Chapter Fourteen #3
"Would you prefer 'detonated'? Because that is closer to the truth.
Your letters detonated every careful wall I had built around my heart.
They destroyed years of carefully cultivated indifference.
They made it impossible for me to continue pretending that I did not want you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. "
"You are being dramatic."
"I am being honest. There is a difference.
" He released her hands and stepped back, creating a small distance between them.
"Now. We have established that I read your letters, that I used them shamelessly to pursue you, and that I intend to make you my wife at the earliest opportunity.
Is there anything else you wish to discuss? "
"I…" She paused, considering. "What happens now?"
"Now we return to civilisation. I shall call on your father this afternoon and request permission to court you formally.
Your mother will be delighted as she has been throwing eligible young ladies at my head for years, but I suspect she always hoped I would choose you.
Edward already knows, so that particular conversation is mercifully behind us.
And then…" He smiled. "Then I shall court you properly.
With flowers and poetry and all the romantic gestures you wrote about wanting. "
"You do not have to…"
"I want to." His voice was firm. "You deserve to be courted, Vanessa.
You deserve grand gestures and passionate declarations and everything those letters dreamed of.
I may have had an unfair advantage in knowing your feelings, but I intend to earn them regardless.
I intend to make you fall in love with me all over again, without the aid of stolen words. "
"I never stopped holding you in my affections.”
"Then I intend to make you fall deeper." He offered her his hand, a formal gesture, almost courtly. "Shall we? Your father awaits, and I find I am eager to begin the rest of our lives."
She took his hand. "You are very confident that he will say yes."
"I am a duke. I am obscenely wealthy. I have excellent teeth and tolerable manners when I choose to employ them. Why would he say no?"
"Because you are insufferable?"
"That has never stopped anyone before." He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and began leading her toward the front of the shop. "Besides, if he refuses, I shall simply elope with you. I understand Gretna Green is lovely this time of year."
"Martin!"
"What? I told you I was persistent." He paused at the end of the aisle, turning to look at her with an expression that made her heart skip. "I have waited six years for you, Vanessa. I am not about to let a little thing like parental disapproval stand in my way."
"That is not romantic. That is alarming."
"The two are often indistinguishable." He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead…swift, almost chaste, but it sent warmth flooding through her entire body. "Come. Let us go face our future. I find I am rather looking forward to it."
They emerged from the alcove together, hand in hand. Mr. Haberton looked up from his ledger, took in their linked fingers and flushed faces, and smiled with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had seen a great deal of human drama play out among his shelves.
"Found what you were looking for, I take it?"
"Yes," Martin said. "I rather think I did."
***
The carriage ride to the Wayworth townhouse was brief but significant.
Martin had insisted on escorting her home had, in fact, refused to hear any argument to the contrary.
His own carriage had been waiting outside the bookshop, his driver unsurprised by the addition of a female passenger.
Vanessa suspected this was not the first time Martin had collected a young lady in his carriage, but she found she did not care. Whatever his past, his future was hers.
"You are quiet," he observed, as the carriage rattled through the streets of Mayfair.
"I am thinking."
"About?"
"About how strange this all is." She turned to look at him, taking in the familiar lines of his face, the grey eyes that had haunted her dreams for years. "Yesterday morning, I woke up convinced that my life was over. That the letters had ruined everything. And now…"
"And now?"
"Now I am sitting in a carriage with the Duke of Montehood, who has just declared his intention to enter into matrimony with me." She shook her head slowly. "It does not seem real."
"It is real." He reached for her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. "More real than anything I have ever experienced."
"But what if…" She hesitated. "What if it does not work? What if, now that the chase is over, you find that the reality is less appealing than the fantasy?"
"Vanessa." His voice was gentle but firm.
"I have known you for six years. I have seen you at your best and your worst, triumphant at balls, furious in arguments, vulnerable in moments you thought no one was watching.
I have memorised the way you laugh and the way you scowl and the particular shade of pink your cheeks turn when you are embarrassed.
There is no fantasy here. There is only you, in all your complicated, infuriating, magnificent reality. "
"You are being romantic again."
"I am being truthful. The romance is incidental.
" He lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
"I am not going to wake up one morning and discover that I no longer want you.
That is not how this works. That is not how I work.
When I love, I love completely. Permanently.
Perhaps obsessively, if we are being honest."
"We are being honest."
"Then yes. Obsessively." His eyes met hers, dark and intent. "I have been obsessed with you for six years. I expect I shall be obsessed with you for the rest of my life. I apologise in advance for any inconvenience this may cause."
She laughed…she could not help it. "You are impossible."
"So you keep saying. And yet here you are, in my carriage, wearing my ring…" He stopped. "Actually, you are not wearing my ring yet. That is an oversight I intend to correct at the earliest opportunity."
"You have a ring?"
"I have several. They are family heirlooms, gathering dust in a vault because I have never met a woman I wished to give them to." His thumb traced circles on the back of her hand. "Until now."
The carriage slowed, then stopped. Through the window, Vanessa could see the familiar facade of her family's townhouse, the white columns, the black door, the windows that had witnessed her departure this morning and would now witness her return as an engaged woman.
Or nearly engaged. They had not quite managed a formal proposal yet.
"Ready?" Martin asked.
"No."
"Neither am I." He squeezed her hand. "Shall we be unready together?"
She looked at him, this man who had tormented her and delighted her and frustrated her for years, who had read her most private thoughts and loved her anyway, who was offering her a future she had never dared to imagine.
"Yes," she said. "Together."
They descended from the carriage and walked up the steps side by side.
The door opened before they could knock, Simmons, the butler, must have seen them approach and then they were inside, in the entrance hall, with the sounds of the household around them and the reality of their situation pressing in from all sides.
"Lady Vanessa." Simmons's expression was professionally blank, but she caught a flicker of curiosity in his eyes. "Your mother is in the drawing room. And Your Grace, shall I announce you?"
"Please." Martin's hand found the small of her back, a warm pressure that steadied her. "I believe Lord Wayworth is expecting me."
"Indeed, Your Grace. He mentioned that you might call." Simmons's gaze flicked to Vanessa, then back to Martin. "If you will follow me?"
They followed. Through the entrance hall, past the familiar portraits and furnishings, toward the drawing room where her mother waited with questions Vanessa was not yet ready to answer.
At the door, Martin paused. He turned to her, his expression soft.
"Whatever happens in there," he murmured, "remember: I cherish you. I have always done so. And nothing, not your parents, not society, not the entire weight of the British aristocracy, is going to change that."
"I know," she whispered back. "I cherish you too."
His smile was like the sun emerging from behind clouds. "Then we have nothing to worry about."
Simmons opened the door.
They stepped through together, into the light.
***