Leslie LaFoy (53 page)

Devon watched her storm away, stunned, his heart racing. Sweet Jesus Christ. He'd had no idea that she saw his decisions as being presumptive and heartless.
He'd thought he'd made his motives so clear that day. She had to understand; he couldn't bear her resentment.

He stopped just inside the bedchamber door. “Claire, all I've done…”His throat swelled and he swallowed hard to clear it, to say, “All I want is for you to be safe.”

Her back to him, she quietly asked, “What does being safe matter when you're so miserably unhappy that you'd rather be dead?”

It didn't. Living wasn't worth the bother if there wasn't even the hope of happiness in it. He'd known that before she'd come into his life, and he'd learned the lesson again the day he'd sent her away. But not once since then had he ever stopped to consider that her pain might be as deep as his own, her heartbreak as raw, her life just as forever empty. He'd been so damn wrapped up in his own misery that he hadn't thought about hers. He was a selfish ass. Guilty of every callous, pompous crime of which she'd accused him.

“What would make you happy?” he asked, willing to do or say anything, grant any request she made of him.

“So that you can decree it for me?” she asked.

He deserved that slap. And he'd invite and endure a thousand more of them if that's what it took to get her to talk to him, to tell him what was in her heart. “When was the last time you were happy, Claire?”

“When you took me in your arms last night and carried me in here,” she answered, her voice quavering with tears, “and I thought that you'd come to take me home.”

Relief flooded over him. There was road to go yet, but they were at last on the same one. Devon stepped forward, gently placing his hands on her shoulders. “I've been such a damn fool,” he confessed.

Turning under his hands, she looked up at him defiantly,
tears rolling down over her cheeks. “Yes, you have. And I've been a fool to let you get away with it for as long as I have.”

No, she'd been a saint to endure the consequences of his stupidity. Cradling her face in his hands, he gently brushed her tears away with the pads of his thumbs. “Can you ever forgive me for what I've done to us? For the heartache I've caused?”

The defiance left her eyes and the hope that came into them filled his heart. “Do you still love me?” she whispered.

He answered her with a kiss, tender with apology, fierce with a hunger too long denied. With a moan, she melted into him, her arms twining around his neck, her love and forgiveness healing his heart and soul.

R
OUSED FROM SATED BLISS
, Claire smiled as Devon gently shifted beside her on the bed, swore softly, found and then tossed a boot aside. Gathering her back into his arms, he held her close and whispered, “I love you, Claire. I will to my dying day.”

“And I, you,” she replied, placing her hand over his heart.

Covering her hand with his own, he sighed contentedly. “I feel it's only fair to remind you that I have absolutely nothing to offer you except hope, my love, impending bankruptcy, and the real possibility of committing treason. If you want to rethink your commitment to a life with me, I'll understand.”

She shook her head in the tender confines of his embrace. “Hope and love are all that matters, Devon. I don't need anything more than that to be happy.”

“If you're sure…”He hesitated and then asked, “Will you come home with me, Madam Rivard?”

They were the dearest words she'd ever heard. She smiled and snuggled closer to him, listening to, feeling,
the steady, strong beat of his heart and discovering a fundamental truth. “Home isn't bricks and boards and glass, Devon. It's wherever you are.”

“It's good that you look at it that way, sweetheart,” he said, pressing a kiss into her hair. “Because odds are that you'll be living with me in a military campaign tent before the next year is out. War is coming.”

His greatest hope, his greatest fear. Propping herself on her elbow, Claire looked down at his handsome, beard-shadowed face. “And I'll stand with you on the day that war arrives. What you need me to do in the defense of freedom, I will. Where you go, Devon, I will go with you. No matter what happens, I will never again leave your side.”

She was the most magnificent light that had ever come into his life, and he would spend the rest of it making sure that she never once regretted loving him. “Always together, Claire,” he promised softly. “From this day forward. Come what may.”