Page 84 of A Proposition for the Comte

It was simple and easy, the hope of it left in the hands of fate. It was as if a huge burden had been removed and she felt the weight of it slide away.

‘Then, yes. I will marry you.’ There was no hesitation now or uncertainty. ‘I love you, too, Aurelian, and I have done since that night you made love to me when I asked for your protection. Before that I had never known what it could be like between a man and a woman.’

‘Well, I have not felt it like this before, either, so perhaps it is just us.’

She laughed and leaned into him, feeling his arms coming about her and his heart beating as fast as her own.

He kissed her then, slow and deep, taking the time to let her understand what he felt wordlessly and she answered him back.

How easily he could do this, she thought smiling, this rousing her into heat. The space between her legs throbbed with desire and she closed her eyes with the ecstasy.

He would be her husband and she would be his wife. Together. For ever. Two halves of a whole. She reached down to find his centre and rolled over on top of him.

‘My turn now, Aurelian,’ she said, and his teeth flashed in the half-shadow.

‘Mon plaisir,Lady Addington. Fais comme tu veux.’

My pleasure. Do as you like.

‘You promise?’

‘I do.’

The words were said as a vow and she smiled.

‘In the church when we are married remember this moment.’

He laughed, the room fused with humour and hope.

‘Love me, Aurelian.’

‘I will.’

The day began badly, with the snow that had threatened falling steadily and the roads, as a result, clogged with traffic. Aurelian looked tense, and even more tense as the moments ticked on by, holding them up.

‘You wish us to be early?’ Violet asked this as she rearranged the shawl she wore around her neck to keep out some of the cold.

‘I want to see Cummings’s face when Mountford arrives, for surprise is a great revealer.’

‘Of guilt?’

‘And of knowledge. The Minister’s presence will worry him.’

He gazed out the window and Violet saw that they were moving again and that the obstruction ahead had been cleared away. Eli Tucker and the others would be just outside Cummings’s house watching and that was a relief for with Violet beside him he wanted nothing at all to go wrong.

‘If there is trouble stay low and leave the room as quickly as you can. Stand next to Mountford. He is the safest of all the options apart from me, though I wish to hell that I had not let you come...’

‘You couldn’t keep me away and I would have followed you had you left me, for this is my battle, too.’

‘Douglas Cummings will either take flight or fight when he sees Mountford. I am picking the second but I have no true knowledge of Antoinette Herbert’s movements for she was not at her house at all last night.’

‘You had her followed?’

‘I did. Tucker is both circumspect and largely invisible even given his size.’

‘But you think there are others, too, in this.’

‘I am certain of it and I pray to God they are not all out in force this today.’