handed back her champagne.
He put both glasses down and took his wife into his arms. ‘Well, madam, you know by now I don’t need to be asked twice.’ His hand then reached up for Mr Fox, sitting beady-eyed on Eliza’s side of the bed, and he stuffed the small creature under the pillow.
‘Rav, what are you doing?’ Eliza murmured.
Her noble husband chuckled. ‘I don’t think we need an audience, do you?’ and he began to trace her fine collarbone with an increasingly insistent series of kisses.
Lying later with Eliza in his arms in the blissful warmth of the marital bed, Raven Purfoy idly circled a finger through the pale damp fronds of the hair that framed his wife’s face and murmured, ‘I’m ashamed to admit how it thrills me to hear you call me my lord in circumstances such as this. I have been called so all my life by everyone from the under-gardener to the Prince of Wales. It has meant very little. However, when your sweet voice whispers my lord when you’re in my arms, it sends a jolt through my blood and quickens my spirit. How say you, my lady?’
