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Knowing she might drive herself to distraction with such doubts and speculations, she'd decided to ask him to meet her here in this secluded place, where servants, workers and household staff were unlikely to interrupt them. Rather than agonize over the matter any longer, better to baldly inquire about his feelings and discover straightaway whether she'd pierced together her shattered heart only to break it again over a man who didn't really want her.
A flicker of movement caught her eye. Joy and nervousness warred in her breast as she watched Tony Nelthorpe round the bend in the lane. Taking a deep breath, she advanced to meet him.
"Jenna, you're looking as lovely as this sunny afternoon," he said, kissing the hands she offered. "Rested and refreshed! Evers must be finding fewer recruits to occupy you."
She took his arm, an automatic zing of awareness shocking through her. Surely he still felt it, too!
"Yes, we've had only a handful of soldiers and one more widow arrive since your last visit," she replied, guiding him toward the stone storehouse. "Your spring planting has prospered, I trust?"
"As yours has, I see," he said, nodding toward the fields below them. "A pretty site, this. You asked me to meet you here to admire the view?"
"It is lovely, isn't it? But you must be hot after that long walk up. Come, let's get out of the sun. I've brought some wine."
Did she only imagine his minute hesitation on the threshold, as if troubled when he noted the deserted building's relative isolation? "That would be most refreshing," he said an instant later, following her into the cool dimness within.
She let him gaze around as she poured wine from the basket she'd carried up. Primitive but solidly built, the one-room storehouse was unfurnished, its single small window looking out over the vista of hill and meadow.
"Does the place remind you of somewhere?" she asked after a moment.
Nelthorpe gave a short laugh, the tips of his ears reddening. "It does rather bring to mind that abandoned monastery outside the walls of Badajoz."
"Where you lured me under false pretenses, then tried to seduce me? Threatening, I recall, not to allow me to leave until I succumbed to your advances?"
Nelthorpe groaned. "What an arrogant, chuckle-headed coxcomb I was! Still following the sage advice of that great arbiter of correctness, my father, who'd preached that a woman rebuffed a man's advances only as a sap to her conscience. That she really wanted him to take her, despite any protests to the contrary."
Jenna laughed. "I dispelled that illusion rather pointedly."
"I've got the scar to prove it," he acknowledged with a rueful grin. "I couldn't have been more shocked-I was so presumptuously sure you wanted me as I wanted you!"
This was her opening, Jenna thought. Gathering her courage, she said, "I did want you. I just didn't know it yet. I...I still want you."
He jerked his gaze back to her face, the sudden blaze in his eyes mitigating her uncertainty. An instant later, however, he tightened his hands into fists and stepped away.
"I thought we'd already decided that would be... unwise."
She stepped after him, took his arm and made herself continue. "Do you no longer want me?"
His fists flexed, unflexed, as if he could not decide whether to leave her hand on his arm or brush it away. Finally, he left it, covered it gently with his own. "You know I do," he said gruffly. "But the result of indulging that desire might be a child, and I couldn't risk that. You are honorable to your bones! I would expire of frustration before I would place you in a position where doing what was right compelled you to accept something you didn't want, weren't ready for."
"And if I were to tell you that I am now ready?"
Once again he snapped his gaze back to her. "Are you implying what I think you're implying?" he demanded, studying her face.
"Let me say it plainly. I love you, Tony Nelthorpe. Once, another world and time ago, we came together to a room like this and you asked me to marry you, threatening to detain me until I was fit to be no man's wife but yours. I wish more than anything for you to ask me again, but this time there must be no coercion. Don't offer out of gratitude for my saving your life, or pity for the widow left alone. Don't offer even out of passion for a wanton who cannot seem to resist your advances. Offer only if you love me, Tony. Only love can insure you are meant to be no woman's husband but mine." Her courage beginning to falter, her voice wobbled as she asked, "D-do you love me, Tony Nelthorpe?"
For long, nerve-shredding moments he simply stared at her. Her face was flaming in chagrin, her heart lacerating in anguished disappointment, when finally he stuttered, "L-look in my waistcoat pocket."
"Your waistcoat pocket?"
He grabbed her hand and thrust it inside his jacket. "Here."
For half an instant she wondered if he wanted her once again to seduce him, until her fingers touched folded paper. At his curt nod, she drew it out.
"Read it."
Still baffled, she unfolded the document-and discovered it to be a special license, permitting one Anthony Nelthorpe to wed one Jenna Montague Fairchild at a place of their convenience, any time within the next three months. The paper was dated June 25-the anniversary of Waterloo.
Incredulous, she looked back up at him. "But we've met three times since you obtained this! Why have you said nothing?"
"I sensed-I hoped-that you had at last recovered from your grief, but every time I thought to propose, my courage failed me. I was terrified you might dismiss my pretensions as contemptuously as you did that day in Badajoz, or be so insulted by my unworthy offer that you banished me. I lost you once. Difficult as it was to be with you as a friend when I wanted so much more, I could better stand that than the thought of losing you forever."
He seized her hands, still holding the special license, and kissed them fervently. "I love you, Jenna! And though a lifetime might not be enough for you to remake me into the kind of man you deserve, will you marry me anyway? Will you love and cherish and mold me for the rest of my days?"
He loved her. After the anguish and despair of the last year, she could hardly allow herself to believe it.
A fierce joy welled up, swelling her chest, making her throat ache and bringing the sting of tears to her eyes. "I will," she replied, her voice unsteady. "Indeed, I suspect a lifetime will be just long enough."
Clutching the special license in one hand, she threw herself into his embrace.
