Brook had waited a few minutes, studying the lightening clouds and the crowds of people, to make sure Deirdre did not come back, having missed her train. But when no raven hair reappeared after a while, she checked traffic and backed carefully out to the cobbled street.
The abbey on the hill stole her attention as she headed out of town—she’d yet to explore the ruins. Papa had never shown any interest in that particular attraction, hounded as it was by tourists.
But there would be no tourists flocking there today, she would guess. Perhaps she would walk up the hill and wander
its once-hallowed chambers for a few minutes. She wouldn’t linger long—Papa would be expecting her back, and she was more than a little curious to see what letters Pratt had had Deirdre put in her trunk—but she needed to pray. Earnestly, openly. Not like she’d been doing since they’d returned home.
Decision made, she found a place to park on Church Street and let herself out. The famed one hundred ninety-nine stairs loomed, and the wind blew sprinkling rain into her face. But it was warm and raw and felt like heaven’s way of washing away some of the dust inside her.
She climbed quickly, having the stairs all to herself. Her legs felt a pleasant burn once she reached the top. The grass was green and bright, close cut. And the three remaining walls of the abbey towered huge and gold-grey. She squished her way through what must have once been the main doors . . . but rather than stepping into a room, she stepped instead into an unhindered view of the sea.
Yes. This was worth seeing. A skeleton of a wall, graceful arches, pointed spires, and God’s creation, all together. The wind whipped the water of the harbor and tried to snatch away her hat. She closed her eyes and considered letting it. Letting the fingers of air soothe and caress.
Father God, mon Dieu. Please, I . . . Forgive me. I have
been focusing only on my hurt. On my . . . my fears. Papa was right. I’m afraid of giving myself over
to this. But what is it you say? Perfect love
casts out fear. Cast it out of me, Lord, please. Of all the things I want to be, that is
not one of them. I do not want to be
a coward. I don’t want . . . I don’t want
to miss the joys you have for me because I’m too frightened to grasp them. Purge me of the
shadows, Lord, of the darkness. Fill me, please, and show
me what I should do.
Warmth touched her, intense enough that her eyes flew open, expecting to see summer’s sun breaking through the clouds.
But no, rain still misted over her upturned face. The heat came from within. It started in that cold, aching place surrounding her heart and seeped its way outward.
Her breath shuddered. Her knees shook. And a warm gust of wind beckoned her to look to her left.
There, perched on the base of what had once been a column, half-hidden behind the remaining column between them, he sat. With his eyes closed, his face turned to the sea, no hat to keep the misting rain from his face. And given how wet his clothes looked, he must have been there even when the rain had been torrent instead of drizzle.
Justin.
Her breath whispered out. For weeks she had avoided him—but the moment she obeyed the Lord’s urging to stop and pray, there he was. And love for him nearly felled her.
She moved toward him, though he must not have heard the squishing of her shoes above the whistling of the wind. He didn’t open his eyes, showed no signs of awareness. Stopping in front of him, she let the smile come. This disheveled man with the dripping hair would never be mistaken for the Duke of Stafford, even if he sat there twirling the signet round and round his finger. He was Justin. That was all.
“Haven’t you the sense to go in out of the rain?” She said it lightly, still smiling.
His eyelids rose slowly, his lips parted. Disbelief filled his gaze when he looked at her, and he surged to his feet. “Brook.”
His arms came around her, crushing her to his drenched, cool chest before she could protest.
She didn’t want to protest. She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and hold on until all the foolish things they’d said were washed away by the rain. “Justin. I’m sorry.” Those words tasted like honey and felt like balm. She said them again. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”
“But you were right. I do try to control everyone.” His hands moved up her back, over her shoulders, and put enough space between them that he could frame her face.
Bright as sapphires, his eyes gleamed. She put her fingers over his. “No,
you
were right. I’m impulsive. I always have been.”
