Somehow, Caroline kept her features serene. “I can’t accept. I just cannot. I will not marry you for money.”
“I’m not asking you for any such thing.”
He stood, began to pace. “When you confronted me at Callows, I cannot deny that your opinion of me wounded me. You saw my efforts to save my dukedom as signs of failing in my character.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Given time to parse your words,” he continued, feet still marking a neat series of steps, “I realized that you were correct in some respects. Namely, that I was using the methods I preferred—and only those—to try to pull Wyverne back to solvency. I invested too much in untried innovation and not enough in the old ways that had worked for so long. I gave too much to Wyverne’s future but not enough to its present.”
He halted, turned on one heel to face Caroline. She felt very small as he looked down at her, magnificent and proud. “I’m not saying that the old ways will work forever, Caro. Times are changing. But I realized if I pursued only steam power and irrigation, I was fighting the land, and my tenants would soon be driven from it into the factories Miss Cartwright loves so dearly.
“Some of them might choose that life after all,” he mused. “But anyone who wants to stay shall have the means to make a good life. You see, in excavating one of the canals, we found a new seam of coal.”
Caroline felt a step behind. “Coal? But you’ve always known you had coal on your land.”
Michael sank back into his chair. “Yes, but it’s never been worth the trouble to ship it off the estate before. Coal may be plentiful in Lancashire and needed in London, but the cost won’t bear transporting it overland.” His mouth tugged up on one side. “I owe a bit of thanks to Miss Cartwright. She was determined to understand my financial status, and she inquired in such detail into the coal reserves that I ordered some more exploration and found that a known seam of coal extends into my network of irrigation canals.”
“But if the cost won’t bear transporting it, as you said?”
“Not overland. But by water, it will. Because of the cold weather, coal prices are high in the cities this year. If my canals are widened and graded, they will take on enough water for transport. And then the coal can be shipped: water to water, canal to river to sea.”
Caroline’s head felt very full. “Your canals.” She choked out a laugh. “Incredible. Your canals have saved you after all.”
“My canals and the long winter. But eventually the weather will thaw and the sun will come out. If the price of coal drops again, then the canals can be used for bringing fields back to life. And if I am blessed beyond deserving, then all of my plans will bear fruit.”
“Your creditors have stopped dogging you, then?”
“Indeed they have. It is amazing what wonders may be worked by the promise of a steady income from a known commodity. As soon as I arrived in London, I met with Weatherby and the other bankers and laid out my plans. They were satisfied enough by my sanity and my reason,” he said drily. “Bringing Wyverne out of debt will not happen in a year, or even in a decade. But perhaps not much longer than that. It will happen.”
“So you don’t need to marry for money anymore,” she said faintly.
“I do not.” His face was solemn. “And I know that you would not. The last time we spoke, in the Chinese room at Callows, you stated that you considered our acquaintance at an end and that I had nothing more to hope for. I was prepared to cut all ties with you.”
“I’m sorry,” she blurted again. So much to apologize for; so much that had gone wrong.
“Do not apologize. Or rather, I will apologize too. We both spoke harshly, and I’m sorry for my part in that.” A faint smile touched his lips. “Then an unlikely source retrieved my hope. Stratton.”
“Stratton did something helpful? I can scarcely credit it.”
“Unintentionally, I assure you. He found me just after he left you in the Chinese room. I had thought him on his way back to London, so I was not precisely pleased to see him again. I was pleased, though, by what he had to say.”
He leaned forward, holding her gaze. “He was adamant that I go to you, for the sake of your reputation, and convince you to cease your matchmaking efforts on my behalf. He was in a rage over the fact that you showed more loyalty to me, a near stranger, than you did to him, your own kin by marriage.”
“I would show more loyalty to a hatstand than I would to Stratton.”
“And that hatstand would deserve it more, I’m sure. Regardless, I gathered that you had defended me, spoken warmly about me—and that you’d somehow angered Stratton. This, I thought, was all promising evidence that you weren’t so set against me as you had indicated.”
“I was only hurt, Michael. I was never set against you.”
“So I hoped.” His fingers flexed, then stilled. “So I hoped.”
Though gray and chilly as ever outside, the drawing room seemed to warm. “Perhaps Stratton isn’t completely worthless after all,” Caroline said.
“That will be for his wife to determine and to deal with. Fortunate Miss Cartwright—that is, the new Lady Stratton. I gather she could not resist the idea of leading a nobleman about by golden reins.”
