Page 56 of Marquess of Stone

“Why now?” she asked, the question emerging with painful directness. “Why say these things now when you have had ample opportunity before?”

“Because I am a fool,” Nicholas admitted, the self-deprecation carrying more weight for its rarity from a man of his position. “A proud, stubborn fool who did not recognize what was before him until the prospect of its loss became unbearable.”

He took another step closer, close enough now that propriety demanded he either retreat or acknowledge the intimacy of their position. “I had not realized,” he continued, his voice dropping to a register meant only for her ears, “how much light you bring into every space you enter. How empty rooms feel in your absence. How hollow conversations become without your perspective to challenge and illuminate them.”

Something glistened in Marian’s eyes, the moisture catching the fading sunlight like diamonds. “You speak so beautifully,” she said, her voice unsteady despite her evident effort to control it. “But words come easily to men of your position and education.”

“Then judge me by actions rather than words,” Nicholas countered, his gaze never leaving her face. “By my presence here today, hours beyond what propriety dictates. By my arrangement for your stay with Amelia rather than accepting your exile to Bath. By my willingness to wait however long necessary for you to believe the truth of what I feel.”

He reached for her hand, his movements slow enough to allow refusal if she wished it. When she did not withdraw, he enclosed her fingers within his own, the contact sending a current of awareness through him like lightning striking parched earth.

“I want to share adventures with you, Marian,” he said, each word emerging with careful sincerity. “Not just the items on your list but countless others we haven’t yet imagined. I want to give you everything You have ever wanted — not material possessions, though those are yours for the asking, but freedom, respect, partnership.” His voice softened further. “I love you, and I want to love you for however long you will allow me to do so.”

A tear escaped Marian’s careful composure, tracking a silvery path down her cheek. “Why now?” she asked again, the question carrying a different weight than before. “What changed?”

Nicholas’s thumb brushed across her knuckles in a gesture of impossible tenderness. “Elias informed me that your parents had arranged a match for you with Riverstone,” he admitted, a rueful smile touching his lips. “The thought of you belonging to another man — even one as unobjectionable as the Duke — made me realize what I had been too blind or too stubborn to acknowledge even to myself.”

Marian’s expression transformed, confusion giving way to something that hovered between incredulity and unexpected mirth. Her free hand rose to her lips as if to contain whatever emotion threatened to escape there.

A sound escaped Marian then — half laughter, half disbelieving gasp — as she shook her head in a gesture that sent one of those wayward strands of hair brushing against her cheek. “There is no arrangement,” she said, her voice threaded with emotion that belied her words. “No match, no understanding. I have exchanged perhaps ten words with the Duke in my entire life, most of them regarding a first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s works he mentioned at your sister’s ball.”

Nicholas remained perfectly still, absorbing this information with the careful attention of a man who suddenly suspects he has been maneuvered by a master strategist. “No arrangement,” he repeated slowly. “Elias led me to believe —”

“It seems the Duke of Fyre has been engaging in some creative matchmaking,” Marian observed, a smile beginning to curve her lips despite the tears that still glistened in her eyes. “Though his methods might be questioned, one cannot fault his perception.”

A soft curse escaped Nicholas, so uncharacteristic of his usual precise diction that Marian’s eyes widened slightly. “I shall have words with him,” he muttered though without genuine heat. His gaze returned to her face, studying it with renewed intensity. “Though perhaps I owe him my gratitude as well. His deception forced me to confront truths I had been too stubborn or too blind to acknowledge.”

“And what truths might those be?” Marian asked, her voice steadier now though her fingers remained within his grasp, making no attempt to withdraw.

“That I love you,” Nicholas replied simply. “That the thought of you belonging to another man — any man — was unbearable. That my carefully ordered existence has been irrevocably transformed by your presence in it, and I have no desire to return to the precision and control that defined it before you disrupted every carefully established pattern.”

The last rays of afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows, painting them both in warm gold and casting their shadows across the polished floor — two silhouettes drawing inexorably toward one another despite the dictates of society and their own initial resistance.

“This changes nothing about my feelings,” Nicholas continued, his voice gathering conviction with each word. “If anything, it simplifies matters considerably.” His free hand rose, hovering near her cheek without quite touching it, respecting boundaries not yet invited to cross. “I love you, Marian Brandon. Not because I feared losing you to another but because you have become essential to my happiness in ways I never anticipated and can no longer deny.”

Marian’s gaze searched his face, as if seeking confirmation of his sincerity in the subtle expressions that emotion had etched there. Whatever she found seemed to satisfy some internal question, for her next words emerged with a new quality — vulnerability threaded with unmistakable hope.

“I refused your previous offer,” she reminded him softly, “because I believed it born of practicality rather than affection. Because I could not commit to a lifetime beside a man who viewed me as merely a convenient solution to society’s expectations.”

“A reasonable conclusion,” Nicholas acknowledged, “given my history of expressing myself in terms of advantage rather than emotion. Another failing I must rectify if you will permit me the opportunity.”

He released her hand but only to take a half-step backward, creating space between them for what he intended next. With deliberate movements that somehow managed to convey both humility and certainty, Nicholas lowered himself to one knee before her, the gesture so unexpected that Marian’s hand flew to her throat in silent astonishment.

“Lady Marian Brandon,” he said, looking up at her with an expression stripped of its usual careful composure to reveal the raw emotion beneath, “if you can find it in your heart to forgive my initial failure to express the depth of my feelings, if you retain any affection for me despite my shortcomings — would you do me the extraordinary honor of becoming my wife?”

Time seemed to suspend itself in the drawing room, the ticking of the mantel clock fading to insignificance as Nicholas waited for her response. Marian stood perfectly still, framed by the golden evening light, tears continuing to trace silent paths down her cheeks despite the smile that gradually transformed her expression from uncertainty to radiant joy.

“Yes,” she whispered, the single syllable carrying more weight than volumes of poetry. “Yes, Nicholas.”

She extended her hands to him, helping him rise from his kneeling position with a strength that belied her delicate frame. As he regained his feet, their bodies drew inevitably closer, propriety momentarily forgotten in the magnetic pull of shared emotion.

“I should tell you,” Marian added, her voice soft but steady, “that I already love you in return. I have for some time though I feared it was merely another item to be crossed off your mental ledger.”

Nicholas’s hands moved to frame her face with exquisite gentleness, his thumbs brushing away the tears that lingered on her cheeks. “The only ledger that matters now,” he murmured, “is the one we will create together — all the adventures we will share, all the experiences that await us.”

Their gazes locked in perfect understanding, the last barrier between them dissolving like morning mist before the sun. With deliberate slowness, Nicholas lowered his head until his lips hovered mere inches from hers, offering her the chance to withdraw if propriety demanded it.

Instead, Marian rose on her tiptoes, closing the final distance between them in a gesture of unmistakable choice. Their lips met in a kiss that carried the sweetness of hard-won realization and the promise of countless tomorrows — tentative at first, a delicate exploration of new territory, then deepening as Nicholas’ arms encircled her waist and Marian’s hands found their way to his shoulders.

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