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“Yes. Obviously.”
He smiled at the terse reply. “You love me.”
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said it. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters, love. It’s all that matters. You love me.”
“Yes,” she confessed. “But it’s not enough.”
“Love... It’s enough.” He pulled her close. “Of course it’s enough. You, this wild world you live in, these wild women who come with you, all of it... it’s so much more than I imagined. It’s everything.” He paused, pressing kisses to her knuckles until she let out a little sigh. “Now. You love me and I love you and we’re in a perfectly nice church.”
“There are so many explosives hidden beneath the pews of this place, we’re one dropped match away from razing the South Bank,” she retorted.
His brows rose. “Are there? Then let’s get married quickly and leave it.” He was bent toward her, his thumb stroking over the soft skin of her cheek, the scent of fresh rain surrounding them even here, in this ancient church. “Marry me. Not because your father wants it. Not because you made a bargain. Marry me because I love you. Because you love me. Because here, like this, we win.”
She clasped his hand, pressing her cheek to his palm, and he would have given all he had in that moment to know what she was thinking. But she turned her unreadable gaze on her father and said, “I marry him, and you release Lord and Lady Carrington. Immediately.”
Henry exhaled, harsh and hopeful. This was it. She was going to be his.
Alfie’s smile went wide. “Of course!”
She narrowed her gaze on her father. “Immediately, Alfie.”
“Absolutely.” He turned to the guards near Jack and Helene. “Linus—go fetch the vicar.” His will done, he turned back to them. “There’s just one more thing.”
Of course there was. “Go on.”
“A small thing, really. Just enough to ensure that this”—he waved a hand between them—“new partnership don’t go sideways the moment you leave the SouthBank.” Henry waited, wondering what Alfie’s final request would be. “I want what was in the box.”
Adelaide stiffened next to Henry even as he said, “What box?”
“Nah, don’t play the fool with me. I know too well that you’ve a head on your shoulders. Addie stole something from me that belongs to you. Something Havistock was willing to pay a pretty penny for. And I want it. You know, for insurance. In case you start thinkin’ ’bout annulments.”
Irritation flared at the suggestion that Henry wouldn’t honor his marriage vows—vows he intended to honor every moment of every day for the rest of his life.
“No,” Adelaide said to her father, the word clipped and cold. “That’s not for you.”
“In fact it is, as you stole it from me.”
“You stole it from him first.”
“And he who finds, keeps,” Alfie said.
“I think you meanshewho finds, keeps.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Henry said, reaching into his pocket and extracting his father’s long-ago letter, which he’d tucked into his pocket before coming to fight for this woman he loved. Just as his father had done. “Not anymore.”
She reached out a hand to stop him. “Henry. No. That’s not for him. It’s not for anyone but you.” Her brow furrowed in concern. “The memory of it. The reminder of it. It is yours.”
It proved that love existed, he’d said to her about the letter and why he’d never destroyed it.That it was good and worthy and true.
Except he did not need it now. Now, his proof was Adelaide, and the way she had freed him from the fear he’d had of what was in that letter.
He lifted her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “You may have all that is mine, if only you wish it.”
Tears welled in her beautiful eyes as she recognized his father’s words to his mother. As she answered, softly, “All I wish is a future that we might together call ours.”
“Yes,” he said, leaning down and kissing her thoroughly, until Alfie grumbled and Jack and Helene clapped happily, and Sesily Calhoun gave out an enthusiastic hoot.
