“You told me you’d made peace with your past. Yet you cannot seem to let it go.”
“I have made peace with my past. But just because I can accept it doesn’t mean anyone else would. The things I’ve done, my background, are unacceptable. Society, your own family, would never accept me. You know they wouldn’t.”
“You cannot help nor be blamed for the circumstances surrounding your birth, Meredith. Nor are you responsible for your mother’s actions. What you see as insurmountable obstacles, I view as reasons to admire your strength and determination to overcome such daunting odds. As for Society rejecting you, yes, I’m certain most of them would if they were to learn the things you confided in me today. However, I don’t care a jot about Society. I suffered at the expense of their petty cruelties until I left England. I owe them nothing-most especially the woman I love. As for my family, Catherine has already given our union her blessing. She married a man from our social class-a baron with a pedigree and fortune-but they do not love each other, and she is miserably unhappy. She does not want the same misfortune to befall me.”
He moved one step closer, leaving only a hairbreadth between them. “When I returned to England, I was fully prepared to marry a woman I barely knew in order to keep my word to my father. I am no longer willing to do that. The thought of marrying anyone but you is completely impossible. Other people may not accept you, Meredith. But I do. Exactly as you are. And isn’t that really all that matters?”
Meredith started to tremble. Thank God his arm supported her, or she surely would have wilted to the floor. He’d listened to all her objections, then had swept them aside as if he wielded a broom.
“What if you are unable to break the curse, Philip?”
“Then I would humbly request that you be the wife of my heart, Meredith. I would not shame you, or our feelings for each other, by asking you to live openly in England as my mistress-especially now that I fully understand all the reasons for your aversion to such an arrangement. If I cannot rid myself of the curse, then we could leave England, travel abroad, anywhere you wished, and represent ourselves as husband and wife. If the curse prevents me from pledging my life to you in a church, it still cannot prevent me from pledging it to you.”
He tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “Whether it is because of the decade I spent away from Society, or simply my nature, there are very few people whose opinion truly carries any weight with me. Your past, our arrangement- whatever we decide it is to be-is private, between you and me. What anyone else thinks does not matter.”
Dear God, he made it all seem so reasonable, and possible. Still, one small matter remained…
She shifted out of his arms, and put several feet between them. “Um, Philip, I’m afraid I have a confession to make. Several minutes ago, I pilfered your watch from your waistcoat pocket.” She slipped her hand into the deep pocket of her gown to retrieve the piece. “I did it to demonstrate how completely unacceptable I would be as a candidate for your wife, and had every intention of returning it to you…” Her voice trailed off and a frown pulled down her brows as her fingers swept through her pocket. Her empty pocket.
“Is this what you’re looking for?”
Her gaze riveted on him slowly extracting his watch from his waistcoat pocket. “H-how…?”
He casually snapped open the gold cover, consulted the time, then returned the piece to his pocket with equal nonchalance. Then a slow, devastating smile curved his lips upward. “I picked up several skills while abroad. The ability to pinch items from someone’s pocket, for instance. Bakari instructed me on the finer points, strictly for survival reasons, you understand. Came in quite handy on more than one occasion.”
She actually felt her jaw drop open. “You stole things?”
“I prefer to call it retrieving my own personal items that were stolen from me first. Many places I visited were rampant with thieves and pickpockets. Since I strongly objected to being relieved of my property, I merely beat them at their own game.”
Meredith shook her head in amazed disbelief. “Incredible. You’re very good. I didn’t feel a thing.”
“Thank you. Heartwarming to know I haven’t lost my touch. However, as long as we’re exchanging confessions, I must tell you that I did, on one occasion, use my talents to confiscate something that did not belong to me. While in Syria, Bakari, Andrew, and I, through a rather circuitous series of events, were imprisoned in a dungeon. I pinched the key from the guard’s pocket, and we escaped.”
Her eyes goggled. “Imprisoned in a dungeon? Did you accidentally lock yourselves in?”
“Not exactly. It is a very involved tale, one I will happily share with you-but not right now. Right now we have much more important things to discuss.” Erasing the distance between them with a single long stride, he drew her into his arms. “Do you have any other last-minute confessions to make?”
Dazed, she shook her head.
“Excellent. Neither do I. Therefore, all that is left is for you to answer my question. Will you marry me?”
He was looking at her with an expression that robbed her of breath. Love, tenderness, admiration, and heated longing all emanated from his gaze. Everything she’d always wanted but had been convinced could never be hers now stood before her. All the feelings and yearnings she’d ever hidden in her heart burst free, flooding her with a happiness she hadn’t dared hope possible.
Staring at him in wonder, scarcely able to believe this wasn’t a dream, she reached up and framed his face between her hands. “I love you, Philip. With all my heart. Yes, I will marry you. And I will strive every day to be a good and proper wife to you.”
She felt the tension drain from his body. Lowering his head, he pressed his forehead to hers. “Thank God. I thought you were going to say no.”
“You were very persuasive.”
“Because I love you so very much.” He gently touched his lips to hers, a kiss filled with love and promise, and one that quickly flared into a passionate mating of lips and tongues. Heat raced through her, and, wrapping her arms around his neck, she raised up on her toes, pressing herself against him.
Philip tightened his arms around her, and tried his damnedest to curb his ardor, but he was lost. Lost in the soft, supple feel of her. The delicious, sweet taste of her.
Lost in the knowledge that she loved him. That she would be his wife. That she was his to love and touch and kiss. To laugh with and love with.
Her fingers wreaked havoc with his hair while his hands ran restlessly down her back, urging her closer, then skimming lower to cup her buttocks. His erection strained against his tight breeches, and a guttural groan vibrated in his throat. Summoning his last ounce of will, he broke off their kiss. He blinked behind his fogged-up lenses, then impatiently pulled off his spectacles and tossed them onto the end table.
He looked down into Meredith’s glazed eyes, and a groan of pure masculine need pushed past his lips. With her lips damp and parted, her eyelids at half mast, and her color high, she looked well kissed and thoroughly aroused. And he knew if he kissed her again, he’d give in to the need clawing at him. “Meredith, if we don’t stop now, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop at all.”
She looked at him with an expression that stilled him. “I don’t recall asking you to stop.”
Eighteen
Her words shot fire through his veins and robbed him of speech. I don’t recall asking you to stop…