Page 94 of The Bridal Quest

A short laugh escaped him. "I can always count on you, can't I? You never allow one the easy way."

She shrugged. "Then you are well out of it, are you not?"

"I don't want to be well out of it," Gideon replied. "What I want is to marry you."

She grimaced. "Then I fear you are doomed to disappointment."

"Did you mean what you said?" he asked. "That you love me?"

She lifted her chin. "I am not in the habit of lying. Yes, I love you, but that doesn't mean I have any intention of marrying you."

A smile tugged at one corner of Gideon's mouth. "Not even if I become a rag picker?"

The familiar temper lit her eyes. "Do not mock me! I offered you my love, and you offer me—money and ... titles ... and ..."

"My love," Gideon said simply, going to her and taking her by the arms. He looked down into her face. "I offer you my love. First, last and always. Everything I have is yours. Without you, I fear that none of it would be worth anything to me anyway. But most of all, you own my heart. You have from the moment I first saw you, pointing that gun at my chest, those golden eyes blazing down at me."

"But I—" Irene felt herself begin to tremble with the aftermath of all the tumultuous emotions that had swept through her this afternoon. "You said—" Tears welled in her eyes, and she stumbled to a halt, feeling at once foolish and wonderful.

"I offered to release you because I could not in fairness hold you to your promise. That does not mean I wanted you to accept that release. What I hoped was for you to do as you did ..." He paused and with a rueful grin, rubbed his cheek. "Although perhaps somewhat less forcefully. I had to give you the chance to choose, knowing everything."

She let out a little sound, half sob, half laugh, and moved into his arms. "Please, do not offer me such chances again."

"I will not," he assured her, wrapping his arms around her tightly and laying his cheek upon her hair. "Believe me. I intend to give you no other chance to get away from me. Fair or foul, you are mine, and I will never let you go."

Irene circled his waist with her arms, pressing her cheek against his chest and drinking in the feel of him, the warmth, the strength, the scent. After a moment, though, she leaned back and looked up at him. "But you said—you told me last night you could not love me. You said you—"

"No doubt I said a number of foolish things," he interrupted her. "I thought— I told myself that I did not love you, that what I felt for you was hunger, desire, friendship, admiration—and it was all those things. But this afternoon, when I watched my uncle—my father—as he bent over my mother's body, dead so many years, and I saw the tears well in his eyes ... I knew. I knew that was how I would feel if you were taken from me. Twenty, thirty years later—the rest of my life later—I would still ache for you. And I knew that I was only pretending that what I felt was anything but love. I love you."

"Gideon!" Irene flung her arms around his neck and went up on tiptoe to kiss him. "I love you, too."

After a long moment he released her, looked down into her face and smiled. "I think," he said quietly, "that we should leave Aunt Odelia to spread her story about without our help."

"I think that sounds like a very good idea," she replied, smiling back at him.

"I also think that I should tell the servants to send our supper up to us in the tower. I am not, I fear, feeling well enough to join our guests this evening."

Irene's smile broadened. "You know, I believe that I am not feeling well, either."

"Then we agree? I believe this may very well be the second time."

"And the last," Irene put in.

"Then I think we should celebrate the occasion."

He kissed her until she melted against him. Then he slipped his arm around her shoulders, and they strolled off toward the ruins.

Epilogue

It was generally agreed that the marriage of the Earl of Radbourne to Lady Irene Wyngate was the wedding of the year. It was not perhaps the grandest, for it was put on with unseemly haste. But no expense was spared, and there had not been a wedding in years that was so rife with drama and rumors.

It was enough to keep the city buzzing for the whole two months between the announcement of their engagement and the actual wedding in November. There was the matter of the vanished heir returned to his family years later, the abduction that it was whispered was not an abduction at all, not to mention the shiveringly horrifying discovery of the body of the earl's long-dead mother—during a house party, if one could imagine that. And other, much darker things, which none dared mention above a whisper, with a knowing look.

It was rumored to be a love match. And while very few could claim that they actually knew the groom, which gave him a titillating air of mystery, there were many who were well-enough acquainted with the bride to be astounded at the notion that either she or the groom had tumbled headfirst into love.

But none who attended the wedding could deny the glow of love that shone on the face of both the earl and his new wife as they said their vows. And when they took to the floor for the first dance of their married lives, not even the most hardened heart among the guests could deny a twinge of tearful joy.

Lady Francesca Haughston, standing at the edge of the dance floor, watching them, glowed with a pleasure that owed only a small measure to the lovely silver epergne that Lady Odelia had given to her in gratitude for bringing off the engagement—and which would keep Lady Haughston's household operating through the winter. The truth was that Francesca had come to like both Irene Wyngate and her new husband very much during the time she had spent with them, and she was filled with the happy certainty that their marriage would be a loving one.