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‘Too much?’ he asked.
‘Um...’
‘Only I wanted you to know. You’re worth any embarrassment. Any story in any paper. I can ignore any of it if I have you with me.’ He sounded so earnest, so open. Faith couldn’t remember ever seeing him like that, except in this place. And one precious night when he’d let himself go, only to have everything ruined.
‘Even if I’m a scandal?’ Because she was. And probably always would be. If he wanted her, he had to want all of her, even the parts that were too brash, or showed off too much cleavage, or walked up to strangers in airport bars and demanded a job.
‘I don’t care,’ he said, so swiftly she couldn’t help but believe him.
‘I suppose no one is going to ever find anything to laugh at you for more than this,’ Faith mused as the performers reached the climax of the song.
‘Unless you say no,’ Dominic pointed out.
‘I should, you know,’ Faith said. ‘Just to be sure you can really take the humiliation.’
Dominic flipped open the ring box, letting the sunshine sparkle off a diamond that could probably fix the roof of the west wing at Fowlmere. ‘Are you going to?’
Faith looked down at him, into his warm eyes, his raised eyebrow, and thought, How I love this man. He was, by turn, ridiculously stiff and unyielding, then hilariously open and embarrassing. She might never get a handle on him completely. On how to make him open up when he needed to, and how to know when something was too much.
She’d probably embarrass him a thousand times over, and he’d probably drive her crazy at least once a day. The society pages would talk of nothing else for weeks. He’d want to interfere in everything she did at Fowlmere, then forget to ask her advice at Beresford.
But they’d sneak off to Lola’s once a month, and book a suite at the Greyfriars when they needed to get away from it all. She’d get to be herself, not Lady Faith, not Faith Fowler, just her. Because she knew, beyond anything else, that was who he loved most.
There was a lot they’d need to figure out. But they’d get there. She had faith.
‘You’re not afraid I’ll run away?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll take the chance. Besides, I don’t care where you go, as long as you always come back to me.’
The song finished and the dancers crowded round them, panting slightly, not adding anything at all to the romance.
‘So. What’s your answer? Are you going to say no to test my humiliation level?’
‘Yes,’ Faith said.
Dominic’s brow crumpled. ‘Yes, you’re going to say no? Or yes, you’ll marry me?’
Faith laughed, her hair blowing in the breeze, and reached down a hand to pull him to his feet. ‘Yes, I’ll marry you. Even though you hijacked a bus and proposed to me by flash mob.’
His arms were around her waist in less than a second, before the crowd even started cheering.
‘It was the only way I could think of to convince you,’ he murmured as he leant in to kiss her.
‘Well, it worked,’ Faith said, stretching up on tiptoe. ‘Remind me not to let you search for wedding speeches on the Internet?’
‘Will do.’ And then he kissed her and she forgot her sister-in-law-to-be, filming everything from the side, forgot the flash mob, forgot the crowds; she even forgot the pelicans.
She only knew she’d never need to run away again.
* * * * *
