Page 66 of Elixir of a Duchess' Passion
She was stunned into opening her eyes when she felt Lord Spurnrose drop onto one knee.
Looking down at him in the shadows, she locked herself in his forest-green gaze. “This isn’t entirely how I saw it, but here we go. Lady Melissa Belmont, Duchess of Twinton, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”
And when he plucked a ring box from his breast pocket, a feather might have struck Melissa over.
“Where did you get that?” She stammered over the words.
He shrugged. “I have carried it since I arrived back in London, just hoping …”
His eyes grew round, his jaw clenched, and he fixed his gaze on her without blinking. “Lady Belmont, I fear my heart could not take another rejection from you. I must have you by my side for the rest of my days, not least because you have made it possible for there to be many but because I cannot bear the thought of spending one more without you.”
Tears pricked the corners of Melissa’s eyes, and she remembered her best friend’s words all over again. It was time to stop pushing people away, not only because she was hemmed into a corner and had no hope of overcoming the giant of a man kneeling before her.
Smiling with laughter at how dastardly foolish she had been these last few days, Melissa clutched the ring box, cupping his hands with it, and said, “On one condition.”
“Anything!”
“We must both always be truth to each other and ourselves,” Melissa said, silently making the vow to herself before he responded. She was exceptionally fed up lying to herself.
“I swear it on the life you have given me,” Lord Spurnrose said without a moment’s hesitation. “So long as you promise me one thing also?”
Melissa flinched at that; she wasn’t used to compromise after so long living alone.
“Speak it.”
“Never allow a single doctor to speak to you the way Doctor Wallis did yesterday. Youmustcontinue your practice.”
The tears that pricked Melissa’s eyes started to roll down her cheeks, and she dropped onto her knees before him, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him ever more passionately.
“I vow it,” she assured him, kissing him again, this time more sweetly, before she instructed, “Take me to your brother.”
Though it was the very last thing she wanted to do at that moment, she knew she could only keep her promise to him if she did not allow herself to be distracted from her healing by his very presence.
As if he sensed her meaning, Lord Spurnrose gripped hold of her hand as if to drag her from the alcove. At the very last moment, he slipped a topaz ring from the ring box and onto her finger.
“You have made me the happiest man alive,” Elijah assured her as they hurried from the alcove.
With an affectionate smile, brimming with happy tears, Melissa forced herself to put back on the mantel of her old self and sternly say, “We can discuss this later. Right now, I believe your brother urgently needs medical attention.”
Chapter 30
Three months later
“Lady Belmont, please forgive my asking, but does your upcoming engagement have anything to do with your saving the earl’s son’s life?”
Elijah was gobsmacked to hear the conversation in Melissa’s sunroom after letting himself in through the servants’ quarters as he so often did now. With their wedding just days away, it did not feel unwelcome.
Yet standing in the shadow of the door, thinking about how Melissa had nursed his brother back to health after his idiotic fisticuffs at the gentlemen’s club, he thought he ought to have at least knocked. He hadn’t expected her to be with a client, least of all Lady Beaufort.
“I would say yes and no,” Melissa said surprisingly, and Elijah could not stop from eavesdropping further.
Silence followed, and then the clinking of china on china as Lady Beaufort sipped her tea and put the cup back on the saucer. “And so, will you continue practicing after marriage?”
The concern in the older lady’s tone suggested it was for herself and not for Melissa.
“Will your new husband allow you?”
Elijah held his breath. He couldn’t burst in and assure them both that he would. He had no right either way.
