HIS EXPRESSION unreadable, Colin approached their bed the next morning and handed Amy a letter decorated with an all-too-familiar red seal. A pain clenched her middle as her eyes scanned down the page, past lines of neat, flourished script, the product of many years of tutoring, to the bottom, where it was signed, “Your very loving friend, Charles R.”
“Dear heavens,” she groaned. The parchment rustled as she dropped it to the bed. “Not another summons, another favor.”
Colin’s laugh boomed through the chamber. “Read it, lazybones.” He stalked to the window and pushed open the drapes. “It’s only a letter saying a treaty with the Dutch was signed three days ago at Breda, and thanking me for service performed on behalf of England.”
She blinked against the sunshine flooding the chamber. “Thank heavens for small favors.” When he came to kiss her on the forehead, she flashed him a teasing smile. “I would have thrown you into the oubliette before I let you go this time. Six weeks you were gone!” She made a half-hearted attempt to sit up, then fell back against her pillows, defeated. She sighed. “I don’t remember going to bed last night.”
“You fell asleep in the middle of a sentence. Been lying awake missing me all those weeks?”
He sat on the bed and leaned to kiss her again, his teeth nibbling at her bottom lip, sending her pulse racing. He smiled against her mouth. “I never got the chance to thank you for sharing your inheritance—”
“There’s no need—”
“—and for saving Greystone.”
“Saving Greystone?” She brushed her fingertips over his scratchy cheeks. “Perhaps I made things a bit easier for you, but Greystone would have done well in the long run, regardless. It’s a fine estate.”
“A fine estate, yes.” He took her hands. “But it would have been Lord Hobbs’s fine estate.”
“Lord Hobbs’s?”
“I owe him money. From Priscilla’s dowry, due at the close of the year. It would have been Newgate Prison for me, or Greystone for him.” He gave a rueful laugh. “Coward that I am, I’m afraid he would have ended up with Greystone.”
“But there was always the gold—”
He quieted her with a kiss. “I promised you I’d never take it, love.”
He’d been willing to give up everything for her.
Sudden tears flooded her eyes. “A Chase promise is not given lightly,” she murmured, hearing Jason say so in her head. Back at Cainewood, nearly a year ago.
It seemed like a lifetime had passed.
“No, it’s never given lightly,” Colin agreed. “Most especially to those we love. Now, get some rest while I tour the estate.”
One more kiss, his lips soft, lingering on hers.
A hand on the doorjamb, he paused on his way out. “Are you happy?”
“Happy?” she asked in a daze. “I’ve never been happier in my life.”
At that moment, it was true. The smile transformed her face long after Colin’s footsteps had faded down the corridor.
He loved her.