Chapter 9 #2
Her hand came up to rest against his chest, and beneath his waistcoat, his heart beat strong and durable under her palm, a rhythm so vital and present that it made her own pulse quicken in answer.
He tasted of strong coffee, bitter and bracing, and something deeper that she could not name but wanted more of.
His free hand settled at the small of her back, drawing her closer with a care that acknowledged the gentle swell of her belly, and she yielded with a sigh that rose from some deep and long-neglected place within her, a place she had sealed shut and forgotten existed.
The rain drummed against the windows. The fire crackled to ash. And Josephine Oxley, who had believed herself incapable of wanting a man’s touch, discovered yet again that she had merely been waiting.
When they parted at last, she was flushed and trembling, and her breath came in shallow catches that she could not quite control.
He kept his hand at her jaw, his thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone with a tenderness that made her eyes sting, and the look he gave her was warm and reassuring and contained none of the cold detachment she had come to associate with a husband’s gaze.
“Josephine.” His voice was quiet. Rougher than before. “Will you marry me?”
Her eyes burned. She blinked against it, determined not to weep, and felt the sting recede to a fierce pressure behind her lashes.
She thought of the babe growing beneath her stays, the fragile new life that needed a father and a name and a future free from the dowager’s machinations.
She thought of the girls, who deserved a world larger than the boundaries of this decaying estate.
She thought of her mother and her sister in her father’s declining estate and of the distant cousin who would inherit the entailed property and turn them out when her father’s fragile health finally gave way.
She thought of all the people who needed her to say yes.
And then she thought of the warmth of his mouth on hers and the powerful drum of his heart beneath her palm, and she realized that she was not merely saying yes for them. She was saying yes for herself.
“Yes,” she said. “I will marry you, Alistair.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead, and she closed her eyes and breathed him in and allowed herself, for one unguarded moment, to lean into the solid wall of his chest.
“I shall make the arrangements. We will tell the girls at dinner. Together.”
She nodded, barely listening as he told her the arrangements for their vows, smoothing the front of her gown with hands that would not stop trembling. Then she gathered her composure along with her skirts and left him alone in the library with the rain still falling and the fire burned to embers.
The ghost of his kiss accompanied her through the dim corridor and up the stairs to the Duchess’s Wing, warm on her lips, persistent as a promise.
Her fingertips drifted to her mouth as she climbed, pressing lightly where his lips had been, and the sensation lingered even as she pushed open the door to her bedchamber.
Clara was there, as she always was, mending a torn hem by the window where the light was strongest. Her wide hazel eyes lifted from her needlework with the alertness acquired from learning to read the mood of every room she entered.
“Your Grace?” She set aside the mending and rose to her feet, her gaze sweeping Josephine’s face as though cataloging symptoms. “You look flushed. Are you well?”
Josephine closed the door behind her and leaned against it, pressing her shoulders to the solid oak as though the wood might lend her its strength.
“He has proposed. We are to be married.”
Clara’s hands flew to her mouth. For a moment, she simply stared, her hazel eyes enormous in her fine-boned face, and then the tears came.
Not the soundless, measured weeping that both women had perfected in a year of living beneath the dowager’s notice, but great, heaving sobs that crumpled her slight form entirely.
Her knees seemed to weaken, and she sank into the chair she had vacated, pressing her hands against her face while her shoulders shook with the force of release.
“Clara.” Josephine crossed the room swiftly and knelt beside her, pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressing it into the maid’s trembling fingers. “Clara, it is good news. Take this.”
“I know.” The words came muffled through the linen.
“I know it is good news. Forgive me. I just—” She drew a ragged breath and lowered the handkerchief, her lashes dark and wet, her cheeks blotched with color.
“We have been holding on for so long, Your Grace. So very long. And I was so afraid that he would refuse, or that he would leave and never return, or that the old woman would discover …” The unfinished sentence hung between them like smoke.
Josephine remained on her knees, holding Clara’s hand, and let the moment settle around them. They had shared so much. So many mornings when they had looked at each other across the bedchamber and understood without words that another day of endurance lay ahead.
“He is going to protect us,” Josephine said. “He gave his word, and I believe him.”
Clara dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, her breathing slowly settling. “You believe him? Truly?”