Mayhew made to follow Miss Culpepper, remembered the kittens, and caught up the basket. He stepped hastily into the parlor, closed the door behind him, set the basket down again, and turned to face her.
Miss Culpepper had crossed to the small diamond-paned window casement and was looking out. Her back was to him and he could see every mud stain, every wrinkle, every snagged thread.
No wonder Sir Walter had assumed the worst.
“I’m very sorry,” Mayhew said contritely. “I shouldn’t have said half of what I said and I definitely shouldn’t have said it so loudly and so publicly.”
Miss Culpepper turned to face him. To his astonishment, he saw that she was smiling. It was a small smile, not enough to set the dimples dancing in her cheeks, but enough to tell him that she wasn’t furious with him.
Which she really ought to be.
She’d been harangued in public because of him. She’d lost her chance to go to Vienna because of him.
“I’m very sorry,” Mayhew said again. He felt a rising tide of shame, and on the heels of shame, dismay. He’d accused Sir Walter of ill-breeding, but he’d been ill-bred, too, losing his temper like that.
It’s better to fix things than lose one’s temper—Colonel Culpepper’s maxim, that, and Mayhew had indisputably lost his temper. Even worse, he couldn’t fix this mess. Miss Culpepper’s position with the Pikes was irrevocably lost.
But he would fix the things that could be fixed.
“May I escort you back to Kingston upon Thames, Miss Culpepper? That is . . . if my behavior hasn’t given you a repugnance of me.”
Miss Culpepper cocked her head at him. “Repugnance?”
“Your father disapproved of displays of temper. I must presume that you do, too.”
Miss Culpepper’s dimples finally made an appearance. “Do you think my father never lost his temper, Lieutenant? You’d be wrong, then, for he most certainly did!”
“You’re not angry with me?” Mayhew asked cautiously.
“Angry?” Miss Culpepper’s dimples deepened. “Lieutenant, you were shockingly uncomplimentary to Sir Walter, but you were exceedingly complimentary to me.”
Some of the tension in Mayhew’s chest eased.
“If my father had been here, he’d have given Sir Walter exactly such a raking down as you did,” Miss Culpepper said.
“He would have?”
“Yes.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Although he probably would have been louder.”
“But . . . your position in Vienna—”
“It would have been interesting to live in Vienna for a spell,” Miss Culpepper said. “But I doubt I would have enjoyed being part of Sir Walter’s household. As you so eloquently put it, he’s a pompous prat.”
Yes, he had called Sir Walter that. Loudly.
Mayhew didn’t know whether to grimace or laugh, so he did both. Then his laughter faded and his grimace faded and he just stood in the middle of the private parlor, looking at Miss Culpepper. “I meant it,” he said quietly. “You are the most outstanding female I’ve ever met.”
Miss Culpepper’s cheeks became an adorable shade of pink. She looked down at the muddy toes of her half boots.
“The last eighteen hours have been both irksome and uncomfortable. Most people would have complained, but you haven’t. Not once! Not when you missed the stagecoach. Not when you got muddy and wet. Not even when you hurt yourself and had to sleep in a barn! You’ve borne everything with fortitude and good humor.”
Miss Culpepper’s cheeks became even pinker. “You make me sound like a paragon, but the sad truth of it is that I’ve enjoyed it, Lieutenant.” She glanced up at him through her eyelashes, not flirtatiously, but a little uncertainly, as if she was doubtful of his reaction. “Even the mud. Even the storm.”
“I’m shocked,” Mayhew said, a smile growing on his face. “Deeply shocked.” He took a step closer. “And extremely relieved. And . . . enchanted.”
Miss Culpepper blushed ferociously at that last word. She fixed her attention on her half boots again.
Mayhew laughed softly and reached out and tipped up her chin.
Her eyes met his shyly, and Mayhew felt an almost overwhelming urge to bend his head and kiss those rosy lips.
The urge was so strong that he almost succumbed to it—but he’d just comprehensively upended Miss Culpepper’s life and he needed to mend that before he did anything else.
“What would you like to do now?” he asked her. “Tell me, and I’ll make it happen. Would you like to return to your aunt? Or would you like to come to Southampton with me? You can stay with my sister and her husband—there would be no impropriety, I assure you!—they’re very respectable. He’s a magistrate, you know.”