“No, I imagine not.” Caroline wanted to sigh. “Stratton cares for money above all else; he will not underestimate her worth. I believe he will make her a devoted husband.”
Miss Cartwright had been willing to sell herself—or to be more accurate, to buy Stratton. But such devotion, based on pounds and pence, held no value for Caroline. She wanted a devotion that was difficult to earn, from someone who was reluctant to trust. Someone strong enough to venture across a nation alone and strong enough to admit his faults.
Strong enough to match her love? Hope trembled like a hummingbird, caged.
“So. Now you know the full truth of it,” Michael said. “Why I acted as I did eleven years ago, why I have become the man I am now. I have a cold, run-down dukedom and a backbreaking quiver of responsibilities. I know you love London, and you have many friends here. I can’t offer you that sort of elegance or ease. I’m stubborn and proud, and I don’t make decisions lightly. I say the wrong thing much more often than not.”
“Yes, I know all of that.” She tilted her head. “Is a declaration lurking somewhere within this recital, or are you trying to make me boot you out the window?”
With a dry laugh, he said, “I’m not making a very good case for myself, am I? Perhaps I cannot. But I will never be quit of you, Caro, even if you’re quit of me. It’s not in me. I love you.”
“You love me.” She had wanted to hear it so long and expected to hear it so little, that the sounds hardly made sense in her ears. “You love me?”
“I do. I offer you my heart. I don’t know if you’ve any need for it. But if you’ll allow me the three days that were left on our old contract, I’ll try to convince you of my feelings.”
Slowly, Caroline shook her head, as a sweet bubble of joy filled her. “I won’t listen to you because of that silly contract, Michael. I cannot be bought. Only given.” She allowed herself a moment of tantalizing silence, to study the look on his face. He had stilled, every muscle and fiber waiting for more.
“You’re a brilliant man,” she continued, “and yet you overlooked something quite obvious. Michael, I never wanted anything from you but love. Not eleven years ago, when I had nothing to offer you but my heart. Not now, either. I turned down your proposals because I didn’t want to be courted for my money. I wanted to be courted for… well, me. I wanted to be needed.”
He was blinking rather more often than usual. “I did tell you you’d be needed if you were a duchess.”
“Oh, hang your tenants.” She bounded to her feet, her whole body humming discordantly. “Not literally, of course. But don’t you see the difference? I can’t marry to help nebulous legions. I’m far too selfish for that. The tenants of your dukedom don’t care who your duchess is; any woman would do as well.”
“No one could do as well as you.”
She smiled. “Ah, that—that’s what I wanted to hear.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s proof of your faith in me,” she replied. “Faith, and a kind view of me despite my shallowness and flaws.”
“You are the kind one. One of the kindest people I have ever known.” He reached out, caught her hand in his long fingers, and tugged her until she was within inches of him. One more tug, and she lost her balance and sank onto his lap.
Strong arms wrapped around her, and his chin snugged into the angle of her neck and shoulder. “I had not understood how you could take me to your bed but decline to marry me. Fool that I was, I thought you had cheapened the experience when you really refused to set a price on it.”
“Yes,” was all she could manage. His cheeks, chin moved against her skin with his every word. She was aware of his mouth, so near her skin—that mouth that had devoured her own, that had kissed her body.
He pulled in a deep breath. “Do you accept my proposal, then?”
“You haven’t proposed.”
“Haven’t—” Michael leaned back, goggling at her. “Caro, I have proposed to you three times.”
“No, only twice before today, and those proposals were all logic and transaction. As for today, you said you intended to propose, but you haven’t actually said the words. I would have remembered.”
“I see.” A smile played on his lips. “I must do the thing properly, then. If you’ll rise?”
He pressed her to her feet, then slid from the chair and dropped to one knee. He took her hand in his own roughened one. “You will not be offended by the truth?”
She looked down at him, this kneeling duke, with his odd, deliberate ways. There was simply no one else like him, and she loved him for that. “I might. But I want it anyway.”
He worked shaking fingers between hers, then gave a sharp nod. “Here it is. Eleven years ago, you married an old man who wanted to cheer his last years with a nubile young wife. I have no expectation of dying soon, so I am quite prepared to see you grow haggard and fat over the forthcoming decades.”
