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“You’re trying to get out of the arrangement,” he said flatly.

“No.” She scrambled onto her knees. “It has nothing to do with that. I’ll stay as promised.” Because she’d sooner sever her arm than give up any time she could steal with him. “But that is the story. The only one I’d tell, Malcom.”

Sitting up, he edged to the side of the mattress, and for a moment, she thought he’d reject the piece. That he’d set it down and lash out as he’d done so many times when the past came up between them.

Only this time, he sat and read. Motionless except for the occasional glide of his fingers as he turned the pages.

Until he reached the end.

Her heart hammered.

She’d often wondered how readers had felt about her work. Even as she’d written the pieces as a requirement from her employer, there’d been the hope that there was someone out there who’d appreciated the words she put to the page.

But those stories, they’d all been empty. Gossip, as Malcom had rightly claimed. And the opinions of those strangers had not mattered at all. Not compared with him. This man before her.

When he sat in silence, Verity wetted her lips. “Well?”

“It is ... perfect,” he said quietly. “It is perfect.”

And as he took her in his arms a moment later and made love to her all over again, Verity found perfection once more.

“You are going to be the death of me, Verity Lovelace.” He groaned, an arm flung over his eyes.

“If one must die, this would be a preferable way to go,” she teased, giggling when he lightly swatted her buttocks.

“Minx.” He ran a hand in slow, wide circles over her back. That caress so gentle. So soothing.

Sliding her fingers into his, Verity rested her head against his chest, the light mat of curls soft against her face. How ... right this was. Being in his arms. All her life, she’d only seen acts of intimacy between a man and a woman as folly and weakness. Now, having made love with Malcom, she saw how wrong she’d been. There was beauty in lying in the arms of a person one cared for.

Her sleepy gaze on their interlocked fingers, Verity lightly squeezed Malcom’s in a slow, deliberately rhythmic pulsing.

When she registered Malcom’s absolute stillness.

She abruptly stopped. Propping her chin on his chest, she swept her eyes over his stricken face. Gone was all hint of the earlier desire or teasing; in its place was raw, unbridled emotion. “What is it?”

His mouth moved, but no words were immediately forthcoming. Verity followed his tumultuous stare. His eyes remained locked on their joined palms.

Verity made to release him, but he clung tight, as if her hand were a lifeline, and she gripped him all the harder. “Malcom?”

“I just ... I ...”

She waited, allowing him his time.

“My mother ...” His whisper emerged hoarse and gravelly. Malcom drew in a shuddery breath and began again. “As a boy, I was always running off, seeking and finding mischief, and before I would go, she’d take my hand and ... squeeze it as you did as she said:

‘I love thee, I love but thee

With a love that shall not die

Till the sun grows cold

And the stars grow old.’”

His eyes slid closed. “She’d say it whenever we parted, and when she tucked me into bed.” Then his words came quickly. As if he feared in not speaking them, he might lose them and the memory he held dear. “She would press my hand in time to the rhythm of that sonnet. B-because ...” His voice wavered, and Verity closed her other palm over their joined hands. “‘Because my h-heart beats for you. It always has and it always will, and even after it ceases to beat, my love will live on in you.’” A ragged sob tore from him, and he clung to her fingers, clenching tight.

Tears clogged her throat and blurred her eyes, and Verity just held Malcom. Lying against his chest, she allowed him to weep with the pain of all he’d lost and the memory that had at last come to him. His body shook and trembled from the force of his emotion. Verity held him all the while, with time meaning nothing, and then his crying stopped.

She pressed a kiss to the corner of his temple, and squeezed his hand several more times in that rhythmic beat, and willed him to feel the love she carried for him.