CHAPTER 47
Daisy
My mouth hangs open as he drags himself out of the lake, water cascading off him.
I sprint to him, my heart pounding so hard it might break free from my chest and start doing laps around the lake itself.
He straightens, water dripping from his hair, his ruined wedding suit clinging to him. He looks at me calmly like he hasn’t just driven a full horse-drawn carriage into a body of water.
And, oh , the shirt. The transparent, clinging, wet shirt.
“Hello, Daisy,” he says.
I skid to a stop, breathless.
“And you call me chaos?” I blurt. “Sophia’s going to murder you. Pretty sure ‘brother of the bride commits grand theft carriage and drowns it’ wasn’t covered by the wedding insurance.”
His lips twitch. “She’s going to be even madder if I don’t bring you back.”
I suck in a breath, still dazed, still trying to process the absolute insanity of what just happened. Still trying very hard not to stare at his dark nipples through his wet shirt.
“Edward,” I start. “I—”
“Please,” he interrupts. “Hear me out.”
“Hello, love!” Mum calls cheerfully from the cottage.
Edward, still dripping wet, turns his attention to her.
“Ah, Caroline,” he says smoothly, nodding at my mother. “You look beautiful.”
Never forgets his bloody manners.
Then, his attention shifts back to me.
“Daisy,” he begins, his voice rough. “I owe you an apology. A proper one. I was a coward. A bloody, unthinking coward who made you feel like you were some kind of secret. That I wasn’t proud to be with you.” He swallows hard, his jaw flexing. “But I was . God, I was .”
My heart hammers against my ribs as he steps closer. Water trickles down his face, catching on those perfect cheekbones, and I have to physically stop myself from reaching up to brush it away.
“The truth is, I was scared.”
I blink at him. Edward Cavendish, scared?
“Scared of how much you mean to me. Scared of how bloody hard I’ve fallen for you. And terrified that if I pulled you into my world—this suffocating world—you’d see just how different we are, and you’d decide you didn’t want me at all.” His throat bobs. “That you’d wake up one day and realize I’m just a workaholic with a stick up my ass ninety percent of the time.”
I almost laugh except my chest is too tight, my pulse too erratic, my emotions too tangled to manage anything beyond standing here, rooted to the spot, absorbing every word.
“All the things I can offer a woman, my family name, a fancy job, a nice house, none of those things are important to you. And instead of appreciating that, it made me question what I could give you. What could I offer someone like you? Someone brilliant, someone kind, someone breathtaking enough to have anything she wants?”
“Edward,” I start, but he cuts me off.
“No, wait—let me get this out.” His shoulders tense, his voice dipping lower. “I kept you at arm’s length. I held you back. I treated you like you were temporary because I was too bloody terrified that if I let myself believe this was real, I’d lose you.” He inhales sharply, his hands clenching at his sides.
“And in doing that,” he says, voice quiet now, almost broken, “I lost you anyway.”
A lump forms in my throat the size of the estate.
I can’t breathe.
I’m just standing here, butterflies fluttering, staring at him like a complete idiot.
He is so damn beautiful.
That brooding frown creating perfect little valleys across his forehead. The water droplets sliding down his shirt-plastered muscles. Those deep blue eyes staring into my soul like they can see I’m about to ruin this perfect moment with a terrible joke. Those dark nipples poking through his wet shirt like two soldiers standing at attention, ready to declare war on my self-control.
I blink hard, shaking it off. Even in the most emotionally raw moment of my life, I remain an absolute thirsty bitch.
“I don’t give a damn what my family thinks,” he continues. “Or what anyone thinks. The only thing that matters is you.”
I don’t realize I’m shaking until he reaches for me and pulls me closer.
“You,” he repeats, softer now, reverent. “The woman who makes me laugh when I forget how. The woman who makes me want things I never let myself want again.”
I swallow, my lips parting, but no words come out.
Because I think— I think I might actually be about to die.
“It’s not just about the ball,” I manage. “I spent our entire ‘relationship’ feeling like I don’t belong in your world.”
His brows pull tight. “Why are you saying ‘relationship’ like that?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly a proper one.”
His expression darkens. “It was, to me.”
“But maybe you were right to have doubts. We are from different worlds and that means something.”
“I don’t care about any of that. “
“How can you not ?”
He pauses, his chest rising and falling like he’s trying to steady himself.
“Daisy, look at me,” he says, his voice dry with something close to amusement. “I have just driven six horses and a full wedding carriage into a lake —which, for the record, wasn’t part of the plan—and I am standing here, soaked to the skin, with hypothermia probably setting in, when I’m due to walk my sister down the aisle in, what, an hour?” He flicks a wrist, checking his watch, mud streaked across his knuckles.
I bite my lip to hide a smile. Because—Jesus Christ—I want to be mad. I should be mad.
But the image of this tall, brooding man—drenched, disheveled—delivering this speech in the middle of my mother’s front lawn is so ridiculous that I feel my heart tip sideways inside my chest.
