Chapter Fourteen #2
"Forward." He laughed, a proper laugh this time, startled out of him. "You were worried about being forward?"
"There are rules, Martin. Social conventions. One does not simply accuse a duke of reading one's diary."
"Those letters were hardly a diary. They were…" He stopped, and something shifted in his expression. Something warmer, more tender. "They were the most beautiful things anyone has ever written about me. Or to me. Or for me."
Heat flooded Vanessa's cheeks. The embarrassment she had been holding at bay crashed over her like a wave.
"They were the ramblings of a foolish girl," she said, looking away.
"Melodramatic nonsense. I cannot believe you read them…
I cannot believe anyone read them. I wrote them in the dead of night when I could not sleep, when I was too tired to maintain any sort of dignity or restraint.
They were never meant to be seen. They were… "
"Honest." Martin's voice was quiet. "They were honest in a way that nothing in my life has ever been honest. You wrote about wanting me, about cherishing me, about the particular way I smiled when I was genuinely amused versus the way I smiled for society.
You noticed things about me that I did not even notice about myself. "
"I was obsessed," she muttered. "It was pathetic."
"It was not pathetic. It was…" He stepped closer, close enough to take her hands in his.
His fingers were warm, slightly trembling.
"Vanessa, I have spent six years convincing myself that you did not want me.
That you saw me as nothing more than Edward's irritating friend.
That your sharp words and sharper glances were genuine dislike rather than… "
"Rather than what?"
"Rather than the same desperate defense I was employing." His thumbs traced circles on the backs of her hands. "We were both hiding. Both pretending. Both so convinced that the other did not care that we built walls of wit and sarcasm to protect ourselves from the truth."
"And the truth is?"
"The truth is that I have been devoted to you for six years," he said simply.
"Since a cushion and a library and an argument about Byron that I have never forgotten.
The truth is that receiving your letters was the most terrifying and wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, because suddenly I knew that I was not alone in this.
That you felt it too. That everything I had been feeling for years was not one-sided, was not hopeless, was not the pathetic obsession I had always feared it was. "
Her vision was blurring. She blinked rapidly, refusing to cry. "You should have told me. When you received them. You should have said something."
"I know. I was a coward." His grip on her hands tightened.
"I kept waiting for the right moment, the perfect opportunity.
I told myself I needed to be sure…needed to see if your feelings were still current, still real.
The letters spanned years, after all and people change…
hearts change. I was terrified that you had moved on, that the woman who wrote those letters no longer existed. "
"She exists." Vanessa's voice was barely a whisper. "She has always existed. She was simply... hiding."
"As was I." Martin lifted her hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "Can you forgive me? For reading them, for keeping them, for using them to find my way to you?"
"There is nothing to forgive."
"There is. I violated your privacy. I took something that was not meant for me and…"
"Martin." She freed one hand from his grasp and pressed it to his cheek, silencing him.
"The letters were addressed to you. They were always meant for you, even if I never intended to send them.
You were their audience, their purpose, their reason for existing.
How can I be angry that they finally reached you? "
"You could be angry quite easily, I should think. Most people would be."
"I am not most people."
"No." His voice was rough. "No, you are not."
He turned his head, pressing a kiss to her palm. The sensation sent a shiver down her spine from the warmth of his lips, the slight rasp of stubble against her skin.
"I was mortified at first," she admitted. "When Aunt Bertha told me what she had done. I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear. I imagined you reading them and laughing, or reading them and being horrified, or reading them and, I don't know, fleeing to the Continent to escape my pathetic devotion."
"I would never flee from your devotion. Pathetic or otherwise."
"It was pathetic. Some of those letters oh… Martin, some of those letters were written when I was seventeen. I shudder to think what idiotic things I said."
A slow smile spread across his face. "Ah, yes. The early letters."
Her stomach dropped. "What about them?"
"Nothing. They were very... enthusiastic."
"Martin."
"You had quite a lot to say about my eyes."
