Meg awoke with a start.
She’d been having the strangest dream. A nightmare of blood and pain and encroaching shadows that smothered her, slowly paralyzing her until she was unable to move or scream or draw a breath. Until the darkness fully claimed her.
She lingered, buried under heaps of cold earth, for what seemed like an eternity. But then she felt herself drifting, light as a downy feather on a breeze to a different place. A void. A nothingness. A world of dark gray skies and a vast, unending plane covered in ash.
Behind her there was darkness, and up ahead, the smallest, barely perceptible glow of light. As she moved toward it, the empty skies altered to dove gray, then gradually slate gray, and finally to a pale cloudy blue.
She liked it there. It was peaceful, the nightmare behind her. She thought she would stay there for a long while and simply rest.
But then she heard a sound from far, far away. Barely a whisper, the voice was hollow and pained and talking about fate.
It made her heart ache to hear those words, and she felt a weight pressing down on her chest. Beneath it, her heart thudded heavily, and it was hard to catch her breath.
Afraid that the suffocating nightmare had returned, her eyes flew open on a strangled gasp.
Her throat felt raw, and her tongue tasted like she’d licked the bottom of the ash bin.
She rolled it around in her dry mouth, behind a wall of chapped lips. Lifting her hand, it felt like it weighed ten stone and she dropped it halfway to her face. That was when she discovered the reason it was so hard to breathe. Someone’s head was on her chest.
Recognizing the efficiently layered hair beneath her fingertips, she whispered, “Lucien?”
The bed jolted. She heard a startled inhale. She felt a squeeze of her hand, her face touched, cradled and then kissed.
“You’re alive,” he breathed against her forehead. “And awake.”
She was about to make a quip about how strange a greeting that was, but opening her pasty mouth proved too difficult. Had she licked the bottom of an ash bin?
She heard the scrape of chair legs, followed by the sound of items clattering to the floor as he groped for something on the table. He cursed. And then a light flared to life, the solitary flame blindingly bright.
She squinted as he brought it near, while he clumsily hooked his spectacles over his ears. Then he hovered over her, scrutinizing. As he did, the flame wavered, light flickering in stark shadows over his face, making him look thin and drawn as if he hadn’t slept in days.
“Your color has returned.” A sigh left him, and he wavered on unsteady legs. So he set the chamberstick down, took her hand again and brought it to his cheek. Then he smiled. “And you’re warm, too. Are you thirsty? Do you think you can drink?”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out except for a dry rasp. So she nodded.
He moved swiftly, nearly overturning the highbacked chair, the legs scraping across the floor. Gripping the porcelain ewer by the handle, he stumbled around the room in disoriented haste. She’d never seen him like this before—bumbling around as he searched for the glass, muttering under his breath, only to realize it had been on the bedside table all along.
Gently, he propped her head up on the pillows and brought the glass to her lips. “There, now.”
The first sip was painful, as if her throat was lined with corn husks. But the coolness felt too refreshing to stop. After several grateful gulps, he lifted it away for her to catch her breath.
“Much better,” she whispered hoarsely, her tongue clumsy. Then she nudged upward in a wordless demand for more.
After she drank her fill, he set the glass down and slumped into the chair. Leaning forward, he took her hand and laid his cheek in her palm, gazing at her. “Am I dreaming this?”
It was only then that she noticed that his eyes were red-rimmed, his voice as shredded as her own. And the memory of the library came back to her.
“Your sister,” she said, and he nodded, answering the unspoken query in her eyes. “Did she . . . hurt anyone else?”
He shook his head. “No one else drank the poison. Our daughter is safe and sound asleep. If it wasn’t for our little escape artist, I might not have found you in time.” His breath hitched as he turned his head and pressed a lingering kiss into her palm. “And I couldn’t bear it if you were gone. I love you too much to lose you.”
Her throat constricted on a sudden rush of joy, and all she could do was whisper his name. “Lucien.”
“Surely, that doesn’t surprise you,” he said. And then, in a smug, scholarly way, he added, “I’ve hypothesized the likelihood of such an occurrence since the day we met.”