“Southampton?” Miss Culpepper said.
“Yes.” Mayhew’s lungs squeezed tight. “And . . . if you wish . . . I can apply for permission to marry you.” He felt himself blush, and continued resolutely on: “But I’ll only do that if it’s what you truly want, because we don’t know each other very well and perhaps we ought to correspond for a while, and I am only a lieutenant.”
“My father was only a lieutenant when he married my mother,” Miss Culpepper said.
Mayhew’s heart gave a hopeful leap. Did that mean what he thought it meant? “Tell me what you’d like to do, Miss Culpepper. What you would most like to do.”
She smiled at him. “What I most want to do is marry you.”
“Now?” he said cautiously. “Or in a year—”
“Now.”
Mayhew’s heart didn’t just leap in his chest, it soared. “Are you certain?” He searched her face for doubts, for hesitancy.
“I’m certain,” Miss Culpepper said. “Maybe I don’t know everything about you, but I do know that we’re cut from the same cloth, you and I.”
“Indeed, we are.” He lifted one hand and touched her cheek, ghosting his thumb over the spot where her dimple was hidden.
“I think I could search all of England and not find someone who suits me as well as you do,” Miss Culpepper told him.
“Nor I you.” Mayhew stroked her cheek again, lightly, reverently, marveling at the softness of her skin.
She smiled, and a dimple sprang to life beneath his thumb. “And it’s not just because you’re a soldier. I think I should wish to marry you even if you weren’t.”
“You do, do you?” he teased her. “Are you certain about that?”
The dimple deepened. “Yes.”
“I’m very pleased to hear it,” Mayhew said. “Because I’ve decided to sell my commission and become a farmer. A pig farmer. In Wiltshire.”
Miss Culpepper laughed. “No, you haven’t.”
“No, I haven’t,” Mayhew agreed. He gave in to temptation and tipped up her chin and kissed her lightly. Her lips were exactly as he’d imagined, soft and warm, but also shy and trembling, which he hadn’t expected, and a sudden realization flashed through him: Willemina Culpepper had never been kissed before.
Mayhew drew back slightly and looked down at her.
Miss Culpepper gazed back, shyness written on her face, and it made his heart squeeze in his chest to think that he was the first man to kiss this remarkable woman.
Shyness wasn’t the only thing written on her face. Trust was there, too, but trepidation and fear weren’t—which didn’t surprise him, because his Willie didn’t have a timid bone in her body. His Willie was brave and confident and indomitable—and gazing at him not just with shyness and trust, but also with expectancy.
Mayhew could see that she wanted him to kiss her again, so he did, bending his head, touching his lips to hers. It was a kiss that was gentle and tender and friendly, affectionate. A kiss that said hello and I love you and this is our beginning. Then he drew back and took both her hands in his. “I know I’m only a lieutenant, but I have been tapped for a captaincy. I’ll be a major within five years, and a colonel before I’m forty. I promise you.”
“I don’t mind if you’re a lieutenant forever,” Miss Culpepper told him. “But I have no doubt that you’ll be an excellent colonel.”
“I hope to be.”
“I know you’ll be,” she said. “I have confidence in you. And I have confidence in us. You and I were destined to be together.”
Mayhew laughed at that and kissed her again, lightly, and whispered, “I have confidence in us, too,” against her mouth, and then he kissed her again, not quite so lightly, and her lips parted for him and the tip of her tongue touched the tip of his and a shiver went through him from head to toe.
Mayhew drew her closer. He kissed her in wonder and joy and delight, and she kissed him back eagerly. His arms were around her, drawing her close, and her hands were fisted in his jacket, pulling him even closer, and the dance of their mouths became deeper and more intimate, more urgent . . .
Mayhew reluctantly broke the kiss. He lifted his head and tried to catch his breath, tried to catch his wits, but it was practically impossible to do either when Miss Culpepper was clutching his jacket and gazing up at him, looking flushed and breathless and utterly adorable.
Much as he wanted to keep kissing her—much as he wanted to do a lot more than merely kiss her—now was not the time and here was not the place.