A crack of laughter burst from her throat; his mouth creased in a barely suppressed smile as he added, “My finances are adequate without the aid of your fortune. And—forgive me for mentioning it—but my bloodline is more noble than yours too.”
“This is hardly a litany of praise.”
“It’s the truth. And so is this: that there is only one remaining reason for me to offer you marriage. I love you.” His grip about her fingers tightened. “For many years, I had no talent for using my heart, and so I never bothered with it—until you entered my life and showed me the pleasurable bits of life that I was missing. How much sweeter is work when there is someone to play with at day’s end. How a small kindness can grow to touch everyone around it. Everything is better with you near.”
The walls around her heart were weak now, indeed. “I want to believe you. So much. But I know your nature is solitary. How can I be sure you won’t tire of me and toss me aside like a Carcel lamp?”
“I would never toss aside a Carcel lamp.”
She couldn’t help but laugh.
“But, Caro, such a comparison does not do you justice. You are far more precious than any work of human hands. I don’t trust easily, yet I trusted you with my future when we met on that terrace—and I have long wished that my future would include you. I hope that you, in turn, can trust that I am yours: heart and mind, body and soul.” Eyes never leaving hers, he brushed his lips over the back of her hand. A whisper of a kiss—a promise. More, more to come. More.
She tugged him to his feet, then wrapped her arms around him as though she could pull him into her heart. “You dear, dratted, wonderful man. I love you dearly. And I would be honored to marry you.”
He let out such a deep breath that for an instant he seemed boneless in her arms. “I am delighted to hear it. I wanted you to agree, very much.”
“I would have agreed weeks ago had you asked for my heart instead of my fortune. But if Stratton convinced you that I might care for you, why have you waited so long to come?”
His gaze sidled away. “I have found that it takes twenty-one days of conscious effort to form or break a new habit.”
“Am I a habit, then? I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment.”
“Not a habit, but a hope. After our last conversation, I realized I could never convince you to marry me unless I could save my dukedom without your money. I also realized that, even with a houseful of guests, I missed you. And even with twenty-one days of hard work and planning, you were always on my mind. As a promise unfulfilled or…”
“Or a hope,” she repeated. “Yes. I hoped too.”
“In those weeks, I could not get out of the habit of loving you. I didn’t even want to try. I cursed every day that it took me to travel south from Lancashire. Then, when I arrived in London, I blessed the scandal rags, for they showed me that Stratton and Miss Cartwright had neatly removed themselves from our concern. I hoped that if you knew I didn’t want anyone else—that I never had—”
Again, she laughed. “You should have begun your proposal with all this, instead of that business about me growing haggard and fat.”
With a deep sigh, he pressed a kiss against the side of her neck. “I told you I always say the wrong thing. Yet you agreed to marry me anyway. I suppose you really do love me.”
“Just as you are. Yes. I suppose I really do.” She tightened her arms around him.
And with that, he kissed her. A kiss of sweet hope, of passionate promise. His mouth firm on hers, hands laced around her waist.
More kissing followed, not just the neck, but the lips, every part of the face. Hands slid, stroked. Caroline’s limbs began to weaken from lust.
Joy welled up in her, pure and elemental. “I do.”
Against her cheek, she felt the flex of his throat, tight over a choked swallow. His skin was warm, his cheek just barely stubble-scratchy. “I hope you will marry me very soon, Caro. I cannot do without you: I told you I never decide anything lightly.”
“Very soon,” she agreed. “And you shall not do without me. Come to my bedchamber and we’ll practice for our wedding night.”
“A lady’s request,” Michael said, “should not be gainsaid.”
“How well you have learned the lessons of society—and in fewer than six events too. Shall we credit my talents or yours?”
“Both,” he said. “We could only accomplish so much together.”
***
“I know we have all night,” Caroline said as she pushed closed the door to her bedchamber. “But there’s no reason why we should not get started right away, is there?”
“You want me to cut your corset strings again?” Strong hands slid around her waist and tugged her into the solid wall of his body.
“Do whatever you want to.” She pressed herself more closely against the support of his chest, belly, the ridge of his cock. “As long as you do it to me.”
His hands roamed over her back, teasing open the buttons at the back of her bodice. When he worked free the last button, he caught her gaze. His jaw was set in tight control, but his eyes showed his true feelings. Warm in the low lamplight of her bedchamber—still an Argand lamp; how had she not remedied that?—they looked so intently at her that they seemed to strip her bare in every way. The pupils were dilated, as though he must drink in the sight of her more fully. His lashes were sooty shadows every time he blinked.
