Page 71 of The Marquess and the Maiden

He turned her chair down another corridor, and she immediately saw it was lined with frames. “I thought perhaps we could try that moment again.” He inhaled, and she could have sworn he appeared nervous. “I hope you’ll like these portraits and drawings.”

He stopped the chair in front of the first one; it was quite obviously his drawing.

“That is what Brookhaven looked like when it had fallen into ruin,” he said.

“Most people would have sold that estate and used those funds to buy something already built and in better repair. But you chose to fix it.” She looked up at him. “You didn’t give up, that takes strength and courage, Oliver.”

He swallowed and nodded but didn’t respond.

“I never saw it this way, but to have seen what it looks like now, you have done an amazing job. You are remarkably talented.”

“The beauty was always there, in the lines, the bones of the building. I merely brought her back to life.” He moved them to the next frame. “That was my image, my plan of how to fix it. How I wanted to rebuild Brookhaven.”

“You did so even more.”

He nodded.

The next frame. “Benedict’s?” she asked.

“Yes, this is what it looked like before we finished and opened it. And here it is now, more or less. And also his father’s home after I repurchased it and repaired it.”

He’d painstakingly hung each of these for her to recreate the night he’d rejected her. Her heart fluttered. Perhaps he was trying to tell her something, but she wasn’t certain what it could be. “Oliver?”

But he shook his head. “Let me finish.” He nodded to the frame.

“This is the Crystal Palace, the first time I saw it.”

The features were mesmerizing, as if his pencil contained magic instead of a simple piece of lead. Each arch, each line, every detail was perfect.

“And this is the place where I walked with you the first time. And again when I proposed. The first time.” He grinned, then rolled her to the next.

Her breath caught. “My mother’s parlor. Where you kissed me the first time.”

He nodded.

The next drawing was of her. In all her bare gloriousness. “This was before I’d seen every part of you, so this was my imagination. Much as the other ones you found.”

She blushed. “We cannot leave this hanging on the wall.”

“I’ll move it later.” He stared at the drawing a moment. “I didn’t do you justice. You are far more beautiful in the flesh.”

They moved forward, and she found a beautiful rendition of the small village chapel where they’d married.

“Every one of these drawings is of something I love, something I’m passionate about; that is what usually compels me to pick up the pencil. I see that now. They are pieces of me. The buildings I’ve worked on. The friends I’ve tried to make penance to.”

“What are you saying?”

“How am I to say it, Harriet?” He reached down and cupped her cheek. “The Bard and the rest of the poets have already said all there is to say about love. Still, it is but a fraction of what I feel for you. Your smile lights up any room you enter, it draws everyone to you; for me, though, it is more important than food. One smile could sustain me an entire day. Your laughter is the air I breathe. Oh, but sweet Harriet, ’tis your heart that has bewitched me so. Kind and forgiving and loving, you are more than I ever deserve, and I shall spend every day from here forth trying to remedy that.”

Her breath caught. “You love me?”

“I daresay I love you more than any man has ever loved a woman. Forgive me for being daft and not recognizing it sooner?”

Tears pricked at her eyes, and happiness threatened to consume her.

“I thought you’d left me. I went everywhere that day searching for you to tell you, to beg you to return to me,” he said. He bent forward to put his face closer to her. “I love you so damned much, it terrifies me.”

“There is no need to be terrified; I would never leave you.” She cradled his face with her hands and kissed him. “Of course I love you, Oliver, so very much. In fact, I was ready to tell you that I could love enough for us both. I want our marriage so badly.”

“What if you wake up one morning and realize you could have had someone else, a different man, a whole man?”

“I’d pick you, again and again. I don’t need you any different than how you are right now. I merely need you to complete me.”

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