Page 105 of Duke of Moonstone
The question sat between them. Heavy with the weight of everything it contained—that first morning at the breakfast table, the terms she had set, the distance those terms had created.
Alexander sank to one knee before the settee. Not in proposal—he had already done that months ago in a study that smelled of ink and obligation. This was different. This was a man coming down to her level because he wanted to look her in the eye when he answered.
“I want you,” he said. “Only you. That is all I have wanted for longer than I have been willing to admit.”
His hand found hers.
“And if God ever blesses us with children, you are the only woman in the world I would want to be their mother. But I am not asking for an heir. I am asking for you.”
Frances looked at him. At the face she had studied across breakfast tables and in carriages and in the lamplight of a storm-dark library. At the blue eyes that had watched her sleep and thought himself unobserved. The man who had spent a decade building walls was kneeling before her now with every single one of them in ruins.
She stood. He rose with her.
She stepped closer. Close enough that she could feel the warmth of him.
“I love you,” she said.
His breath caught. She saw it in the way his chest stopped and his eyes widened, and his whole body went still, as though the words had struck him physically.
“I love you,” she said again. “I have loved you for longer than I should have, and I was too afraid to say it, and I am saying it now.”
His hand rose to her face, his palm warm and steady, trembling just a little. He gently tilted her chin up with his thumb.
“Frances,” he said.
She kissed him.
Not the way he had kissed her in the library—uncertain, questioning, bracing for rejection. This was certain. This was a woman stepping into the space she had earned and claiming it. Her hands found his chest, pressed flat against the wrinkled fabric of his coat, and his arm came around her waist, pulling her close. His mouth met hers with a hunger that had nothing to do with storms, lamplight, or the particular weakness of a moment.
This was not a moment. This was a choice.
His fingers slid into her hair. The kiss deepened, and Frances felt everything she had been holding collapse at last. The walls. The distance. The months of measured silence and careful composure and telling herself not to hope.
She hoped. She loved. She stayed.
And Alexander held her as though he would never again make the mistake of letting go.
EPILOGUE
“You have rearranged the flowers again.”
Frances shifted away from the sideboard, a sprig of white jasmine still grasped between her fingers. “I rearranged them just this morning. You have been observing me.”
“I have been watching the dining room transform into a hothouse over the course of six months.” Alexander leaned against the doorframe. “There was a time one could see the wallpaper.”
“The wallpaper is hideous.”
“It is Georgian silk.”
“Hideously Georgian silk.” She tucked the jasmine into the arrangement and stepped back to assess her work. “There. Perfect.”
“You said that twenty minutes ago.”
“Twenty minutes ago, it was nearly perfect. Now, it is actually perfect.” She brushed her hands against her skirt and crossed to him. Her fingers found his lapel, smoothed an invisible crease. “You look well.”
“I look the same as I did this morning.”
“You looked well this morning too.” Her mouth curved. That particular curve that still made his chest do something inconvenient after six months of marriage that had finally become a marriage in truth.