How she loved him, this stubborn, loyal, determined man.
“This might be an excellent time to mention,” he said conversationally, “that I’ve devised a new area of study recently.”
“Does it have anything to do with removing your clothes?”
He gave her a tiny, wicked smile. “With yours, actually. If you’ll permit?”
Hooking a fingertip under the loosened edge of her bodice, he worked it down her shoulders, arms, torso. The silk slid, heavy and slow, into a puddle of rich fabric.
Michael bent and coaxed Caroline’s feet free, then laid the green gown carefully over the back of a chair. “I should hate for it to be spoiled,” he said as he turned back to her. “It’s the only one I’ve ever seen that comes close to matching your eyes.”
She melted.
Liquid, she allowed him to free her from her corset and shift, crouch to tug her garters from her legs and roll down her stockings. His hands were roughened, but his touch was gentle. Under his touch, every cell in her body fired into heated life. But he avoided her center of pleasure, her belly, her breasts. As he unfolded to his full height again, tugging at his cravat, she felt positively molten.
“Show me what you’ve been studying,” she said. “Show me.” And with swift, determined tugs, she hurried him through his own disrobing.
Never had he smiled so much, this carefully coiled man. Never had he seemed so playful, so joyous, so wickedly delighted.
The undressing seemed to go much more quickly this time. Uncertainty had vanished; now they both knew what came next, what they wanted, what they felt. His hot tongue found the hollow behind her ear lobe, just as he kicked free from the last of his clothing. Caroline shivered and clutched for him, and they toppled onto her coverlet in a tangle of bare limbs.
Michael made up for the swiftness with which they undressed by stroking Caroline’s body slowly. “Not everything I study is confined to theory,” he murmured, running the point of his tongue between her breasts before settling next to her. Raised on one elbow, his left hand played over her. “Some of it can be translated quite well into practice. For example, if I’ve figured this correctly, you ought to enjoy this very much.”
His head bent, teeth grazing her earlobe, just as his hand slipped over her breast and tugged lightly at the nipple.
“Ummm.” She swallowed. “Do that again.”
“Are you certain? Or would you rather I try something new?” His mouth replaced his fingers around her nipple, pulling hot and wet, sending liquid heat to her core. Those wicked fingers slipped down again, finding where she grew slick, and one, then two slid within her, filling her—almost perfect but teasingly different.
“You see,” he said between licks and tugs at the nipple, “touching two points of pleasure at once more than doubles the sensation.” His fingers slipped in her wetness, painting ecstasy through her body.
“How did you learn this? This couldn’t… couldn’t be from a book.” Caroline’s voice was unsteady, smoky from the fire within her.
“No.” He rested his head flat on her chest, short hair teasing her sensitive skin. “It’s billiards: identify the right angle for hitting two targets.”
“Billiards?” She had to laugh. “That is absurd. You’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”
“Not as pleased as you’re going to be.”
Caroline ran trembling hands over Michael’s back, pulling him atop her. He raised himself up on steady arms, caught her eye, and grinned again. “If one understands the capabilities of the equipment, one can calculate the preferred angle of thrust.” With a sleek movement of his hips, he slid into her. His eyes closed, and a shudder ran through his long body. “God, Caro.”
He swallowed heavily before wrenching his eyes open and adding, “And the correct amount of force.”
Caroline’s toes curled. “This is all most logical,” she said in a husky voice.
“Logic is simply a means to an end,” Michael said. “The purpose is to make you scream with pleasure.”
“My dear future husband, I am a great admirer of your theories.” She wrenched herself up to press hungry lips against his. Then she curled back onto the bed and tugged at his hips, sinking him deeper and deeper within her. “Everything’s better with you, Michael.”
“It will get better still.” He sank onto his forearms and cradled her in his embrace. “For we have a lifetime to practice.”
At last, he began to move, and he was right, the clever man. He found the spots that made her quiver; he teased them until she cried out, aching and full and needy. The angle, the thrust, the force… he filled her with pleasure until every barrier came down. Oh, she could never have imagined the sharp joy of this making love, melding the physical intimacy with emotional closeness just as deep. Never before had her heart and mind and body been so joined for one purpose.
“Together,” she gasped, and he unleashed himself within her.
That was the last word either of them spoke for some time.