Page 38 of The Meaning of Love
She nodded and, greatly daring, added, “And love.”
He didn’t look away. He held her gaze for several long moments, then asked, “Owning to love as well?”
She swallowed and nodded. “Yes. For what worth is love if it’s hidden away?” She tipped up her chin. “So yes, love acknowledged, not love concealed or denied.” She paused, searching his eyes, then as bold as he had previously been, asked, “Will you—are you prepared to—offer me even that?”
She could barely believe they’d pared away all the usual obfuscation and got down to the essential, fundamental question.
He continued to hold her gaze, his own open and steady as a rock. “I’m not one hundred percent certain I know what love is, but if love is what we feel for each other”—he waved a hand between them—“if that’s what’s grown and is still growing between us, then yes.” His voice deepening, he vowed, “I’m ready and willing to offer you—and to own to and acknowledge—all that I feel for you.” His lips quirked. “I’m not sure it’s possible for me to do anything else. This”—again, he waved between them—“whatever it is, is too powerful a feeling to suppress or even hide. That much, I already know and readily admit.”
The look in his eyes—steady, sure, and true—ensured that she couldn’t keep her response from her lips. “I don’t know that it’s love I feel for you, either. I haven’t experienced this sort of feeling for another before.”
He was watching her with the same all-consuming intensity with which she was regarding him. “So can we agree,” he said, “that if this is love, we’ll own to it? That we’ll go forward with our marriage and, in doing so, acknowledge our love, claim it, and make it an integral part of our shared life?”
She felt compelled to point out, “We can’t see the future—we can’t know if any enticing picture you and I conjure today will weather even the next few months, let alone through the years.”
“True.” He didn’t even attempt to argue, to tell her she was wrong. “But one thing I learned during my time in Ireland, dealing with so many others with their own agendas, is that you can never truly know another’s heart and soul. Ultimately, in every relationship, there comes a point where each party has to offer trust—to trust in the other.”
His gaze didn’t waver as he went on, “The reality is that we can each make declarations and promises, but neither of us can know with absolute certainty that the other will remain true to our initial shared vision, our initial shared goal. Short of there being some sort of test or demonstration, each of us can only trust that the other will prove steadfast.”
He paused, then, his voice low yet certain, concluded, “If we want to go forward, all we can do is place our faith in each other and take that chance.”
Held captive by the power in his gaze, she drew in a slow breath, then slowly exhaled. “In marriage and in loving, there are no guarantees.”
“No. There are only promises and hope. But if we don’t take the chance—if we don’t pursue love but instead decide to protect our hearts and turn aside—we’ll leave all potential benefits behind, unrealized.”
She dipped her head in agreement.
After a second of searching her face, he went on, “For us, today, here and now, what we do next hinges on one question—with respect to our putative marriage, are the potential benefits enough to tempt you to take a chance, accept the unavoidable inherent risk, and trust me when I swear that, if you place your hand in mine and make our faux engagement real and subsequently marry me, I will continue to feel as I do about you, and because of that, I will put your welfare and your wishes ahead of my own for the rest of our lives?”
She felt as if she should deliberate long and hard. Instead, she let the single word her mind supplied fall from her lips. “Yes.”
He blinked, then searched her eyes. “Just that? Yes?”
She let her smile grow, then laughed at the faintly stunned look on his face. She reached out and gripped his hand and shook it. “Yes, I trust you. I always have, even in those long-ago days in Little Moseley. And since then, you’ve only grown more obviously honorable and trustworthy.” She knew to her bones that was so; his true colors were so obvious, so evident, that he’d become the Home Office’s ace negotiator because people on both sides trusted him and had faith in his honor, in how he would behave. “I know,” she said with absolute conviction, “that any promise you make, you will move heaven and earth to keep.”
Despite her “yes” being precisely what Julian had wanted to hear, she’d just proved his point that one could never entirely be sure of another’s heart. He hadn’t even fully understood the depths of his own feelings, and he certainly hadn’t foreseen her conviction and clarity regarding her own.
She just agreed to marry me.
He’d never craved anything more intensely.
Lost in her eyes, he reminded himself to breathe, then felt compelled to confirm, “So from here, from now, we go forward.” He turned his hand, captured hers, and raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. “And make our supposedly perfect match into the union we want it to be.”
She tightened her fingers on his. “Yes, just that. We make our marriage into whatwewant it to be, a union that encompasses all that’s important to us.” She held his gaze. “Including love.”
That sounded like a challenge, one he was perfectly willing to accept. “If love is ours,” he stated, “we’ll embrace and claim it.”
They stared at each other as those words sank in, then using his hold on her hand, he drew her to him and bent his head, and as she lifted her lips, he covered them with his.
The exchange started off poignant and sweet. She kissed him back, and moving slowly, he closed his arms about her, drawing her deeper into his embrace, before angling his head and extending the caress, sinking progressively deeper into the kiss.
Her lips parted on a sigh, and he took immediate advantage. The engagement spun out and on, into realms of evocative and increasingly provocative sensation, until passion rose, steady and sure, thrumming beneath their escalating hunger and infusing the desire that had ignited and started to simmer, gradually building to a slow, steady, compulsive thud in their veins.
Sensation swirled and beckoned, luring them on.
The tightening grip of her palm at his nape and the scoring of her nails as her fingers raked through his hair were just novel enough to register—and remind him of where they were.
Mentally, he came to a dead halt, then after a fraught moment of lecturing himself regarding their reality and his wider purpose, inexorably, he drew on their reins.