He tossed her hat to the ground and rested his forehead on hers. “And much as that drives me mad with fear, I love it about you—that where I am cautious, you are bold; that where I think and never act, you charge ahead.”
“But I can be careless. And you’re right to think of consequences. Had your father listened to you . . . You’ve always been the one to take care. And
I
love that about
you
—that you consider so far ahead of where I look.” She gripped his fingers as much as she could without dislodging them. Strong and familiar, long and lean, with the bold circle of gold there to proclaim what he had become.
He stroked his thumbs over her cheekbones. “
Je t’aime. Tu es mon âme. Mon cœur
.”
I love you. You are my soul. My heart
.
“Justin . . . I love you.” She kept her words English, though she could hear the French in them. “And I was so very wrong. I
do
need you. I’m so much better with you than without you.”
He kissed her then, his chilled lips warming against hers as his hands slid to her back again and pulled her against him. Rain from his jacket seeped through hers, but it warmed instead of cooling. This was the kiss she had dreamed of all those months he was gone—gentle but demanding, deep and slow. The kind that made her want to savor, want to strain forward, want to never leave his arms.
She slid her fingers into his hair, slick with water, and pressed close when he tried to pull away.
Smiling against her mouth, he kissed her once more but then set her back. “We’ve still much that needs saying.”
She gripped his waterlogged lapel lest he get some foolish
idea about putting more than a few inches of space between them. “It can wait. You can come home with me, and we can talk into the night. I daresay this will be harder to achieve, though, in my father’s presence.”
He chuckled, his mouth hovering an infuriating breath away. “I was told that I couldn’t expect to kiss you again and set the world to rights.”
Oh, how she loved the way his eyes flashed darker when feeling crashed through them. “I am, on occasion, happy to be proven wrong.”
“Really.” Mirth sparkled in his eyes. “Not the Brook I know.”
She couldn’t help but chuckle. “All right, just on this
one
occasion. So you had best take advantage of it and kiss me again.”
His lips brushed hers. “If I must.” He pulled her closer and kissed her until her mind went muddled and her legs weak. She let her fingers trail down his neck, settling a moment at that place beneath his jaw, where she could feel how his pulse raced in time to hers. When next his lips broke away, he still held her flush against him. “I would have married you.”
Her mind must still be hazy. Had he said
would have
? “Hmm?”
“Had you shown up at Ralin Castle one day, if we hadn’t found your father. I would have married you.” His lips trailed over her cheek, her jaw, and paused on
her
pounding pulse. “I would have agonized over it—I’ll admit that—but at first I would have found some excuse to keep you close and told myself it was enough to have you near, to have your friendship. Expectation would have kept me up at night—all those centuries of dukes’ voices telling me I must marry a noblewoman, and preferably a monied one, or landed.”
A delicious chill raced through her. It had been too long since he’d told her a story. And never one like this. “Then what?”
He tilted her head back, kissed her throat. “At some point,
I would have been unable to deny how my feelings for you had changed. And I would have begged you to marry me. You would have put up a fuss about it though, because you distrust unions based solely on love. You would have tried to argue that a future duke couldn’t marry the daughter of an opera singer. Of course, I would have pointed out the many times the Grimaldis ignored such logic.”
The chuckle in her throat felt so different with his lips still resting there against her skin. “But I would have had to point out how rarely those unions ended well.”
“We would be different though, you and I. We have our faith to bind us, not just our love. But that love—it’s too strong to stay silent forever. You probably would have tried to do something impulsive, like leave without telling me. But I’d have been there. I’d have galloped after you on Alabaster, though she’d have a hard time keeping pace with Oscuro.”
“I wouldn’t have had Oscuro.”
“Shh.” He laughed, trailed his nose back up her neck. “Fine, then. I would have had no trouble overtaking you on whatever pathetic mount you’d found for yourself.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I’d ever choose a
pathetic
—”
He pressed his lips to hers. It was, she decided, the best way to be silenced. “The important thing,” he said against her mouth, “being that I caught you.”