"I was seventeen!"
"And my shoulders. You devoted an entire paragraph to my shoulders, as I recall. Something about how they looked in evening clothes and how you wanted to…"
"Stop." She pulled her hand away from his face to cover her own, her cheeks burning. "Please stop. I am begging you."
"I'm merely quoting. Your prose was quite vivid."
"I will end you. I will take your life right here in this bookshop, and Mr. Haberton will help me hide the body because he likes me better than he likes dukes."
Martin laughed a full, delighted laugh that transformed his face. "There she is. There's the woman who threw a cushion at my head and called me insufferable."
"I stand by that assessment."
"I would expect nothing less." He reached for her hands again, drawing them away from her face. His expression had softened, the teasing giving way to something more serious. "Vanessa, I need you to understand something."
"What?"
"The letters…they gave me hope. They gave me courage.
But they did not make me give you my heart.
I cherish you already, have been devoted to you for years.
What they did was show me that I was not alone.
That the feelings I had been carrying, the feelings I had convinced myself were shameful and inappropriate and impossible, they were not one-sided. You felt them too."
"I did. I do."
"Then everything else is just... details.
" He lifted her hands again, cradling them against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat through the layers of fabric…
rapid, unsteady and matching her own. "We have wasted six years being afraid.
Six years of silence and longing and pretending. I do not want to waste another moment."
"Neither do I."
"Then let us stop wasting them." His eyes searched her face.
"I want to court you properly. I want to call on your parents and ask your father for permission and do all the tedious, traditional things that society expects.
But I also want you to know, right now, before any of that happens, that my intentions are not merely honourable.
They are permanent. They are forever. I am not asking for a courtship, Vanessa. I am asking for a life."
Her breath caught. "Are you…is that…"
"I am telling you that I intend to wed you.
" His voice was steady now, certain. "Not because of the letters, not because of last night, but because I cannot imagine a future that does not have you in it.
I have tried and I have failed utterly. You are in my thoughts when I wake and when I sleep.
You are in every room I enter, every conversation I have, every decision I make.
You have been the center of my world for six years, and I am tired of pretending otherwise. "
"Martin…"
"I am not asking you to answer now. I am not even properly proposing, I shall do that later, with a ring and candlelight and all the romantic trappings you deserve.
I simply needed you to know. Before we leave this bookshop, before we face your parents and mine and the endless scrutiny of society, I needed you to understand that this is not a whim.
This is not infatuation. This is the rest of my life, if you will have me. "
Vanessa stared at him. The tears she had been fighting finally spilled over, tracking down her cheeks in warm rivulets. She did not bother to wipe them away.
"You impossible man," she whispered. "You ridiculous, wonderful, impossible man."
"Is that a yes?"
"It is not a no."
"I shall take what I can get." He released one of her hands to cup her face, his thumb brushing away her tears. "Though I should warn you…I intend to be quite persistent. I have read your letters, after all. I know exactly how to court you."
She laughed a watery, hiccupping sound. "That is terrifying."
"It should be. You were quite specific about your preferences." His eyes glinted with mischief. "Candlelit dinners. Poetry readings. Long walks in gardens under moonlight. You also mentioned, and I quote 'a firm hand at the waist during the waltz,' which I believe I have already mastered."
"I cannot believe you memorised them."
"I told you. I read them many times." He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching hers. "I can recite passages, if you wish…'Dear Martin, I despise you. I despise the way you smiled at Lady Hartwell this evening, as though she were actually amusing rather than simply…'"
"Stop!" She shoved at his chest, but she was laughing now, genuine laughter bubbling up through the embarrassment. "I dislike you immensely."
"You adore me."
"That is entirely beside the point."
"It is exactly the point." He caught her hands, stilling her ineffective assault on his person. "It is the entire point, Vanessa. You cherish me, and I cherish you, and we have both known it for years. The letters simply... hastened the timeline."
"Hastened." She shook her head. "You make it sound so solid."