Page 147 of Where the Heart Leads
He hauled in a huge, not entirely steady breath. “When Cameron grabbed you and he had that knife—I literally saw red. I knew nothing beyond the fact that you—around whom my life now revolves—were in danger. That if anything happened to you, I couldn’t live—I might exist, but I wouldn’t be truly alive as I have been with you over the last weeks.”
He searched her eyes. “You didn’t say it before, so I will—you make my life complete.I love you, I need you, and I want you as mine—mine for all the world to see and know.”
To his surprise, the words had come easily. “I want us to marry. I want us to be man and wife.”
She looked into his eyes, then slowly, she smiled. “Good.” Reaching up, she drew his head down to hers. “Because that’s what I want, too, because I love you, too. It’s strange and unexpected, but fascinating and exciting, and I want to keep exploring it…with you.” Their lips a bare inch apart, she paused. Her ripe, luscious lips curved deliciously. “And you might want to remember that arguing with me is never wise.”
He would have laughed, but she kissed him. Kept kissing him when he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her back.
Joined with him—more, urged him on. All barriers fallen, all hurdles overcome, there was no longer any reason not to celebrate to the fullest all they’d found, all they shared—the love, the desire, the passion.
They let all three loose—his and hers combined. Together, as one, they let the tumult rage and devour them.
Let it sweep them into a giddy, desperate, wild engagement driven by their needs. Who took whom, who could more evocatively demonstrate, more effectively convey their devotion—as ever they argued, wordlessly pressed, embraced the question and with abandon gave themselves up to pursuing the answer.
To their mutual delight, to their mutual pleasure and ultimate satisfaction.
To the culminating moment when he had her beneath him, when she arched and took him deep, when her hands clutched desperately as she crested the peak—in that moment, looking down on her face, on the rapture so starkly etched across her features, he couldn’t doubt—didn’t doubt—that her devotion, her commitment—her love—was the equal of his.
Then the maelstrom took her, shattered her, and glory poured through her—into him. Even as her hands slid limply from his shoulders, the tight clutch of her body drew him with her into the timeless void. Into that moment of exquisitely sharp sensation when nothing mattered but that they were one.
The moment fused them, wrapped them in warm clouds of bliss—in completion, in benediction, in the sureness that this was where fate had wanted them—slumped, helpless in the aftermath of something neither could deny.
Whole. Complete. In each other’s arms.
They were married, not as they’d wished within days, but in late January. December arrived and with it came snow—feet and feet of it. Even though their respective ancestral homes weren’t that far apart, their mothers jointly declared that too many others would have to brave the drifts to attend their nuptials; consequently, said nuptials had to be delayed until after the thaw.
As Penelope was heard to comment on the drive to the church, she and Barnaby had to count themselves lucky they’d been allowed to wed before April.
The weather did not similarly affect matters in the capital. Cameron was committed to Newgate, and left there to languish pending a full review of the charges to be laid against him; his trial would necessarily have to wait until those from whom he’d stolen so successfully returned to the capital to identify their possessions.
The day after Cameron had been arrested, Stokes and Huntingdon’s staff had searched the house. Courtesy of a tweeny who had heard noises in the locked box room adjacent to her tiny room in the attic, they’d uncovered a cache containing the seven items Smythe and the boys had delivered into Cameron’s hands.
Riggs had confirmed that Cameron was an acquaintance, one who knew of his house in St. John’s Wood Terrace, and that his mistress, Miss Walker, was a slave to laudanum. Riggs had been confounded to learn of Cameron’s actions. “He was always such a good fellow, you know. Would never have suspected him of any such thing.”
That sentiment was echoed by many; it was Montague who eventually shed light on Cameron’s motives.
Cameron hadn’t been what he’d purported to be—not since his early schooldays. The son of a mill owner from the north who’d married the local squire’s daughter, his gentry-born maternal grandfather had taken some delight in sending him to Harrow.
Unfortunately, courtesy of his schoolmates, his schooldays had given Cameron a glimpse into the world of the haut ton. It became his burning ambition not just to gain entry to that gilded circle, but to belong. So he’d hidden his lowly origins, and had zealously concealed his damning lack of funds.
He’d made ends meet by gambling, which had stood him in good stead, until he’d hit a losing streak. His life had gone downhill rapidly. He’d landed in the clutches of London’s most notorious cent-per-cent, a usurer Stokes and his superiors would dearly like to see put out of business, but neither desperate debtors nor dead men tended to talk.
As Cameron’s scheme had been all his own invention, he wasn’t any help in that regard. Now that said scheme, and the façade he’d constructed, had tumbled down about his ears, Cameron had retreated into himself and largely refused to speak.
Given the seriousness of the thefts he’d planned, and his exploitation of his position as Huntingdon’s secretary to that end, knowing as he had that such actions would seriously damage the standing of the still-fledgling police force, and in light of the incitement he’d provided to Smythe and Grimsby to commit murder, kidnap innocent boys and induct them into lives of crime, transportation was the very best Cameron could expect; he would be lucky to escape the gallows.
On a happier note, Inspector Basil Stokes and Miss Griselda Martin were married early in the New Year. Having spent Christmas with their families, first at Calverton Chase, then at Cothelstone Castle, and then having journeyed—commanded by duchessly edict—to join the revels at Somersham Place, there to be subjected to another round of congratulations and teasing, Barnaby and Penelope pounced on the excuse to flee. Braving the roads, they reached the capital the day before the wedding. Just as well, as Barnaby was Stokes’s best man, and Penelope stood beside Griselda as her maid of honor.
Penelope regarded the outcome as a triumph. She was quick to extract a promise from the happy couple that they in turn would attend her and Barnaby’s nuptials in due course.
Finally,later that month, after she’d succeeded in dancing the wedding waltz at her own wedding—a waltz she’d enjoyed to the very depth of her soul—Penelope stood by the side of the Calverton Chase ballroom, and confessed to her sister Portia, who, with her older sister Anne, had been her matron of honor, “It was soverytempting, being in London, to have Barnaby get a special license and simply have done with the matter, but—”
“You couldn’t face your mothers’ consequent disappointment.” Portia grinned. “Neither of you would have ever lived it down.”
Looking down the ballroom to where their mother and Barnaby’s sat, resplendent on a chaise surrounded by other ladies of similar degree, delightedly receiving the congratulations of their acquaintance, Penelope frowned. “I can’t understand it—it’s not as if they haven’t presided over weddings of their children before. For Mama, this is herfifthtime, and the countess’sfourth—surely the gloss should have dimned by now.”
Portia laughed. “You’re forgetting one thing. For them, this wedding represents a triple triumph.”
