Page 66 of A Slight Problem with the Wedding
“I hate it when you do that,” she grumbled.
“Do what?”
“Spout common sense and logic.”
His smile was affectionate as he said, “I’ll leave you to wash up and dress. Meet you downstairs for breakfast?”
She nodded, for she was feeling much better than she had been these past few days. Enforced bed rest did that to a person, she supposed. This was why Dr. Farthingale had prescribed it for her in the first place. “Julius…”
“Yes?”
She took a deep breath. “Why did you kiss me the other day? Adela and Ambrose burst in just afterward and we had no chance to speak about it. Was it just a momentary urge and does not merit discussion?”
“What do you think I meant by it?”
She laughed. “Oh, no. I am the wrong person to ask. I know nothing about men, other than dead ones whose stories are told by the physical clues found on their unresponsive bodies. I have never been involved romantically with anyone, not even Allendale. Do not expect me to understand what your steamy kiss signified. I have a hope as to what it means, but that is all.”
He gave her cheek a light caress. “All right, then I will simplify it for you. It means that I am in love with you. Fully committed, crazy in love.”
Her eyes rounded and her mouth gaped open because of all the answers she had expected in response to her question, this was not one of them.
“I have always loved you,” he said, drawing her into his arms. “There was never a moment since meeting you that I did not love you.”
He had said the same in her dream.
“Clear enough?” he asked with the whisper of a smile upon his lips.
She nodded numbly.
Had it been a dream? That first kiss? And then he’d kissed her again shortly before Adela and Ambrose returned.
A second kiss?
Or was it only the first and the other had been a dream?
Was she dreaming now?
Her head began to throb.
She put her hands to her temples and began to rub them gently. “Why did you never tell me this before? How could you let me attach myself to Allendale?”
He sighed as he continued to hold her in his embrace. “Gory, we had this conversation the night after your uncle was killed. But you were in no condition to hear it, so you’ve forgotten what I told you then. Has any of it come back to you?”
“I don’t know. I can no longer tell what is real and what is not. It is this detestable laudanum I need to stop taking.”
She found herself struggling as her memories were getting all jumbled in her head.
“Gory, hush.” Julius stroked her hair, running his fingers gently through her unbound mane. “I see that merely thinking about it…thinking about us, is distressing you.”
She looked up at him, searching his face as though all the answers were within his eyes. “Us? As in a permanent us? Do you want me beyond a kiss?”
“Yes, Gory. Have I not made that evident? I want you for always. If I ask you again to marry me, will you remember it? Will you accept me?”
The pounding in her head grew stronger. “You’ve asked me before?”
He nodded. “The same night I gave you that first kiss. To be clear, the kiss I gave you the day my brother and Adela returned was our second.”
Tears formed in her eyes. “I did remember, but I could not believe it was true.”
