Chapter Forty-Three
Andrew awoke slowly, and he almost thought himself delirious with fever. That was, until he realized all the warmth he felt across his chest was Della. He was delirious with satisfaction, then.
She lay on her stomach, tucked underneath his arm.
Her own arm was draped over him, and their legs were tangled beneath the blanket he’d tossed over them at some point in the night.
His free hand had found her waist, and Andrew closed his eyes because he just had to take a moment to commit this exact scene to memory.
He’d woken up alone the last time they’d been together like this, and he’d thought that was his lowest point. Now that he knew the bliss of waking up holding her, he’d only ever feel his truly lowest point if he never got to experience this breathtaking contentment again.
He didn’t want to wake her. His fingertips memorized the feel of her skin, running over her shoulder blade and down her back.
He attempted to untangle the knots in her hair, but he wasn’t so good at it.
He may have made them worse. For long minutes, he watched the sun come up, but his eyes never left her face.
The light drifted over her features slowly but surely, until it reflected off the strands of hair at the crown of her head.
She seemed so serene like this, but still so vibrant.
Like she was both peace and joy personified.
Her breathing quickened against his neck and her limbs tightened against his. Della’s fingers flexed against his chest, and her wide, startled eyes jerked up to look at him.
“Andrew,” she whispered. Then she smiled. That half of a grin had him breathing out a contented sigh so significant the motion shifted Della off of his chest.
“Good morning, love.” He gripped the back of her neck again, his hand knotting even more of her hair, and he kissed her.
It was the greatest privilege of his life to kiss her like this, casually, and whenever he wanted. Simply because she smiled and he melted and he could. Simply because for the first time, she was truly within reach.
Her fingertips danced over his chest, sweeping up his neck and over his face in the softest touch he’d ever felt. She seemed to be doing the same thing, cataloging him. Her eyes were looking too close and seeing too much.
“What is it you want to do with this place?” Andrew asked her, once breath became necessary and they broke apart. Her pointer finger fell over his lips and he kissed it. “Now that it is yours.”
“I’ve an idea,” she said. She rolled her wrist and cracked her knuckles. Mornings were hard for her, he remembered. She was always stiff and achy. He was also hard, stiff, and achy this morning, but in an entirely different way. “I have had so much support since I fell ill.”
Andrew felt his brows knit up. To him, it seemed a ridiculous thing to say. After all her parents and brother had done, to think she’d still had the support she deserved. It was preposterous.
“I have always had a home, and I found an alternate family. Not all are so lucky.” Della raised her head up, looking back and forth to stretch her neck. “I want to make Kinloss a place for other young women whom society has cast aside. To give them the support they need and the love they deserve.”
Andrew nodded. It seemed like such a Della thing to do, to inherit property and immediately want to give it to other people. It was inherently Della, to see a problem that wasn’t hers and offer a solution that was.
“Clara is quite sold on the idea already. She was ill herself when she came to Westfield Manor. She gets these horrible headaches, they’re debilitating. That is why she doesn’t wear hairpins, because they cause her pain.”
She was rambling, but she was staring at him with this half-grinning, bemused expression on her face, and he’d never seen her so exuberant.
Her excitement was contagious. Andrew felt himself smiling, too.
He supposed that was just his body’s reaction to seeing her like this. To seeing her at all, really.
“We’re going to start with Gwen, I believe. She is still hiding, pretending she isn’t ill at all. I do not blame her. I did the same. We all do, to some degree, I think. We’re going to have to work on that.”
Della nodded, as if to herself. Andrew nodded back anyway.
“I . . .” Della hesitated, and she suddenly wasn’t looking at him anymore. “I could use some assistance, you know. With the running of the estate, the business of it all. I’m sure there will be an excess of paperwork.”
“Darling.” He tucked a fraying strand of hair behind her ear. Her eyes drifted back up to his. “I happen to love paperwork.”
She smiled, a grin so wide and open and free that he thought it might split her sweet face in half.
“Where do you think we would be?” he asked her, sobering for a moment. “Now. If things had gone differently? If your mother hadn’t intervened. If you hadn’t been sent away too soon.”
He’d been thinking about it on and off all night, when he wasn’t thinking of the Della of the present that he held in his arms. He thought of the past. It still occupied entirely too much of his mind. Something about this morning had made him deeply reflective.
Della smiled again. She leaned forward to press a kiss against his shoulder.
“I suppose we’d still be right here,” she said. “Together.”
With the hand still woven into her hair, Andrew guided her lips to his.
She melted against him, and she was all soft sighs and slow glides of her tongue.
Her hand came to rest against his heart, and he hummed.
He licked into her mouth. Her teeth snagged the corner of his top lip and slowly, so slowly, pulled.
“Della,” he nearly moaned. In his admittedly foggy mind, he remembered this was an important conversation. Perhaps the most important.
With all of the strength he possessed, Andrew pulled away. Della let out a whiny little whimper, and Andrew cursed himself for ever moving away from her.
