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“Is your room acceptable?” he asked. “Large enough for both you and the dowager?”

Grace gasped. He did not know. She’d completely forgotten. He had already left when Thomas gave her the cottage. “I’m not with the dowager,” she said, unable to conceal all of her excitement. “I—”

“Someone’s coming,” he whispered harshly, and indeed, she heard voices and footsteps on the stairs. He started to steer her back to her room.

“No, I can’t.” She dug in her heels. “Amelia is there.”

“Amelia? Why would she—” He muttered something under his breath and then yanked her along with him down the hall. Into Room 14.

Chapter Eighteen

Three minutes,” Jack said, the moment he pulled the door shut. Because truly, he did not think he could last any longer than that. Not when she was dressed in her nightgown. It was an ugly thing, really, all rough and buttoned from chin to toe, but still, it was a nightgown.

And she was Grace.

“You will never believe what has happened,” she said.

“Normally an excellent opening,” he acknowledged, “but after everything that has happened in the last two weeks, I find myself willing to believe almost anything.” He smiled and shrugged. Two pints of fine Irish ale had made him mellow.

But then she told him the most amazing story. Thomas had given her a cottage and an income. Grace was now an independent woman. She was free of the dowager.

Jack lit the lamp in his room, listening to her excitement. He felt a prickle of jealousy, though not because he did not think she should be receiving gifts from another man—the truth was, she’d more than earned anything the duke chose to portion off to her. Five years with the dowager—Good God, she ought to be given a title in her own right as penance for such as that. No one had done more for England.

No, his jealousy was a far more basic stripe. He heard the joy in her voice, and once he’d banished the dark of the room, he saw the joy in her eyes. And quite simply, it just felt wrong that someone else had given her that.

He wanted to do it. He wanted to light her eyes with exhilaration. He wanted to be the origin of her smile.

“I will still have to go with you to County Cavan,” Grace was saying. “I can’t stay here by myself, and I wouldn’t want Amelia to be alone. This is all terribly difficult for her, you know.”

She looked up at him, so he nodded in response. Truthfully, he hadn’t been thinking very much of Amelia, selfish as that was.

“I’m sure it will be awkward with the dowager,” Grace continued. “She was furious.”

“I can imagine,” Jack murmured.

“Oh, no.” Her eyes grew very wide. “This was extraordinary, even for her.”

He pondered that. “I am not certain if I am sorry or relieved that I missed it.”

“It was probably for the best that you were not present,” Grace replied, grimacing. “She was rather unkind.”

He was about to say that it was difficult to imagine her any other way, but Grace suddenly brightened and said, “But do you know, I don’t care!” She giggled then, the heady sound of someone who can’t quite believe her good fortune.

He smiled for her. It was infectious, her happiness. He did not intend that she should ever live apart from him, and he rather suspected that Thomas had not given her the cottage with the intention that she live there as Mrs. Jack Audley, but he understood her delight. For the first time in years, Grace had something of her own.

“I’m sorry,” she said, but she could not quite hide her smile. “I should not be here. I didn’t mean to wait up for you, but I was just so excited, and I wanted to tell you, because I knew you’d understand.”

And as she stood there, her eyes shining up at him, his demons slipped away, one by one, until he was just a man, standing before the woman he loved. In this room, in this minute, it didn’t matter that he was back in Ireland, that there were so many bloody reasons he should be running for the door and finding passage on the next ship to anywhere.

In this room, in this minute, she was his everything.

“Grace,” he said, and his hand rose to touch her cheek. She curled into it, and in that moment he knew he was lost. Whatever strength he’d thought he possessed, whatever will to do the right thing—

It was gone.

“Kiss me,” he whispered.

Her eyes widened.