She rolled her eyes. “You have not. The only thing you hypothesized that day was how I managed to steal your book, which I did not do.”
“Which I knew all along as well.”
“What a liar you are,” she said with a papery laugh that left her winded.
A concerned frown notched his brow for an instant before he schooled his features. Then he reached for the glass and held it to her lips once more. She drank dutifully before a wave of exhaustion crashed over her and she yawned.
Tucking the coverlet around her, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and temple. “We’ll simply have to agree to disagree. After we marry, we’ll have many years to argue over it. But for now, you need your rest.”
“Was that a proposal or a command?” she asked, her brows lifting. Her heart fluttered, too, but she tried to ignore it.
This was about the rest of her life and her own legacy. If she had learned anything over the course of these last two years, it was to look before she leapt.
“Darling, you know we’ll be married. We have a child together.”
“It seems to be all wrapped up in a conveniently tidy package, doesn’t it? I imagine it even looks good on paper—husband plus wife plus child equals marriage. But what if I want more?”
“More than my promise to love you with every beat of my heart for the rest of my life?”
She swallowed. And even though it pained her to do so, she nodded.
He studied her for a moment, puzzled. Then a flame seemed to ignite behind his eyes, and gold flecks shone bright behind the lenses of his spectacles.
“I understand,” he stated simply. “You require proof. And you shall have it, because I’m not going anywhere.”
* * *
Every day of the next month, Lucien asked her to marry him. And every day, she refused.
Meg’s reasons began with solid concerns. Such as the fact that his proposal came from the shock of her near death or even misplaced guilt over his sister’s involvement. However, as the month progressed, her reasons started to sound like . . . well . . . precisely what they were. Excuses. And her heart broke every time she said no.
But what else could she do? She couldn’t very well pass on the legend of the Stredwick certainty to Guinevere when both of her parents hadn’t been struck by it. Only one of them had.
Then again, perhaps she was being foolish. All that truly mattered was that they loved each other. Right? She knew it was impossible to expect her completely logical duke to suddenly accept the fact that they were meant to be.
She sighed. These musings had been her bosom companion for over a month now.
After the first three weeks, her strength had improved enough for her to join the family at dinner. By the fourth week, she could climb the stairs without needing to rest to catch her breath. And by the fifth week, she was walking in the garden, hand in hand with Guinevere.
It was on such a day, with the cool autumn breeze sending cyclones of fallen leaves skittering along the path, that mother and daughter spotted Lucien dropping down from the bowed branch of a tree.
And not just any tree, but the tree.
The same one that she’d slipped a coin into and fervently whispered the words I wish to meet my soul’s counterpart. Bring him to me. Please, oh, please.
“Papa!” Guinevere called out, releasing Meg’s hand to scamper down the lane in her pink pelisse. She still called him Wooshan on occasion, but it was mostly Papa now.
The three of them spent hours together each day, having tea and reading books, with Lucien dramatically recounting the tales of King Arthur, Excalibur and the Knights of the Round Table. Not surprisingly, Guinevere loved to hear about her namesake, and both she and her cousin, Johnathon, had developed a fondness for swinging wooden swords.
There were great battles waged in the nursery these days, Meg thought with a smile.
Up ahead, Guinevere giggled as Lucien lifted her impossibly high in the air. Then he spun her around, gave her a kiss and said, “You are a wonder of creation.”
Meg’s heart stopped and seemed to swell. She splayed her hand over that susceptible organ to keep it from bursting as tears gathered in her eyes. Oh, how she loved that man.
Lucien turned then, and his gaze alighted on her. Concern glanced across his features for an instant before she offered a smile to let him know that all was well. Or at least, it would be soon. Because when he asked her to marry him today, she was going to say yes.
She turned to discreetly blot her tears and saw the nurse coming out of the house. Then Lucien set Guinevere on her feet. “Give your mother a kiss and then go with Miss Elaine. Then later, I’ll tell you a story about a king named Pellinore.”
With a squeal of delight, Guinevere scampered back to Meg, pausing just long enough to press a wet kiss to her lips before dashing off.
Lucien was by Meg’s side at once, the brush of his fingertips tender on her cheek. “Are you up for a longer walk today?”