“Della,” he repeated. His other hand came to cradle her cheek, and she leaned into him.
She pressed the lightest kiss against the pulse point in his wrist, and Andrew’s heart beat so fast he thought he must be on the edge of death, because he thought only heaven could be better than this.
“Yesterday, you said you would’ve married me all those years ago. ”
It was a very simple statement of fact, Andrew didn’t know why it felt like such a life-changing declaration. But he did—he knew. It was Della, that was why. Everything about her was life-changing.
“I did.” She nodded, and the motion let his thumb drift over her lips. “And you said you would marry me tomorrow.”
“I did,” Andrew repeated. His entire soul smiled. “I would marry you yesterday, today, and any tomorrow you’d like, my love.”
There was a flash of something in her eyes, a reflection of the unbridled happiness he felt blooming in him, but then she guarded herself. She came down from the clouds and back to the ground.
“What about London?” she asked. Her voice was oddly protective, as if she were preparing herself to be hurt. Eventually, he’d get her to see that wouldn’t be necessary. It would take time, and they had plenty, he hoped.
“I’ve no place in London. Not without you.” At his words, her eyelids lowered, and he brushed his thumb against her lashes.
“What about your mother?” she asked, in that same guarded tone.
That was a question he didn’t particularly know how to answer. He was silent for a moment. He couldn’t pretend that he wouldn’t miss her, but there were letters and carriages. They’d been apart for long periods of time before, separated by oceans, even.
“Do you think she’d like to live here?” Della murmured. “With us?”
Andrew’s poor, battered heart finally settled somewhere deep in his chest, where it would always live, right next to hers.
“I think she would love that.” He smiled, and so did she, and for the millionth time since he’d seen her that first day, Andrew wanted to pinch himself.
Della lay back down on his chest, and Andrew took in a deep, soothing breath that smelled exactly like her. He kissed the crown of her head.
“There are other chambers, you know,” she said, tilting her chin to look up at him.
“I haven’t seen them, but I’m sure there are.
We needn’t sleep in the sitting room again.
As much as I’ve enjoyed it, it would likely be better for my pain if we didn’t.
” As if to illustrate her point, she cracked her knuckles.
“And we needn’t sleep together at all, I suppose.
” She frowned at the idea, even as she said it.
He watched as a line formed between her brows.
“There should be separate chambers. For the man of the house. If you want them.”
“I’ve missed too much of this.” His arms squeezed around her, tight enough that she actually giggled. “If the choice is between a bed with you and one without, then there isn’t a choice at all. Though I am in agreement that a bed would be preferable to our current arrangement.”
Della hummed, and then they lay in silence for a while. Her fingernails drifted up and down his forearm. Back and forth. The motion was oddly soothing, and his eyes started to drift closed again.
“Do you suppose we should get up?” Della asked after a bit, her voice betraying her own sleepiness. He thought the sentence might have ended on a yawn.
“What did I say, Della?” He shifted her until she lay on her back and he rolled on top of her. His head came to rest on her chest, and he sighed into her collarbone when her fingers slipped into his hair. “That isn’t a choice at all,” he murmured.
“You know,” she said after a few moments of contented silence, “while I love you dearly, and I will always be more than happy here with you like this, I will miss our letters.”
“Why would you stop writing to me?” Andrew asked. He didn’t even raise his head. He hoped she could understand him, because he wasn’t fond of the idea of moving.
“Well, what am I to do? I believe the post would be quite confused if I sent a letter to my husband addressed to my own home.”
Andrew nearly died at the use of the word. His heart seemed to malfunction, skipping a beat and soaring and falling all at the same time. Her husband. That’s what he’d be, as long as he lived. So there could be no more malfunctions of the heart, then.
“You don’t have to send them, darling.” He did pick his head up then, lazily drawing his lips over her neck and up to her cheek.
“But you can still write them. Hand them to me. Or put them on my pillow, or in my coat pocket, or the drawer where I’ll keep my socks.
Just because you can speak to me whenever you’d like does not mean you cannot still write.
Hide the letters if you want. I’ll find them this time, I promise. ”
Her face relaxed into something pleased and serene, and her arms tightened around him. That exact expression was so precious to him. He wanted to keep her looking at him like that forever. It would be his life’s work from now on.
“And you will write back?” she asked. Her fingers tugged on his curls again, and Andrew’s eyes nearly rolled back into his head.
“Of course, love,” he managed to mutter. He was half asleep and also deeply aroused. It was an odd combination. That was Della, though. Just like she was peace and joy personified, she was both restfulness and attraction.
“I know you will find them,” she mumbled.
Her voice was as sleepy as his. Della wiggled her body around underneath him to get comfortable, and the movement of her skin against his sent a bolt of pleasure down his spine.
Her body felt lax and pliable and his hands roamed down her waist, over her fevered hips toward her thighs. “You always find me.”