Chapter Twenty-One
If she was sleeping, Winifred thought, she really, really did not want to wake up.
She was not asleep, however, though she was sitting on his lap, warm and cozy beneath the small blanket, her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed.
Her lips were tingling. They felt deliciously as though they might be swollen.
She could feel him with every part of her, his solid, hard, man’s body, his shoulder broad and firm beneath her cheek, his arm about her, holding her close, the other hand on her knee.
She could feel his body heat and smell the faint musk of his cologne.
She could hear his quiet breathing. She could taste him.
His tongue had explored her mouth, slowly, almost lazily, until it had aroused aches and longings that had had her tightening her arm about his neck and moaning slightly with the feeling that a fire had been lit inside her.
That was when he had ended the kiss somewhat abruptly and settled her head on his shoulder.
“We had better save the rest for our wedding night,” he had said, his voice a bit breathless and not quite steady. “God, but I want you.”
Her na?veté had been almost total. “Do you?” she had asked him, and she feared there had been some surprise in her voice.
“Win.” He had groaned.
She had understood then. He wanted her. Wanted.
And that was just what she had been feeling, what she still felt.
She just had not understood or known the words.
She wanted. She could not put into ordered thought quite what she wanted and he wanted, but she knew it was something sexual, a word that had always been quite foreign to her vocabulary.
She wanted him with all of herself. Every part of her. Every part of her body. We had better save the rest for our wedding night.
He was Colonel Nicholas Ware, she reminded herself in some wonder. He loved her. How could that possibly be? He wanted to marry her. He wanted her. He—
“Of all things,” she said, sitting up and looking at him.
His head was resting against the soft, upholstered back of the sofa.
He opened his eyes. In the dim light of the moon and stars beyond the summerhouse, he looked more than handsome.
He looked languid and comfortable and…Oh, what was the word?
Desirable? She was so inexperienced in all this. But she picked up her train of thought.
“Of all things, I have not wanted anything to do with the military life, even though I have always understood that military men are far more than just killers. They are killers, nevertheless. How many men have you killed, Nicholas?”
He had not moved, but his eyes were more alert.
“Me personally?” he asked her. “Or me as an officer who commands other men to kill?”
She huffed. “How many? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?”
“I hope not thousands,” he said.
But he did not deny dozens—or even hundreds.
“War is brutal, Win,” he said. “But often it is a brutal necessity.”
“And how many lives have you saved?” she asked him. “You and your men.”
“Thousands,” he said without hesitation. “Now that you have had some time to reflect, are you finding that you cannot, as a matter of principle, marry a military man? Would you always, whatever the circumstances, see me as a killer?”
Two of her uncles—Uncle Gil, who was married to Aunt Abby, her mother’s sister, and Uncle Harry, her mother’s brother—had fought as officers in the wars. She loved them both dearly. They were not still in active service, however. Did that make a difference?
“I do not have the faintest idea how to be an officer’s wife,” she said. “Specifically, a colonel’s wife.”
“Can you be my wife?” he asked her. “Nicholas Ware’s? Can you marry the man and not the colonel?”
“Can they be separated?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said.
She did not know how.
“I have never wanted to live in London,” she said. “It would…It would kill my soul.”
“I know,” he said. “And I would not want my wife living there with me. Even less would I want our children to grow up there.”
Oh, that was such a strange thought. Children. With Nicholas.
“I have always wanted children of my own,” she said. “It has been a cause of considerable sadness to me whenever I think that I will probably never marry because I will never find someone who will love me for myself despite all the disqualifications.”
“I love you sufficiently and then in an overflowing abundance,” he said.
“You do like to exaggerate.” She touched the fingertips of one hand to his cheek, and he caught her hand in his to turn it and kiss her palm.
“My ever prosaic Win, who will always keep my feet firmly on the ground,” he said, folding her fingers one at a time over the place he had just kissed.
She sighed. “It is an impossibility,” she said.
