Page 88 of Duke of Pride

A heartbeat. Then, Victoria uncurled her hand from the rope and offered it to him.

Stephen’s soul filled with hope. They stood across from each other. Suddenly, he felt like a schoolboy.

“I brought you this as a parting gift.” He offered her the book.

Victoria looked at the book.A Treatise on Plane Trigonometry.

She gasped. It was the book she had been holdingthatnight, that first night in the library, when they had crossed the line that brought them here.

“Thank you,” she said softly, taking the book.

“And I came to return this,” Stephen added as he took out the hairpin from his pocket.

Victoria looked from the small, insignificant thing to him.

The carriage. No, not the carriage, though that was so cherished and intimate. But the day they spent together in London, as if they had always belonged together.

“You… you kept it.”

“Every day.”

Victoria swallowed and blinked to chase away ready tears. She gave him a weak, sweet smile. “Keep it.”

“No.”

Victoria was startled by his refusal. He cradled her face and made her look up at him.

“I want to be the one to pin it in your curls every day, for the rest of my life.”

For one breathtaking moment, her entire face lit up. Her lips parted, and her eyes widened with something perilously close to joy. Stephen smiled, ready to hold her so close, finally. Forever.

But his actions had cut deep. He had hurt so much that he saw the light dim, her joy restrained by pure survival instinct.

“I have told you before, Stephen. You don’t have to uphold your duty. I have no need for it.”

“Perhaps, but I need you.”

Victoria shook her head, but the motion was weak, less refusal than disbelief.

“You once told me that marriage was about duty. You can’t be?—”

“I was a top-tier fool.”

Victoria searched his face.

“Victoria, I wish I could go back to that thicket, smack myself upside the head, and then get down on my knees and tell you everything I felt. Everything I still feel. Everything I will always feel.”

Victoria opened her mouth to speak, but he stepped closer and took her hand in his own. And kissed it not in the formal way of the ton, but in a “If I don’t touch you now, I will die” desperation.

“I love you, Victoria,” he croaked, his eyes holding hers.

Her jaw slackened, and her grip on his hand tightened. He nodded and held her hand in both of his now.

“I love your fire and passion, I love your light that dispersed the darkness in my life. I love your smile and your pout and the way you frown when I say something stupid.”

“Which is too often,” she scoffed.

They chuckled, but Stephen was not done. The dam inside him had broken, and he had no intention of holding back.