Page 70 of The Duke of Hearts
Her eyes went wide. There it was, sinking in, a better understanding of what he was implying. Of what he wanted and needed from her. But she still didn’t quite have faith. Doubt still ruled.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
He touched her chin. “Look at me.”
She faced him, her lips pressed together, her hands clenched against his.
“I love you, Isabel.”
Matthew’s words were like the shot to her heart her uncle hadn’t taken, and she recoiled from their power. But he wouldn’t let her run. He held her gently, watching her, waiting for her to steady herself.
Waiting for her to believe what was entirely impossible. A dream that she had accepted would never be reality.
But he offered it to her now. Why? She didn’t know, but she feared it was not because those feelings were true.
“You are overwrought,” she said past a thick tongue. “You are grateful you didn’t die and feel obligated because I stepped between you and my uncle.”
He smiled. “I am not overwrought.”
“You are—”
“Very well, if you believe that then I shall simply take you upstairs and make love to you in my heightened emotional state, and tomorrow I will start this conversation over. If it doesn’t work then, I will try the next morning and the next and the next.” He cupped her cheeks. “Until youbelieve me.”
Her heart swelled as he brushed his nose against hers, gentle. Intimate. Sweet and so loving. Almost enough that she could have faith in what he said.
“I don’t understand,” she said at last. “How could you love me?”
He drew back a fraction. “The better question is, how could I not? You are…everything, Isabel. Intelligent and kind, strong beyond measure, even to a fault, as you proved today. You are beautiful and alluring. You have awakened all the best parts of me, even the ones I thought no longer existed. You make me want tolive. To wake up every day and see you across my breakfast table, to dance with you at balls, to bring you home…or even sometimes to the Donville Masquerade if you’d like to be very naughty, and make love to you.”
She blushed hot even as his words seared into her soul. Could she believe them? Believe him?
He shook his head. “I realize I have given you no reason to return my feelings. I recognize your declaring yourself earlier was a ploy to stop your uncle.”
She couldn’t hold back the bark of laughter at the very idea. “A ploy? No, not at all. From the first moment a stranger stepped between me and a man bent on harm and destruction, I have been falling in love with him. With you.” She stared at him. What he was suggesting was the greatest risk, the greatest leap she would ever take. But with the biggest payoff of all. “I-I love you,” she said.
“You do?” he repeated, and sounded just as confused as she had felt just a few moments before.
“Yes!” she burst out, and began to laugh. Because there was so much joy to be had and happiness, so much light in the future they’d share. “Must I prove it?”
His eyes lit up and he dragged her closer. Into his lap and his arms and fully into his life. He smiled. “I think so.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead to his as all the joy in the world filled her. “With pleasure,” she murmured before she claimed his lips.
Epilogue
Three month later
Isabel sat in Ewan and Charlotte’s parlor. She was meant to be playing whist with the other duchesses, women she had come to see as friends, sisters. Instead, she was staring across the room at her husband.
Matthew perched Ewan and Charlotte’s baby, Jonathon, in his arms. He looked utterly terrified, like at any moment the baby would burst into flames or hurtle from his arms. She laughed at the expression and the care and love that was behind it.
She smiled at her friends as she laid down her last card and then got up to cross the room to her husband. He looked relieved as he handed the baby off to Baldwin and reached out to take her arm.
“Need a little air?” she asked, guiding him toward the terrace and away from all the ears in the parlor.
He nodded and took a long sigh. “I have no idea what to do with a baby, I swear. Am I supposed to be comfortable? I do not feel comfortable.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at his nervous ramblings. Then she touched his face. The past month had been utterly blissful. There was no mistaking his love for her, or his passion. There was no hiding her own. And with that acceptance, their future looked so very bright.
“You’ll have several months to practice with all the children of our friends, I suppose,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him. “And I think most papas are more comfortable with their own, at any rate.”
He blinked, staring at her blankly as he tried to digest what she meant. Then his mouth dropped open. “Are you telling me you are pregnant?”
She nodded, and before she could ask if he was happy, he caught her in his arms and spun her around the terrace with a whoop of pleasure. She laughed as she dropped her mouth to his. What had started with a secret, a mask, a lie…was now more than she ever would have dared hope for.
And she couldn’t wait for the next chapter of her life with him.
