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His hands wrapped around her wet upper arms. “This—you—your body, your mind. I want us married, Sloane. I want your skin under mine without having to feel as though I’ve lost all sense of honor. I want us united not only for that, but also for how I don’t want to ever have to suffer through a week like I just did when I thought you were lost to me forever.”
Her lower lip relaxed a modicum. “Your proposal is getting better.”
“You left me, Sloane, and I’ll not have that again. I cannot bear it. And then when you were just sinking into the bog…” His words stopped as he looked out at the landscape for a long moment. His gaze returned to her, pinning her, his words a low rumble. “My world stopped and I couldn’t fathom moving into the next day without you on this earth.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
He stepped in, his chest brushing the hard nubbins of her breasts through her sopping shift. He looked down. “You realize I can see everything of you through your shift and it is driving me quite mad.”
She had to fight to not touch him, to not splay her hands across his chest. “Don’t change the topic.”
He sighed. “The not telling people—it is just for now. Just until we can marry properly in England.”
“A Scottish marriage isn’t proper?” Her nose wrinkled, miffed.
“It’s proper enough to call you my wife. To have you in my bed without tempting the gates of hell.” His hands moved from her arms and wrapped around her waist. “No, I want to use our proper English wedding to flesh out the very people that have used you to come after me. Those that decided kidnapping you in broad daylight was something I would allow. Falsted is one of them, yes, but there are a number of known entities in the smuggling enterprise arriving at Wolfbridge in a week’s time. A summit, if you will, cloaked in a house party, and I am a breath away from pinning the last leader—one man in particular. Falsted has been my entry to this world, but he’s also long had his suspicions about me—it’s why he sent you after me. Why he sent the one before you. But he’s never had proof of what I’ve been doing—whose names I know, the evidence I’ve collected.”
“Why he’s needed the book.”
“Exactly. I’ve invested in enough of his plots that I’m too valuable to cut out of the scheme without direct proof. Falsted sent you, which means he’s getting desperate. And desperate men break. If we can set him so far off-kilter, I am positive he’ll break and tell me who the mastermind of the whole smuggling scheme is—one way or another.”
She couldn’t help the smile that curved her lips. “Now this is interesting. Your proposal almost sounds enticing—flipping this back upon Falsted and his brethren.”
A smile turned up the corners of his lips. “I hope it sounds more than interesting—at least the marriage part.”
She couldn’t resist any longer and her palms went flat against his wet lawn shirt. “You do realize my grandfather had very different plans for marrying me off? Though only the heavens know what he has been concocting since he finds me unmarriageable now. But I was originally only to marry a man that will prove to be advantageous to the Vinehill estate.”
“Done.” He pulled her tighter into him, her body long against his hard muscles. “If you’ll recall, I just happen to own some of the Swallowford lands—I have no business with them—I merely bought them to gain Falsted’s trust. So I’ll happily sign them over to your grandfather or your brother. They can do with them whatever they want—sheep, tenants—whatever is best for your people.”
“You didn’t even ask of my dowry.” Her eyebrows drew together. “You would do that? Marry me with no gain for yourself? A loss, if anything?”
“I gain you, don’t I?” He said the words so matter of fact, as though marriage was that simple. There was always a gain, always an alliance to be had. What he proposed was not marriage. What he proposed was…
Love.
The realization hit her and stole all the breath from her lungs.
One did not get married for love. Sometimes for lust. But never for love.
And never to a man that one had only a month ago vowed to destroy.
Her look dipped down and she stared at the cut of his white lawn shirt, now splattered with fat splotches of mud.
This was the moment.
The moment she would be trading away all thoughts, all ambitions of vengeance if it truly had been Reiner that had ordered the Swallowford lands cleared.
He could be the entire reason her arm was scarred. Torrie was scarred. Her brother dead. Torrie’s family dead.
It was still possible he was the reason.
But Reiner wouldn’t trade his honor to save his own hide. If she knew anything, she knew that. He could have disposed of her in a thousand ways when she was at Wolfbridge if that was his game.
But he didn’t.
Or in the inn after he knew she stole the book. He could have used her own dagger on her and left her in a pool of blood.
But he didn’t.