A happy sigh built in her chest. “Yes, you have.”
“And you would have given up your argument. We would have been married at Ralin, setting the press and gossips abuzz, but we wouldn’t have cared.”
She hooked her wrists together behind his head. “And why should we? They are nothing to us.”
His smile went from simmering to warm. “And then, at some point, we would have traveled to visit my cousin. On the train, no doubt, coming through Whitby. And your father would have
been here, seeing off his sister and nieces, and he would have seen you and thought you his Lizzie. He would have come up to us, apologized for staring, explaining how much you looked like someone he once knew. From there, it would have been easy to piece it all together. And so, the tale called ‘If Brook Were Not Eden’ would still have ended with the realization that she
is
.”
She loosed that happy sigh and rested her head against her arm and his shoulder. “The best yarn you’ve ever spun.”
One of his hands moved to her head, and he wrapped a loose curl around his finger in that way he’d always done. “Brook . . . I wanted this before we were sure you were Eden. I was ready to declare myself while we were still in Monaco, but then Father’s death . . . And then again, months ago, before I left for our holdings. But Grandfather told me to . . . told me to use your money to put Stafford to rights. And I couldn’t do that. I never wanted you to think that it had anything to do with your fortune.”
And she, foolish creature that she was, had believed just that. She stroked a hand over the back of his neck and smiled a little at the way he shivered. “That explains a lot.”
“I’m sorry. I meant to protect you, but I was protecting my own pride too, by pushing you away. I should have trusted the Lord and not tried to solve it all myself. Had I listened, I wouldn’t have hurt you so.”
Her hand slid over his shoulder and rested against his heart. “It was my fear that hurt me, not you. But I’ll not let it rule me, Justin. I want to see what the Lord has in store for us, together.”
He kissed her again, featherlight. And then grinned. “I would ask you a rather important question right now, but I had better speak with your father first. I don’t want to be considered the kind of man who would propose to a young lady without seeking his approval.”
She laughed and shoved at him. “Justin Wildon—all those
conversations this past fortnight, and you haven’t already spoken of
that
?”
“Are you daft? Had you happened by and overheard me asking such a thing, when you’d made it clear you never wanted to speak to me again, you would have challenged me to a duel—and I happen to know how good a shot you are.”
Laughing again, she went up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “I suppose now I must invite you back to Whitby Park, so you can request an audience with my father . . . and then one with me.”
His grin winked again. “Give me an hour to change, and I shall be there. I daresay he would have an opinion about a man showing up looking like he’d taken a plunge in the ocean too.”
“Deal.” She pulled away and held out a hand, to shake on it.
He took her hand, but then he raised it to his lips instead. “May I walk you back to your car, my lady?”
“I would be honored, Duke.”
They traveled the steps together, quickly as they dared, and she let him steal one more kiss as he closed her into the roadster, even though other tourists were emerging from their hotels and inns now. Let them be scandalized, if they saw. She didn’t care. Joy had filled the hollow inside, and she would gladly suffer hearing her father say he’d told her so.
The rain stopped as she drove out of Whitby, and she hummed a happy refrain from Mozart’s “
Le Nozze di Figaro
,” tapping out the beat on the wheel. For a day that began so poorly and was marred with worry for Deirdre’s family, the Lord had certainly surprised her. She would pray for her maid’s family—and sing praises.
Nothing could ruin the afternoon. Not the way the mud sucked at her tires with every revolution, not the clouds still rolling in off the North Sea, and not even the herd of sheep crossing the road amidst much bleating, which forced her to a halt two miles from her turn to Whitby Park. She might be
unable to start again in this mud, but what did it matter? If she had to sit here until Justin came by, then it would give them something else to laugh about. She leaned back, waiting for the animals to clear the road and—
Her door was wrenched open, and a rough hand pulled her out before she could think to react. She tried to scream—surely there was a shepherd with all those sheep—but glove-covered fingers clamped down over her mouth.