After the Kiss (28 page)

As soon as her feet touched the path, she pulled free of him. “Now. What the devil are you doing here?”

He tilted his head, a lock of hair obscuring one eye. “I thought about what you said.”

Joy pushed up through her heart again, and her mind pushed back just as fiercely. She was
not
going to go through that hopeless helplessness again. “Hm,” she said noncommittally.

“‘Hm’?” he repeated, his brow lowering.

“You said you’d thought about what I said. You didn’t say what you’d decided about it.”

Brief, exasperated humor touched his gaze. Good. Now he knew how she’d been feeling for the past…forever, it seemed. Since the night they’d met.

“Very well. I decided that you were correct. I shouldn’t have been making your decisions for you.”

She blinked. “
That’s
what you decided? That
you
don’t know how
I
feel about
my
life?”

“That’s not everything I decided,” he retorted. “I just began with that so I could get the apologizing over and done with.”

“Just like that?” Perhaps she was snapping too hard, but if she could control the conversation, then he wouldn’t be able to hurt her. She couldn’t stand it if he simply apologized and left again.

“Isabel, please. I’ve ridden for two days. I just finished speaking with your father. I don’t—”

“
What?
”

“I’m attempting to do this corr—”

She coiled up her fists and shoved. With a surprised
whumph
, Sullivan staggered backward—and landed on his backside in the lake.

“Isabel!” he roared, shooting back to his feet.

For a stunned second she just stared at him. “Oh! I didn’t mean for—”

Sullivan strode out of the water, swept her up in his arms, and dove back in. Cold water closed over her head. Sputtering, Isabel scrambled back to her feet.

“How dare—”

“I love you, damn it all!” he broke in. “Will you let me finish what I’m trying to say?”

Knee-deep in water, a fish, she was certain, nibbling at her ankle, Isabel folded her arms over her chest and tried to remember to breathe. “Very well,” she said with as much dignity and calm as she could muster. “You did come all this way.”

“Yes, I did. Dunston came to see me.”

She searched his eyes. That couldn’t have been pleasant, but all she could see was the same slightly amused expression deep in his gaze. “Are you well?” she asked.

He nodded. “He said something that struck me on my thick skull. Apparently Oliver and the family have found recovery from the scandal of my arrest difficult because they look like bullies, and I am well respected.” A slow smile touched his mouth. “He respects me.”

“It’s about time he realized that. And you, as well.”

“I know, I know. You told me the same thing.” He took a breath. “I suppose, much as I hate to admit it, that I wanted to hear it from him. But that’s not the point, is it?”

“You tell me.”

“I have an estate now,” he went on. “Amberglen. And I hired a butler so I wouldn’t have to keep running down the stairs when someone came calling.”

She smiled. “I’m happy for you. Truly.”

“Thank you.” He reached out, unfolding her arms and taking both of her hands in his. “I have aristocratic neighbors, but I cannot guarantee that they will ever come calling, or send out an invitation for a social visit.”

“Sullivan.”

“I know, you don’t care about that. But are you certain? Absolutely certain?”

Goodness. This time when joy pushed at her heart, she let it in.
Finally.
“I—”

“And I nearly forgot,” he interrupted with the worst timing ever. “As I was running out the door to come after you, Dunston decided that the only way for his family to recover their reputation is for him to acknowledge me as his son.”

Her mouth gaped open. “You left that until now?” she managed.

“It didn’t signify. But I thought it might be a point in my favor when I spoke with your father. Which is why I spoke with him first. So he wouldn’t shoot me when I returned to the house with you.”

“He wouldn’t dare,” she breathed, tears gathering in her eyes and tumbling down her cheeks.

Sullivan sank to his knees in the water. “Isabel,” he murmured, still holding her hands in his, “you set my life upside down, and you’ve made me happier than I ever would have dreamed I could be. I thought I needed to be someone I wasn’t in order to win you. But you liked who I was. I love you…. I love you with everything in me. Isabel, will you marry me?”

She gulped air, tears obscuring her eyes. “Yes,” she quavered, throwing herself into his arms. An estate, a life without total ruination—she still didn’t care. He’d asked as the
man he was, and she loved him for that. Everything else was secondary. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

He kissed her, pulling her hard into his arms. “Thank God,” he murmured thickly, kissing her again and again. “Thank God.”

