LITMIR.BIZ

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the shape of his body so perfectly fitted hers. It was in the scent of him and the beauty and the strength. It was in his honesty and morality and bravery and forgiveness.

      A single tear traced its way from her left eye down onto the pillow beneath. She had not expected absolution, but how she had wanted it. From him. From the only other person in all of the world who might understand what she had lost and what she had gained.

      Her saviour. Now and then.

      ‘I will love you for ever, Nathaniel.’

      * * *

      Cassandra’s eyes were clear and her voice was strong as she said it, no half-meant troth given with a lack of honesty or intent.

      ‘For ever?’

      This time he was ready and there was no question in his reply. With care he crossed the room and opened a drawer, pulling out his mother’s ring from a velvet box. The emerald glinted in the light as he walked back and he saw she was now perched on the edge of his bed, watching.

      With care he bent on one knee and the smile that he had missed so much came easily to her lips.

      ‘I never stopped loving you, Cassandra Northrup. Will you marry me?’

      ‘I already have, Nathaniel Lindsay.’ The words were wobbly and tears pooled in her eyes.

      ‘Again then. Properly this time. With everyone around us.’

      ‘Yes.’

      Bringing her hand up, he placed the ring upon it. His mother’s ring was still oversized and the ancient gold needed a good polish, but on Cassandra’s finger it looked completely right.

      A circle. Of life. Lost and found. He knew his mother would have loved Cassandra, loved her rarity and her honesty. The only thing she wore was a smile and this ring and she looked to him like a goddess sent from above. To heal loneliness and doubt, to bring laughter and adventure and truth.

      When her hands came to the buttons on his shirt he stood still, tugging the garment off on completion and then doing the same with his trousers and boots. Life had marked them both. Inside and out. But it had also melded them together into a shape that could not withstand the world alone. He smote the candles above and the one on the stand near the bed and in the light of the fire he turned. They came together as husband and wife, his seed spilled without a care for caution.

      Home. Safe. The night outside and the warmth within.

      ‘I want as many more Jamies as you might give me,’ he whispered finally when sense had returned.

      ‘Starting tonight, Nathaniel.’ The light in her eyes danced as her fingers closed around his shaft and all that had been wonderful before began again.

      * * *

      Much later they spoke. She leaned against him, her head upon his chest as he lifted himself to sit against the cushioned bed end.

      ‘Lebansart left the minute after I gave him the names on the document. Louis Baudoin had already died from having allowed me to see the paper and in the end it killed Celeste, too...’

      His finger came across her lips, stopping the flow of words. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more if you do not wish to. It doesn’t matter now.’

      ‘But I want to. If I had not interfered, my cousin’s soul may have been saved, for she died by her own hand less than a day later.’

      ‘Guilt has as many lives as you wish to give it, Cassandra. You were young and trying to do your best to save those you loved, but it’s time now to stop the blame.’

      ‘I hated her sometimes,’ she whispered, the very words so dreadful she could not give them the full power of sound.

      ‘Celeste?’

      ‘She made me stay there with her. I could have escaped, but she held me there with her weakness and her need. In the end she understood just how foolish she had been, but for a long while she revelled in it. The wine. Louis Baudoin. The danger. I could never trust that she would not be harmed by her lack of foresight and so I stayed.’

      ‘To protect her?’

      She nodded, the brisk anger in the movement revealing. ‘And finally I could not even do that.’

      ‘Voltaire once wrote that “no snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible”. Perhaps you should allow your cousin more of the burden of blame.’

      Cassandra mulled his words over. Celeste had grown up reprimanding everyone except herself when things went wrong and in every situation had put her own needs first.

      ‘You think each person is accountable for their actions.’

      ‘I do. I am the next in line for the St Auburn title and all it entails, yet the duties that came with my job in Europe were never the ones my grandfather wished for me to entertain. It was his way of life or no way of life and he harboured a resentment I could never understand.’

      ‘Sometimes people disappoint you.’

      He laughed. ‘I try to allow them not to.’

      Lifting her head on to her hands, she looked at him. ‘Did your work in France teach you the knack of knowing what it is that others wish to hear?’

      He frowned. ‘Hawk and Lucas helped me more with that. You have not met Luc Clairmont yet for he is in the Americas, but without them I wouldn’t have survived the loneliness of my childhood.’

      She ran her finger across his chest, circling the skin around his nipple and liking the way it tightened. ‘I often worried that someone might come from England and arrest me after Perpignan, and in my dreams the punishment was always death. Perhaps that was a part of the reason I didn’t come home for so long. You worked for the British Service, but you never told anyone about me.’

      His hand clamped down across hers. ‘I couldn’t. I never asked another question of that time because if I had found out you were dead....’

      ‘You kept me safe. Us safe.’

      ‘Then I am glad. But enough of talk, my beautiful wife, for there are still some hours before we need to rise.’

      When he rolled her beneath him she simply relaxed, opening her mouth as his lips came across her own.

      * * *

      He heard the birdsong at dawn but remained perfectly still. Cassandra lay against him, one leg draped across his thigh and her head tucked into the crook of his arm. Her hair cascaded around them in all the shades of gold and red, wildly tangled and curling. He lifted up one tress and felt its softness.

      His wife. They had slept for much longer than she could have wanted to and for that he was pleased.

      No covert sneaking back home. He did not wish for only night-time trysts. He wanted to see the sunshine play across her skin and know the ecstasy of every hour of the day in bed. Not quite the slow-building friendship she had had in mind, but then nothing about their relationship had ever been ordinary. He wondered how she might explain this night away to her family.

      Her breathing changed and her eyes opened, sleep filled and disorientated, but widening as they recognised daylight at the window. Yet still she made no attempt to leave.

      ‘You kept me up too late, sir,’ she whispered, and there was a smile in her rebuke.

      ‘Can I do so again tonight, Lady Lindsay? Or today if you should so will it?’

      ‘I cannot think your servants would be pleased at such a prospect.’ Lifting her head, she listened for a moment. ‘They are at work already, yet they have not come in?’

      ‘And rest assured that they will not, my love.’

      Her left hand pushed back the heavy length of her hair and the ring of his mother glinted in the light.

      ‘However, the grapevines of those in servitude will be ringing and my name, undoubtedly,

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