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The mood at Poldene lifted. Neighbors heard the good news and called to congratulate the countess. One or two friends spent time with the earl, and if they were shocked at his ravaged appearance, they didn’t allude to it.
“You saved my father’s life!” Kenver said to Sarah in the evening after one of these visits. They sat together on the sofa in their rooms, and he held her close. Kenver had ordered a fire lit as a cold fog had rolled in from the sea after sunset. “You and your mother,” he added. “Everyone at Poldene ought to be thanking you.”
“Your eternal gratitude will be sufficient,” Sarah teased.
He smiled and kissed her. “You have that. What would we have done without you?”
“Gotten on more easily perhaps,” Sarah had to say. “I’ve caused a great deal of friction in your family.”
“No.”
“But if I hadn’t…”
“Your presence here may have revealed conflicts. That is not the same as causing them.”
“But if you had married someone your mother approved of…”
“And who would that be?”
“A noblewoman,” Sarah replied. “Perhaps a duke’s daughter. With a large dowry and all sorts of useful social connections.”
“Who would do whatever Mama ordered,” he added.
“Mmm.” Sarah frowned. “You know, that might have been a challenge. The only duke’s daughter I ever met was…rather accustomed to getting her own way.”
Kenver shuddered at the conflicts this suggested. “I married exactly the right person.”
“How can you say so when it was all so…accidental?”
“A happy accident? But perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps fate or providence or Tintagel’s magic brought us together.”
“Do you really believe that?” Sarah asked.
He looked down at her, at the gentle face he had learned to cherish. “I believe you have shown me what love truly is,” he replied. “And I don’t see how I would ever have understood it without you.”
Sarah’s blue eyes filmed with tears.
“You are generous and brilliant and delectable, and I love you with all my heart, Sarah.”
“I love you so,” she replied.
This naturally led to more kisses, which soon inspired increasingly urgent caresses, until the sofa became inadequate and a change of location seemed advisable. Arms laced about each other, they moved to the bedroom, where lips and hands enticed as they shed bits of clothing, boots, and a reckless scatter of hairpins. Tumbling into lavender-scented sheets, they did their best to drive each other wild before coming together with passion and tenderness and ecstasy that promised so much for the years that lay ahead.
Afterward, they lay nestled together while their pulses and breathing slowed. Kenver dropped small kisses on his wife’s bare shoulder. “Who would have thought, when we crawled into that cave and huddled on the stone, that we would come to this?” he asked.
“This?” Sarah echoed with a smile.
“Yes. Er, marital bliss.”
She laughed. “I adore scandalous things.”
“I adore you.”
This required a proper acknowledgment. It was some time before Sarah said, “I suppose Merlin might have thought of it.”
“That Welden fellow?” Kenver looked down at her, astonished.
“No, the real Merlin, the magician. He brought Uther to Igraine at Tintagel and made a marriage.”