“I’m going to take the reins for both of us here,” he continues, straightening, voice taking on that authoritative, surgeon-like confidence that makes my stomach flip. “You can be a brat sometimes.”
I narrow my eyes. “Excuse me, what? You just drove six horses and a carriage into a body of water,” I shoot back. “I don’t think you should be taking any reins.”
His lips twitch like he’s fighting a smirk.
“And you ,” I continue, poking his chest with my finger, feeling hard muscle under soaked cotton, “can be an old, albeit”—I take a breath, letting my eyes trail over him because damn —“a very sexy, very handsome, arrogant ass.”
His shoulders shake with barely contained laughter that sends more water cascading off him.
But then, the laughter fades.
And something else takes its place.
Something that makes my breath catch.
He reaches for me, his hands framing my face.
He tilts my chin up, and his voice drops to something low and velvety, something that undoes me.
“I love you, Daisy.”
My breath catches.
His eyes are unguarded—wide open in a way I’ve never seen before.
“I love you,” he repeats, “And if you’ll have me—if you’ll forgive me—I swear to you, I will spend every single day making sure you never feel like you’re not enough again.”
A lump the size of the actual wedding carriage rises in my throat.
I stare at him, my brain flatlining, my emotions everywhere.
“Really?” I whisper.
“Really,” he says, his voice firm.
“You think we can work?”
“I know we can work.” His gaze doesn’t waver. “I don’t work without you. There’s no other option.”
I swallow hard.
“You asked me once,” he says, “if I could see you as the mother of my children.”
His thumbs brush against my cheeks, and despite the cold water dripping everywhere, his touch is warm.
“Daisy,” he continues, steadier still. “I had everything growing up—the best schools, the best opportunities, every privilege a person could ask for. But the things I needed most—the things that actually matter—are kindness, compassion, love. You can teach them that. You can teach them the core traits of survival and resilience.”
I inhale sharply, feeling like my chest might actually burst.
“Okay, you probably can’t teach them the difference between governmental parties,” he adds with that little smirk that makes me want to kiss him and smack him at the same time. “But I can handle that bit, if they’re interested. Though I suspect they’ll find you far more captivating—this whirlwind who lights up every room—while seeing their father as the boring old sod who won’t shut up about parliamentary procedure.”
There is no sarcasm in his voice.
No barrier between us.
Just Edward.
The Edward who loves me
“I know it might take time for you to trust me,” he goes on, voice softening, “and to adjust to the multitude of compromises a relationship with me presents. But we can do it, I know—”
He’s rambling now.
“Oh, shut it,” I cut in, grinning like an idiot. “I love you too.”
Happiness bubbles up, fizzy and wild, rushing through me.
“I’ve loved you for months,” I blurt, “maybe since that first night I hid in your tent wardrobe and saw you—”
“Hold up— hid in my tent?” His brows shoot up, head tilting. “What?”
“Oh, shit .” I wince, cheeks burning. “Didn’t mean to let that slip. I, um . . . yeah, anyway—”
“Daisy,” he says, stern and low, like a headmaster about to assign detention. It’s so frigging hot. “My god. We’re circling back to that later. But first, rewind to the ‘loving me’ bit . . .”
His face shifts—like someone flipped a switch—and suddenly he’s all lit up, eyes bright and crinkling at the corners. Before I can stammer another word, his hands cup my face, and he’s kissing me.
Not a sweet, gentle kiss either. This is the kind of kiss that makes you forget your own name, your address, and possibly how breathing works. He kisses me like a man who’s finally letting go of every rule he’s ever made.
Water’s still dripping from his hair, splattering my cheeks, but I don’t care—I’m too busy tugging at his soggy shirt, half tempted to climb inside it with him.
When he pulls back—just enough to press his forehead to mine—his breath’s coming in rough gasps, hands still cradling my face.
“Say it again,” he murmurs, voice husky.
“I love you,” I whisper, “even if you’re a total nutter who just cannonballed a carriage into a lake.”
He laughs then—deep, rolling, the kind that shakes his whole frame and peels years off him. “Good. Great. Excellent .” He beams, all teeth and dimples. “So, will you walk down the aisle with me?”
I’m laughing too, chest so full it might burst—until it hits me, and my smile falters. “Edward . . . Sophia doesn’t want me there.”
“Trust me, she does.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the friendship bracelet I made her years ago. “She’s sorry. And after Giles, you’re the only person she really wants there. That is blindingly obvious. Maybe even more than Giles, though don’t tell him I said that.”
“Okay,” I say softly, unable to stop the smile spreading across my face. “I will.”
“Brilliant. Now we just need to figure out how to get there.” He glances around at the carnage he’s created—the lake, the scattered horses, the half-submerged carriage—and for the first time, looks sheepish.
BEEP.
We both spin toward the noise just in time to see Richard roll up on the world’s largest, most ridiculous industrial lawnmower, grinning like this is the most fun he’s had in years.
He tips his cap. “Right, lovebirds—let’s go!”