Chapter 9 #2
His mouth was warm, firm, and unhurried against hers, nothing at all like the dry, perfunctory press of Jerome’s lips on their wedding night, the single occasion he had ever kissed her.
The wall she had raised with painstaking care during her loveless marriage, mortared together with endurance and resignation, split straight down the center and gave way.
Her hand rose to rest against his chest, and beneath his waistcoat, his heart beat strong and sure under her palm.
The rhythm was so alive and present it set her own pulse racing in reply.
He tasted of strong coffee, bitter and bracing, and something deeper underneath that she could not name but found she wanted more of regardless.
His free hand settled at the small of her back, drawing her nearer with a care that acknowledged the gentle swell of her belly, and she yielded with a sigh that rose from some deep, long-neglected place inside her, a place she had sealed shut so long ago she had forgotten it still existed.
Rain kept up its drumming against the windows. The fire settled slowly down to embers. And Josephine Oxley, a woman who had long believed herself incapable of wanting any man’s touch at all, found once more that she had merely been waiting all this time, not incapable in the least.
When at last they parted, she stood flushed and trembling, breath coming in shallow catches she could not quite master.
He kept his hand at her jaw still, thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone with a tenderness that stung her eyes, and the look he gave her carried warmth and reassurance, nothing of the cold detachment she had come to expect from a husband’s gaze.
“Josephine.” His voice was quiet. Rougher than before. “I will ask you properly this time. Will you marry me?”
Her eyes burned. She blinked hard against it, determined not to weep, and felt the sting settle into a fierce pressure behind her lashes instead.
She thought of the babe growing beneath her stays, that fragile new life needing a father, a name, a future clear of the dowager’s schemes.
She thought of the girls, who deserved a world far larger than the boundaries of this decaying estate.
She thought of her mother and sister back on her father’s declining land, and of the distant cousin who would inherit the entailed property and turn them out the moment her father’s fragile health finally failed.
So many people needed her answer to be yes.
And then she thought of the warmth of his mouth against hers, the powerful drum of his heart beneath her palm, and understood she was not saying yes only for their sakes. She was saying yes for her own as well.
“Yes,” she said. “I will marry you, Alistair.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead, and she closed her eyes, breathed him in, and let herself, for one unguarded moment, lean fully into the solid wall of his chest.
“I shall make the arrangements. We will tell the girls at dinner. Together.”
She nodded, barely taking in the arrangements he laid out for their vows, smoothing her gown’s front with hands that would not stop their trembling.
Then she gathered herself, along with her skirts, and left him alone in the library, the rain still falling and the fire burned down to embers behind her.
The ghost of his kiss followed her through the dim corridor and up the stairs to the Duchess’s Wing, warm still on her lips, as persistent as a promise.
Her fingertips drifted to her mouth as she climbed, pressing lightly where his lips had rested, and the sensation had not faded even as she pushed open her bedchamber door.
Clara was there mending a torn hem by the window where the light fell strongest. Her wide hazel eyes came up from the needlework at once, alert in the way she had learned from reading the mood of every room she entered.
“Your Grace?” She set the mending aside and rose, her gaze sweeping over Josephine’s face as though tallying symptoms. “You appear flushed. Are you quite well?”
Josephine shut the door behind her and leaned back against it, pressing her shoulders to the solid oak as though the wood itself might lend her some of its strength.
“He has proposed. We are to be married.”
Clara’s hands flew up to cover her mouth.
For a long moment she only stared, hazel eyes gone enormous in her fine-boned face, and then the tears broke loose.
Not the soundless, restrained weeping both women had perfected across a year spent living beneath the dowager’s notice, but great heaving sobs that crumpled her slight frame entirely.
Her knees seemed to give way beneath her, and she sank back into the chair she had just left, pressing her hands to her face while her shoulders shook with the force of it.
“Clara.” Josephine crossed the room at once and knelt beside her, drawing a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressing it into the maid’s trembling fingers. “Clara, it is good news. Here, take this.”
“I know.” The words came muffled through the linen.
“I know it is good news. Forgive me, I only—” She drew a ragged breath and lowered the handkerchief, lashes dark and wet, her cheeks blotched with color.
“We have held on so long, Your Grace. So very long. And I was so afraid he would refuse you, or that he would leave and never come back, or that the old woman would discover …” The unfinished sentence hung in the air between them like thick smoke.
Josephine remained on her knees, gripping Clara’s hand tightly, letting the moment settle itself around the pair of them.
So much had passed between them already.
Countless mornings spent trading a single look across this bedchamber, each one understanding without any words at all that another day of bare endurance lay ahead of them both.
“He means to protect us,” Josephine said. “He gave me his word on it, and I believe him.”
Clara pressed the handkerchief to her eyes, her breathing gradually easing. “You truly believe him?”
“I do.” The certainty in her own voice caught her off guard. “He is nothing like Jerome, Clara. Nothing like any man I have known before him.”
She paused, her gaze sliding to the rain-streaked window.
She had never spoken of her marriage before, not even to Clara, but something about the proposal had loosened a knot inside her.
It felt like an answer to prayers she had barely dared to make, and the promise of a future far kinder than her past had been.