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She put her hand back on his forehead, and he gently caught her wrist, bandage and all, and held it against his chest where she could feel his heart.

“I am not feverish,” he said. “I know precisely what I am saying. I have known it, I think, for weeks. I only did not have the courage to say the word. It has been pressing on me every hour. I have woken in the night with it. I have sat across a desk from my steward and not heard a syllable, because all I could think was that you were in a house across town and that I wanted you in the room.”

His throat moved. “I thought I should wait until I had given you answers,” he went on. “I thought you would not want it from me while you were grieving. I was a fool about it. I nearly waited too long.” He drew a careful breath, then his hand tightened over hers. “Leonora, I am not asking you for anything. If you do not feel as I do, I will accept it. I would not trouble you. I would see you safely back to Lady Byron’s door and be your friend for as long as you would let me. But I could not lie here another hour without saying it. I love you. That is all. I wanted you to know.”

For a long moment Leonora did not move.

She had a speech. She had carried it with her all night, a careful, dignified, sensible speech, thanking him for everything now that her mother had been found, but every word of it was gone.

Without thinking, she leaned down and kissed him.

She leaned down and kissed him.

Her bandaged hand clutched his shirt and her hair spilled over them both. Then he made a low sound against her mouth, and the fierceness slowed. His good hand slid up the back of her neck and into her hair, and he held her there as if he had no intention of ever letting her move.

She felt him part her lips with his own, unhurried, tasting her as though he had all the time in the world. A shiver ran down her spine and settled somewhere low. She answered him without thinking, leaning into the kiss until the edge of the mattress pressed against her knees.

His thumb traced the line of her jaw. His mouth moved to the corner of hers, then back, softer now, and when she sighed his breath stuttered against her lips. She could feel his heart under her palm, fast and hard... she could feel the heat of his skin through the linen, and everything she had spent weeks trying not to want rose up in her all at once and refused to be put down again. She kissed him as though she had been starving for it. She kissed him until the room dissolved, and there was nothing left in the world but the warmth of his mouth and the way he held her.

When she drew back at last, they were both breathing hard. His eyes had gone dark, his lips were reddened, and he looked at her so intensely, she couldn’t hold his eyes.

“You fool,” she said. Tears were running down her face. “You great, impossible fool.”

“That is not a no?”

“Of course it is not a no.” She laughed and wiped her eyes with her wrist. “I was frightened, Anthony. I was so frightened of what I felt for you that day I left. I told myself it was grief, pride, and a dozen other things. I thought if I put enough distance between us it would stop. Then I saw you fall in front of me on that carpet.” Her voice dropped. “I have been afraid of many things, Anthony. I was never so afraid in my life as when your eyes closed. I thought, I have been a coward, and now it is too late. I cannot live without you. I do not want to try.”

He looked at her as though she had handed him the sun.

“Say it,” he said. “Tell me, Leonora.”

“I love you,” she said. “I am in love with you, Anthony. I think I have been for ages.”

His hand cupped her face, and she turned into it. He pulled her down again, more slowly this time. His mouth was warm and she melted into it, aware of nothing but the heat of him and the sound of her own pulse.

Then the door creaked open and Leonora flew upright so fast that she nearly overturned the chair. Anthony let out a soft groan as the movement jarred his shoulder.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

In the doorway stood three women in a row. Rose was in front, clutching a tray with a steaming bowl on it, with her mouth open. Lady Byron stood beside her. Behind them both, in a gown the color of dandelions and a hat with a single drooping feather, stood Marian, with Fortune the cat draped across her arm.

Nobody spoke.

“We did knock,” Lady Byron said at last.

“You did not,” said Marian, delighted.

“Well I intended to,” Rose added quietly. “It feels like we interrupted something.”

“Well, do go on,” Marian said, sweeping into the room. “Do not mind us. I have waited years to see my grandson look like that.”

“Like what, Grandmother?” Anthony asked. “Shot in the shoulder and in pain?”

“No.” Marian said. “In love.”

Leonora’s face was burning. She smoothed her hair with both hands. “He has only just woken,” she said, which sounded ridiculous even to her.

“So I see.” Marian set Fortune on the foot of the bed and bent over her grandson, examining him. “How are you, my darling? Does it hurt very badly? Say so, and I shall send for the surgeon and give him a piece of my mind.”