Page 113 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

He entwined their fingers. “You have very neatly avoided my question. But neither have you fainted, nor run away, which I’ll take as an encouraging sign. Juno, we—” He stopped short. “We are not alone. Let us go outside.”

“To be alone in the dark?” She squeezed his hand. “You are behaving like a libertine already.”

* * *

Leo was feeling like a libertine,to be honest. Juno looked ravishing in that gown. The light of a flaming torch on the balcony glinted off her garnet necklace and bathed her in its glow.

Yet her expression was sad. “I shan’t marry you just so you can save me from ruin,” she said. “I don’t need you to salvage my reputation.”

“I don’t care about your reputation.” He slid his hands around her waist. “Take me with you to Italy. I’ll wash your paintbrushes and shower you with kisses and sweep the studio floor and sweep away your cares. I’ll carry your easels through the countryside, and I’ll read books just to find stories for you to paint, and I’ll make love to you so thoroughly that your dreams will be as full of me as mine are of you.”

Her hands landed on his chest. “But everything you love is here in London. Your life is here. I cannot ask you to give that up.”

“You are my life. More than ten years, Juno, and still it’s not over. It will never be over. These feelings between us, they endure. I must believe it is the same with you. Those drawings you sent me.” He squeezed her waist. “It seems I have a rather fine pair of buttocks.”

“Oh, you really do.”

Soft laughter curled out of him. “Anywhere you go, I will come too. If you do not want me, I shall wait in the street, rain or shine, until you come to your senses and realize our lives must be as one. No matter where you go or what you do, I will not part from you again. You will just have to get used to it.”

She ran her fingers down his cheek. He caught them and held them to his lips.

“Forgive me,” he whispered. “I so feared loving you again that I was determined to keep a distance between us and all I have done is hurt us both.”

“Is loving me so terrible, then?”

“Loving you is a wonder. But I am fated to love you immoderately—with all that I have and all that I am. I fear I would suffer greatly, should you have no need of my love.”

Her smile was like a blessing from the angels. “Then it is as well for both of us that I have very great need of it indeed. You are happiness and hope and home. You took up residence in my heart years ago, and could not be shifted. I drew you to get you out of my thoughts, but you kept coming back. Even after I left you, still you never left me.”

“Because all those years ago, I gave you a piece of myself, the very best part of me. You have carried that part of me with you, and I am only whole when you are near. I ask only…” He took a deep breath. “I ask only that you take the rest of me too. I cannot stop loving you, but neither can I stop being a duke. Only say that you will marry me.”

* * *

“Yes, I will marry you,”she said softly. “I wish I had claimed you sooner. I could not let myself believe you would still want me, not when I had become so disreputable, and I could not bear for you to reject me again, so I rejected myself first. But the truth remains, Leo, I shall make a terrible duchess.”

“You’ll make an unconventional duchess,” he corrected gently. “Besides, the Italians won’t care about that. They think the English are all mad anyway.”

“And here, in England?”

He shook his head. “No need. I could not bear it, if marriage to me stole away your verve. I could not bear to watch you fade away under the demands of society, and their restrictions and rules.”

“Not if I am with you.” She traced one of the golden scrolls curling over his chest. “If you had not come back into my life, I might have gone on believing I had no need of you. But that was a lie. You have stolen my dearest lie from me, and it was all that was holding up my world. I cannot go on as I was without it, which means I cannot go on without you.” She flounced out her skirts. The scallops of golden braid around the hem glinted in the light. “Hence this gown and this ball. I wanted to prove that my love for you is such that I shall happily go anywhere and behave properly, so long as it is with you. Besides, I love London too, so why let them chase us out of it? Parliament sits for only half the year. Why not spend that half-year in London, as the Duke and Duchess of Dammerton?”

A smile eased over his face. “And the other half of the year in Europe, as Leo and Juno, a pair of eccentric English artists. You do realize that half the people here think we are already married?”

“I heard a rumor that you acquired a special license.”

“I did, but not for us. What sort of wedding would you like? I could acquire another special license, or we could have an enormous wedding in London and rub everyone’s nose in it. Or the ship’s captain could marry us, if you wish to go straight to Italy. Or we could take the more traditional route and elope to Gretna Green.”

“Scotland! The light in Scotland at this time of year must be marvelous. But surely an elopement would be more of a scandal?”

“I hope so.” He brushed a kiss over her lips. “You must understand, my love, that we have an important duty to the good people of England: We are duty bound to provide them with a source of entertainment, which means giving them a jolly good scandal every now and then.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Do you mean to say that my first official duty as a duchess will be to run away with you to Scotland?”

“Definitely. With such scandalous behavior, you’ll be everyone’s favorite duchess before the night is out.”

His head lowered, their lips met, but muffled laughter and the faint strains of music forced them to break apart.

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