Page 109 of The Devil in Her Bed
His eyes became pools of sentiment, his face softening. “I haven’t stopped thinking of that girl, the one who clung to me in the fireplace… I… have a proposition for her. For Pippa, for Francesca, for whoever she wants to call herself. I’ll be whoever she wants me to be. Whoever she fell in love with. Because it is impossible to be worthy of such a woman, but I can try. All I know is that if I am a spy, a scoundrel, or an earl, none of it matters. I am no one if I am not hers. And I have nothing, if she is not mine.”
Francesca surged forward and collapsed into his arms, not sobbing this time, but simply breathing. Taking in deep lungsful of his wonderful scent, and releasing months of pent-up misery.
He petted her hair with one hand, smoothing his other down her back. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I was a stupid, angry, blind fool—”
Still unable to say all the words that leapt to her lips, Francesca she did what she always did in these desperate situations. She drove her mouth against his.
The kiss opened her heart and her soul, released pain and fear and sadness and torment like a flock of dark and awful birds to dissipate to the sky. He tasted good, like forgiveness and pleasure and soft things neither of them had allowed themselves.
Like home.
Finally, after they did their level best to devour each other, she pulled back, finding her words.
“I… I did hate keeping anything from you,” she said, shaping her hand to his jaw. “You are the only person alive who can shame me. Somehow my love for you gave you that power, and I’ll confess I was a coward, unable to give you the truth to whip me with.”
She dragged a deep breath into her nose and blew it out in a puff of cold steam against his coat. “I cannot take back what I did… the lie I told…”
“Neither can I,” he said soberly.
“Is it possible we can love each other enough to trust?” she asked—the last question weighing on her heart.
He looked pensive for a moment, before his eyes alighted on hers. “Trust mirrors life, I’m coming to understand. Some get to build on pristine new ground, and others… have to sift through ruins and rubble. Our path might be more fraught with the later, but if anyone has the grit to do it, it is us. Wouldn’t you agree?”
She looked at the ruins of her childhood home, her heart swelling to encompass her entire chest, beginning to crowd out the fear that this wasn’t real.
“Tell me you want to,” Chandler said, pressing a kiss to her forehead, her brows, her fragile eyelids, her temples, before working lower between his words. “Tell me we can build a new life together on top of the ruins of the old. Tell me it’s not impossible. What can I offer to entice you to share your life with me? I’m a very wealthy man now, you know.”
Before he could claim her mouth again, she gave him a halfhearted shove. “I would live in the roots of atree with you, you know I would. But you can tell me one last thing.”
He seemed to brace himself.
“What do I call you during this life together?” she asked. “Surely you don’t go by Luther. And you never seemed to quite take to Declan.”
His eyes brightened, and a smirk pulled one side of his mouth higher. “Oh, didn’t you hear? I officially changed my name to Chandler. Chandler Beaufort de Clanforth-Kenway, the ninth Earl of Devlin.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did.”
“Why? What significance does that name have to you? I never knew.”
“Chandler was your and Francesca’s favorite pony in the stable, if you remember. He died before either of you saw ten.”
“Yes, but… surely you told us your name before then.”
He shook his head. “While you were feeding me, you and Francesca were both chattering so much, and you mentioned the horse in passing. I fell asleep before really having to explain myself to anyone. And when I woke the next day, I sort of just… made up a name when I was asked.”
“How… utterly unromantic,” she teased, kissing him tentatively, then with more confidence.
“I took the name Chandler officially because I was always Chandler to you. Declan Chandler or Chandler Alquist, you knew me by that name.”
She nodded, changing her mind instantly about theromance of the gesture. “I’ve lived as Francesca longer than anyone else. A part of me wants to keep her, to live the life she never was able to, and marry the boy we both loved. Would you be amenable to that?”
His dark brows climbed high on his forehead as he cast her a scandalized look. “Francesca Cavendish, did you just propose to me?”
“I believe I did,” she said, rather dazedly. “Wait. No.” She lowered to one knee. Taking his hand in hers, she turned it over and kissed it over his scar. “Chandler Beaufort de Clanforth-Kenway. Will you make me the happiest woman in the world and marry me?”
“I would say yes but…” He placed a rather scandalized hand over his chest “Where’s the ring?”
