Page 78 of The Marriage Debt
‘And like many eavesdroppers you misunderstood what you heard. We were discussing my ill-fated romance with Arabella. My father is entirely in favour of my marriage to you, and we are both in your debt for what you said to him this morning.’
Unsure she was hearing correctly Katherine asked, ‘You are reconciled?’
‘I do not think we were ever in a state of conciliation to be returned to,’ Theo said with a snort of laughter. ‘This harmony is strange for both of us and I rely on you, Kat, to act as ambassador and make sure we say in such a condition.’
‘But you cannot wish to be married to me,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady and not sound as though she were pleading.
‘Why should I not wish to be married to a lady I love?’ Theo turned the gig through the gates of the park and drove off the roadway under a spreading grove of chestnut trees. He looped the reins around the brake and shifted in his seat to look at Katherine.
‘You…you love me?’No, it was not possible. ‘Why did you not tell me?’
‘Because you would think I was trying to hold you to themarriage and because, then, you did not want to be held. I rather hoped you might grow to wish it. I was going to tell you after our dinner party when you saw for yourself what a fitting hostess you made.’
‘I always wished it,’ she whispered.
‘What?’
‘Ever since the journey up here. I knew I loved you, and I knew I could not be your wife.’
‘Because of who my father is?’
She nodded. ‘And because I could not hold you to a marriage begun in such circumstances
‘My father points out that I have no need to marry for fortune and that in you I may, despite all my sins, have found a woman who will be the making of me.’
‘Oh, Theo.’ She found she was in his arms, not quite certain how she got there. ‘I could not bear to come between you and your father, not after you had been estranged so long.’
Theo pushed her gently back from him until he could look into her face. The dark eyes which had so affected her across that stark prison room held hers. ‘In effect you proposed marriage to me, Kat. Now I propose that we stay married. What do you say to that?’
‘Yes, Theo. Oh yes.’
‘Then there is but one act left to make it so.’ His long fingers caressed down her cheek. ‘Your bed or my bed, Lady Seaton?’ He gathered up the reins and turned the gig in the direction of the Dower House.
With the mid-day sun streaming over the amber silk of the coverlet Katherine opened her arms and her heart and her body to her husband, her eyes wide, drowning in the dark fire of his as he possessed her, joining them.
‘I love you, Kat,’ he murmured as she cried out his name,arching to meet him, match him, envelop him. ‘I love you,’ and his marchioness drew him down to her heart and gave himback love for love.
THE END