“Our marrying?” he said. “I plan to find a house in the country before my wedding, preferably just south of the Thames or perhaps in Richmond. Somewhere my wife can live in comfort and be happy, with a small park or at least a large garden where the children can play, possibly with neighborhood children, and grow up knowing an abundance of love and with an awareness of the beauties and marvels of nature. Perhaps with dogs and cats and a goat or two.”
“And chickens?” she said.
“And definitely chickens,” he said. “When she was very young, Pippa used to carry ours around as though they were house pets. They all had names.”
She smiled at him.
“I may not be able to go home every night,” he said.
“There will be all sorts of business—military business for my other self to deal with—that will keep me late at the Horse Guards. But I will have my home and my wife and children to dream of when I get deeply immersed in work. My little bit of paradise, to which I will escape whenever I can. Is it, though, a one-sided, selfish vision?”
“No,” she said. “For a husband and wife ought to feel free to live their separate lives, rich in satisfaction and meaning, so they can share more than just domestic matters and…oh, romance when they are together. I will surely have neighbors and find all sorts of things to keep me busy and useful.”
“Will?” He raised his eyebrows. “You will have neighbors? Not would?”
She sighed again. “I love you so much,” she said. “I want to be persuaded. But I am trying to be sensible.”
“I am also thirteen years older than you,” he said. “An old man. You must not forget that.”
She laughed. “Now that does not matter to me, since we seem agreed that we can do nothing about it,” she said. “And you are not old. How absurd.”
“One item to cross off your impossible list?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Win,” he said, sitting up at last and lifting her to the seat of the sofa beside him.
“I cannot change who I am or who I have been, and I would not if I could. You say you want to live a useful life. So do I. It is what I have always wanted. Protecting the land and the people who are precious to me has always seemed a worthy goal. And that land and those people do not have to be just the countryside about me and my family and neighbors. All of England and Wales and Scotland and Ireland are my land. I will not change even if I must lose in other areas of my life. But in that other area, my personal life, I have long looked for love and have found it at last. I will cherish that love and nurture it with everything that is my being if I am given the opportunity. My wife and my family, if I am so blessed as to have children, will be the be-all and end-all of my personal life. And frankly, I can see no great divide between the two lives I wish to live. They are not mutually exclusive. They complement each other.”
She tipped her head sideways to lay her cheek against his shoulder again. The moon had dipped just behind the poplar trees on one side of the alley. The tops of the trees were moving in a slight breeze. Moonlight alternated with shade across her face as she gazed out.
“I do beg your pardon for having once called you cruel,” she said.
She could not have been more wrong.
“Oh no, no,” he said. “I do not believe you ever called me cruel. Only my mouth.”
She laughed softly. “Then I apologize for that,” she said. “I was wrong.”
“Will you marry me?” he asked.
“Yes.” She sighed.
“Thank you,” he said. “Shall we return to the house before someone sends out a search party?”
The dancing must have resumed a while ago. Several times she had heard distant music. She got to her feet and folded the blanket, and he laughed.
“I suppose,” he said, “I can never expect you to play the lady and wait to be assisted to your feet, can I? Or to leave housekeeping tasks to servants?”
“What nonsense,” she said. “As though I cannot stand up unassisted. Or fold a blanket instead of letting it fall in a heap on the floor.”
He held her hand and laced their fingers again as they set off in the direction of the house.
The full force of what had happened in the last half hour or so hit her.
They were betrothed. She was, after all, going to be married.
To someone she loved with all her heart, someone who loved her.
And he wanted children, just as she did.
He wanted them to be free and happy and possibly a bit unruly, as her siblings were and as his had been.
He wanted them to have pets in abundance. Even chickens.
“Win,” he said. “Will you mind if we do not announce our betrothal tonight or even tomorrow? General Haviland and his wife and daughter will be here until Monday, and I would not want them to feel more uncomfortable than they already do. They came here expecting a different outcome, knowing that others, including my whole family, expected it too. They do not deserve what they might consider a public humiliation.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“We agreed, Grace and I,” he said, “that though we valued each other as friends, we do not love each other as two people planning to wed ought.”