It took effort to let her go, effort to uncurl her fingers from his jacket, pick up the walking stick from where it had fallen on the floor and hand it to her, effort to take a half step back.
Miss Culpepper looked as disappointed as he was, but she didn’t protest. She knew as well as he did that a servant could enter the parlor at any moment.
Mayhew took her free hand in his. “A postponement,” he said, sealing the promise by laying a light kiss on her knuckles. “Hopefully not a long one, but I do need permission to marry. I can’t imagine Barraclough will refuse. He knows you, after all! He is in France, though, and it’ll take time.” He grimaced at thought of exactly how much time. Weeks, damn it. “But I’ll try at the Horse Guards first. It’s possible someone there will give me permission. General Seaton is a family friend. He sponsored me into the Rifles. He might—”
“General Sir George Seaton?”
Mayhew nodded.
“Seaton was a good friend of my father’s.”
“Was he?” Mayhew began to feel more hopeful. “I’ll apply to him first, then. If he feels he can’t sanction it, we’ll have to wait for Barraclough’s permission, but I know we’ll get that.”
Miss Culpepper nodded. She’d grown up in the army; she understood how these things worked. Officers couldn’t marry without permission.
Mayhew released her hand and made himself take another step back, when what he really wanted to do was step closer and gather Miss Culpepper in his arms and kiss her until they were breathless and dizzy. “What’s going to happen now is that you’re going to go upstairs and have a bath and change into dry clothes,” he told her. “And then we’ll go to Southampton, and tomorrow I’ll return to London and speak with General Seaton.” He waited a beat, and then said, “If that meets with your approval?”
She nodded. “It does.”
“Good.” Mayhew crossed to the door and took hold of the handle.
Miss Culpepper came to join him, leaning on the walking stick. Her nearness, the smile on her lips, the smile in her eyes as she gazed up at him, made his heart feel as if it had grown several sizes in his chest.
“May I call you Willie?” he asked.
She nodded.
“May I call you Sweet Willie?”
She blushed, and nodded again. “If you wish.”
He did wish. Very much. “I hope you’ll call me Will,” he said.
“Will and Willie.” She laughed at that and shook her head, and then she tucked her free hand into his, a gesture of trust and familiarity that made Mayhew’s heart leap absurdly. “We really were made for each other, weren’t we?”
“We were.”
“I’m glad we missed the stagecoach in Abbots Worthy,” Miss Culpepper told him. “And that the horse cast a shoe. And that we fell in the ford and got caught in that storm and had to spend the night in a barn. I’m glad for all of it.”
“So am I,” Mayhew said, and he was. More glad than he’d ever been of anything in his life.
He gazed down at her, knowing that this was a moment to be treasured: the coaching inn, this parlor, Willemina Culpepper holding his hand. And then he realized that while this moment was wonderful, what was even more wonderful was that they’d be able to hold each other’s hands for the rest of their lives.
Mayhew’s throat tightened and it became ridiculously hard to swallow. He managed it, though, and then he released her hand and opened the door and said, “Go and take your bath. I’ll wait here. Would you like me to order breakfast sent up to you?”
“Yes, please.” Miss Culpepper smiled at him, grubby and bedraggled and vivid and beautiful.
Mayhew smiled back, feeling so damned happy and so damned lucky. How had this happened? This combination of mischance and pure good fortune? How had he ended up betrothed to Sweet Willie Culpepper?
A maid appeared and bobbed a curtsy. “Are you wantin’ to go to your room, ma’am?”
“Yes, please.”
Mayhew watched them cross the vestibule and climb the stairs—the tidy maid in her apron and mob cap, and the unbelievably messy colonel’s daughter in her mud-stained dress and bedraggled bonnet, limping ever so slightly, leaning on the walking stick. Miss Culpepper sent him a smile before disappearing from sight and Mayhew smiled helplessly back. Then he uttered a laugh of disbelief and wonder and sheer joy, and went in search of the innkeeper to arrange for a hot breakfast for Miss Culpepper, and a hot breakfast for himself, and milk for the kittens, and a carriage to take them the ten miles to Southampton, where his dry clothes were waiting.