Chapter 42 #2
Neil caught her hand and held it, his words threaded with a fragile hope. “You do?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Constance took a step closer.
“You could teach me your history. Show me pot shards and mud bricks and explain how terribly important they are. Take me to Egypt, or Greece, or Persia. I could see the world while you dig up all its lovely, ordinary secrets.” She swallowed, her throat suddenly tight. “You could fight for me.”
“You’re the fighter, Constance.”
Constance rolled her eyes. “Did you ever think that maybe I might like to have someone who would stand up to the rest of the world with me? Even if they did it with books and pens and stubbornness instead of that sword you don’t know how to use.
And you would,” she added. “Don’t even try to pretend otherwise.
You defend the things you love, Neil. I have already seen you do it.
And there is a very great deal to admire in that. ”
The lines of Neil’s face were drawn in the moonlight. “Is that it, then? You admire me?”
“Hardly,” Constance retorted. “I also want to do absolutely wicked things with you. The most wretchedly sinful notions have been tormenting me since our experiment in the stepwell—or earlier than that, if I’m to be perfectly honest. I have been itching to get you out of all that tweed for weeks.
You are a damnably attractive man, Neil Fairfax. ”
Neil’s gaze darkened with a focus like sunlight through a magnifying lens.
Constance drew nearer until she could feel the warmth of his body through the silk of her gown. A deep, needful shudder moved through him in response.
“Are you attracted to me, Neil?” she asked, deliberately provoking.
“I think you are perfectly well aware of the effect you have on me,” Neil retorted tightly.
“Not as aware as I’d like to be.” Constance glided her hand down the front of his shirt. “I could be so much more aware… if you’d let me.”
“Bloody hell, Connie,” Neil rasped. “You can have me any time you want. You don’t have to marry me for that.”
Constance cocked an eyebrow at this intriguing confession. “I thought you were more of a gentleman than that.”
“Not when it comes to you,” Neil bit back desperately.
“But you want to marry me,” Constance clarified thoughtfully as her fingers traced the waistband of his trousers.
Neil closed his eyes, fighting an obvious war of self-control. “Yes.”
Constance’s hand stilled. “Why do you want that, if you know you could have me anyway?”
Neil’s gaze shadowed with vulnerability through the searing heat of his desire. “I think I already answered that.”
“Because you’re in love with me,” Constance filled in.
She slipped her arms around his waist, laying her face against the warm, solid plane of his chest. She fit there very nicely, her head just coming to his shoulder.
He slowly came to hold her in return, as though afraid that if he went too fast, she would startle and run away.
She spoke across his chest. “You know, I think you might really mean it—that you love me, I mean. And not just your own notion of who you’d like me to be.”
Neil laughed. The helpless sound hummed against her skin. “Connie, I couldn’t pretend you were someone else if I wanted to. You’d set me straight in a heartbeat. Probably in some way that would scorch my eyebrows or require replacing several of my reference books.”
Constance lifted her face from his chest to look up at him. “I know,” she said—the words coming from someplace deep. “But don’t you want me to love you back?”
Neil’s expression flashed with vulnerability once again. “I… yes. That’s what I want. If you think you could. But it wouldn’t have to happen right away. I… We could wait, if you like. To see if you…”
His words trailed off, and he looked up as though searching for strength.
“I mean, I do love you already,” Constance mused.
“I’ve loved you since we were children. Why else do you think I spent so much time trying to make you miserable?
I don’t mean in a romantic way, of course,” she quickly corrected.
“I hadn’t any notion what that looked like all those years ago.
I loved you because you were my friend—even if you didn’t really want to be. And because of Ellie.”
“It isn’t that I didn’t want to,” Neil protested. “You just made it feel so bloody dangerous!”
“It still would be,” Constance warned him. “Just because I fall in love with you doesn’t mean I’m going to behave myself.”
“I am more than well aware of that,” Neil replied dryly.
“You are, aren’t you?” Constance gazed up at him wonderingly. “I wonder if you realize how extraordinary that is.”
Her hand glided up the back of his neck, her fingers threading gently into the soft waves of his hair. “I already love you. I am wildly attracted to you. You know me, and you still want me, exactly as I am—even though it has to frighten you at least a little.”
“Yes,” Neil confirmed bluntly.
“And you are a scholarly wizard with a flaming sword,” she pointed out with wicked delight.
“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”
“Absolutely not,” Constance vowed. “You can see what all of that adds up to, can’t you?
If that isn’t a recipe for falling in love with a person, I don’t know what would be.
In fact, I wonder if I haven’t fallen in love with you already—only I didn’t really let myself see it.
Maybe because you’ve been here in front of me all this time, in one way or another. Or because…”
Constance wavered on the edge of someplace more real—more true—than she had let herself go before.
And leaped.
“Because saying it would have made me realize how very much you had come to mean to me. And how terrible it would have been if you had decided to go away.”
Neil’s voice was rough. “Why would I go away?”
Constance shrugged. “If I wasn’t what you really wanted. We are very different, you know.”
“I know,” Neil confirmed. “But you’re what I want, Connie. I hope you can believe that.”
“I do,” Constance said—and the words swept through her like a revelation.
Happiness bloomed inside of her like something made to fly. She smoothed her hand over Neil’s chest again, feeling his solid strength through the fabric—and the way his breath went ragged at her touch.
“So will you marry me, then?” She glanced up at him with wicked slyness. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”
Neil let out a helpless laugh. “Why does that sound like a threat?”
“Because it is.” Constance flashed him her teeth.
“One that I intend to make good on in the mornings. And over lunch. And on your desk, after I shove all your precious papers onto the floor.” She dipped her hands under the loose hem of his shirt and stroked up his skin, her nails lightly grazing the flesh of his abdomen.
“I’m going to make good on it until the two of us are so sated we can barely stand. ”
“I yield,” Neil groaned. “Damn it, Connie. Yes. I’ll marry you. Even though I was supposed to be the one to ask.”
Constance shrugged. “Well, you were leading up to it nicely.”
And then—at last—Neil leaned in to kiss her. His hands cradled the small of her back like they held something achingly precious, and his lips glided over her mouth with a taut, eloquent restraint—a perfect balance of hunger and delicacy, heat and reverence.
He kissed her like she was a poem that he held in his arms. It was a promise and an act of worship, aching with bone-deep joy.
All of which was perfectly lovely.
Constance grabbed the lapels of his coat, spun him about, and shoved him down onto the bench.
“Let’s try it my way now,” she declared as she climbed on top of him.