“I’m perfectly hale, as I’ve been telling you all week,” she said, a teensy bit crossly, too. But she couldn’t help it. He was treating her as if she were fragile.
Well, except for when he kissed her. And oh, how he kissed her.
Every night, he was like a man starved, a knight returning from battle, leaving her trembling and weak-kneed at the door to her bedchamber. Then he would stop and gaze down at her hungrily . . . and ask her to marry him.
He wasn’t playing fair.
She slid him a sideways look, and his mouth twitched as if her petulant mood amused him.
Covering her hand with his, he strolled along the winding path toward the walled garden. “Have I ever told you about the first day I came here?”
“I believe I already know this story. I found you sitting in the butterfly garden with Guinevere.”
“True. But that wasn’t the first time.”
Her head tilted. “You’d been to Crossmoor Abbey before?”
“Years ago, in fact,” he said with a nod, surprising her. “The experience was so confounding that I spent the past decade avoiding Wiltshire altogether.”
She laughed as he told her about the directionless driver who had taken him north instead of south, how a storm blew in without the slightest atmospheric forewarning, which exposed a colossal stone in the middle of the road, which broke the carriage wheel.
“What an utter disaster,” she said with a laugh. “After suffering all of that, I’m surprised you weren’t stranded.”
“I would have been, if not for your stablemaster. Mr. Weston set everything to rights, and I was able to depart without further incident.”
She shook her head. “How odd that you should have been here, and yet my brother never mentioned it to me, and neither did Aunt Sylvia.”
“I made an attempt to pay a call on your brother, to thank him for his hospitality, but he was preoccupied, as was your aunt, I imagine. There had been an accident.”
“What kind of . . . accident?” The hair on her nape suddenly lifted. And even before he answered, she knew.
Lucien casually guided her beneath the ivy-covered arch and into the garden. “Apparently, his little sister had fallen from a tree.”
“You were here that day?”
“The most perplexing day of my life. I could not make sense of it.”
And yet, it all made perfect sense to her. No wonder she hadn’t felt as strongly for Daniel in all the years she’d known him as she had for Lucien from the very first moment they’d met.
As she gazed up at him, the gold flecks in his dark eyes sparkled, and there was an arrogant curl at one corner of his mouth. She stopped in her tracks and faced him. “How long have you known?”
He shrugged. “A while.”
“All these weeks that you’ve been asking me to marry you?” When he nodded, she squinted at him, and he chuckled. She jabbed the center of his waistcoat with an accusatory finger. “And do you finally accept the fact that fate played a hand in our meeting?”
“I do,” he said without appearing the least bit contrite for having kept this from her. Lifting her fingers, he pressed a kiss to the tips, then gathered her close, his hands slipping beneath the fringe of her shawl to splay over her lower back.
She tilted her face up to his. “Then, why did you wait to tell me?”
“I wanted you to be ready to hear it. Because the instant you say yes”—he brushed his lips across hers with enticing promise—“I’m going to take you.”
The man truly wasn’t playing fair.
Weak-kneed though she might be, she managed to put space between them. “Well, if you think I’m going to accept the proposal of a man who claims to have no choice in the matter—”
He kissed her into silence, hard and ravenous, until she melted against him.
“A wise person once said that there are two kinds of people in the world—those who enjoy experiencing the wonder of everyday occurrences, and those who dissect every component down to the very basic elements. I am one of the few scholars in the former category,” he said smugly. “After all, in order to truly appreciate the miracles in one’s life, one must first accept that not everything can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Some things simply are. There is no explanation.”
She felt the dubious lift of her brows. “Are you telling me that you didn’t calculate every single coincidence between us in search of proof?”
“I filled an entire ledger,” he said with a trace of chagrin. “Then I left it on the bough of your wishing tree.”
She laughed brightly, throwing her arms around him. “And what did you whisper to the wishing tree?”
He held her gaze, his expression solemn, earnest. “I said, Let her know that I am here . . . waiting.”
Her heart bloomed, blossoming in a sudden burst of joy that she couldn’t contain. She smiled as tears spilled from her eyes. “Marry me, Lucien.”