Page 33 of The Matrimony Trap

“You are exactly where you’re meant to be,” Caroline told him, watching his smile turn his storm-grey eyes to molten silver.“The lover in my arms, the best friend at my side, the canny ally and staunch defender at my back…everything you are is everything I need.How could I let you go?No, my darling, delicious, ridiculous man—I’m afraid you are well and truly trapped, for I cannot do without you now.”

“You will never have to,” he said, ferocious sincerity turning the words into a vow as binding as those they’d said in that small Scottish chapel.

And he kissed her there on the hillside, the man who’d finally found his place in the world and the woman who knew he would never ask or want her to be anyone other than herself.She had always feared love, on some level—the loss of choices and autonomy, the loss of self.

But with Fitz, Caroline was more herself than she’d ever been.He knew her, he saw her, in all her parts and complexities and oddities, and he loved all of her.

That kind of love was no trap, she understood in a way that went beyond language or learning or science.That kind of love was true freedom.It would never keep her bound to the earth, her wings clipped, at the mercy of gravity.

In Fitz’s arms, with Fitz’s heart pounding fiercely against her own, Caroline took wing.And soared.

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