“I love you, Sullivan,” she whispered against his mouth, the cold water beginning to make her shiver despite the warmth welling up inside her.

“I love you, Tibby. So much.”

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, holding him tightly. “May we please get out of the water now?”

With a chuckle he lifted her in his arms and slogged to shore, where Achilles and Zephyr stood calmly nibbling at the grass. “As you wish, my lady. As you wish.”

Isabel stood on the front steps of Amberglen and waved into the morning sunlight. The coach bearing the Darshear coat of arms rolled down the curving road and out of sight behind the hill. With a sigh, she lowered her arm again.

“Please tell me there’s no one else.”

Sullivan took her hand. “That, my dear, was the very last of our guests. With the exception of twenty-seven employees and eighty-one horses, we are alone.”

She smiled. “You make it sound crowded.”

“Then perhaps we should find somewhere more private.”

Before she could respond, he swept her up in his arms and carried her back inside the manor. The butler saw them going up the stairs, laughing, and so did a footman and two maids. It still seemed odd, that people could know she loved
Sullivan, that they touched and kissed, and no one so much as batted an eye.

No one here at Amberglen, anyway. And considering that they’d already been invited to three house parties by neighbors, their acceptance seemed likely to spread as far as the borders of Sussex, if not beyond.

“What is it?” he asked, looking down as he shouldered open the door of the master bedchamber.

“I’m married to you,” she whispered, curving her hand along his lean face.

Sullivan leaned back, closing the door behind them. “In a church and in front of witnesses, so don’t try to escape me now.” He chuckled as he set her down gently on the wide bed. “Bram said I made a beautiful groom.”

“No, he said you made a passable groom. Only a fortnight, and you’re already exaggerating the tale.” She reached up to push his jacket off his shoulders and down to the floor.

Kicking out of his boots, Sullivan slipped onto the bed beside her. “It’ll be different now, with your friends and family gone. Not everyone will be all smiles to see us together.”

She tangled her fingers into his hair and pulled him over for a deep, slow kiss. “For the last blasted time, Sullivan James Waring, I don’t care who smiles at us or who doesn’t.”

He smiled against her mouth. “Yes, yes. I believe you.” With a hug he rolled them so that she was straddling his hips. Sitting up with her, he reached around her back to slowly unbutton her gown. “I think you should wear fewer clothes,” he murmured, kissing her shoulder as he lowered her dress to her waist.

“That might make people talk.”

As his mouth closed over one breast she gasped, arching her back. Sullivan’s warm hands trailed down her stomach and then lower, and she shivered deliciously. All hers. He belonged to her now, much more so than when she’d attempted to blackmail him.

She sat back to yank his shirt free, and he pulled it off over his head. Then she went to work unbuttoning his trousers, her fingers eager and stumbling over the fastenings.

“No one’s going to interrupt us, you know,” he murmured, kissing her again. “Take your time.”

“This is the amount of time I want to take,” she returned, standing up to shrug out of her gown. “And you don’t appear to wish to wait, either,” she observed with a breathless grin.

“If it had been up to me, once we left the church we wouldn’t have set foot outside this room except to eat.”

He pulled her to the bed again, putting her on her back to kiss her once more. His warmth surrounded her, heating her from the inside out. And to think, once she’d believed that being Society’s darling provided her with everything she wanted. Being his darling, however, meant so much more.

Slowly he entered her, the slide exquisite and breathless. “Sullivan,” she moaned, digging her fingers into his shoulders.

Sullivan kissed her again, his pace slow and deep and steady, driving her closer and closer to the edge with every thrust. “I love you,” he murmured.

She shattered, clinging to him helplessly as the world spun wildly around. This was him; this was her Sullivan, and she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be anywhere else than with him.

His pace increased, his head lowering to her shoulder. Isabel moaned again, holding as close to him as she could,
waiting for the moment she’d come to love above all others. “I love you,” she returned breathlessly.

He lifted his face to gaze at her, his ice-green eyes deep and glittering. Then he found his release inside her, groaning as he came. “Isabel. My Isabel,” he breathed, settling beside her to wrap his arms around her.

“Always,” she whispered back, sinking into his embrace. “Always.”