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but she could see the tension in him.

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘Might I at least ask you first?’

      ‘Yes, of course.’ She was irredeemably unsuitable, everything proved it. I cannot even hear a proposal of marriage without making a gaffe.

      ‘Bree, do you think I am asking you to marry me because I compromised you at the picnic?’ It was not what she had expected him to start by saying and she frowned, trying to work out what to reply.

      ‘Well, yes. There can be no other reason, I am so very unsuitable for you.’

      ‘Really?’ Max raised one dark brow. ‘Now there I must beg to differ. There is one reason above all why I wish to marry you, Bree Mallory, and that is because I love you.’

      Bree simply gaped at him. ‘Love? Me? But you never said.’

      ‘It is a little difficult trying to persuade one woman that you love her while confessing that you may, or may not, be married to another. I realised what an impossible situation it was once I had started, but I could hardly not say anything after the picnic.’ She found it impossible to speak, simply staring at him and the wry smile that curved his lips. ‘I have no excuse for what happened in the drag other than overwhelming passion. I knew I loved you, I knew I wanted you, yet I could not tell you.’

      ‘You love me?’ The words came out as a croak.

      ‘Yes.’

      She sat staring at him, silenced by his calm certainty. ‘You …’ They were the words she had been dreaming of hearing Max say to her. She must be dreaming. She got her breathing under control to try again. He was watching her, that smile still twisting his lips, and she realised he was apprehensive too. It was true. ‘Me?’

      ‘Yes. I love you, Bree Mallory. That is why I want to marry you. That is why I would want to marry you even if you were Bill Huggins’s daughter. It is just fortunate that you aren’t, so we will not have that particular obstacle to overcome.’

      ‘Bill’s disapproval?’ Bree ventured. Her heart was beating hard, she still felt unsteadily as though the floor was not quite level, but she was beginning to hope.

      ‘Society’s disapproval.’ Max leaned forward and reached for her. She held out her hands and found them enveloped in his. They were large, warm and very comforting. The unsteady feeling began to vanish. ‘Max. I love you too.’ She blinked, her eyes suddenly blurred with tears. ‘I never thought I would be able to say it. I love you.’

      He lifted her hands, still within his, and pressed his face into them, coming to his knees in front of her. It was such a spontaneous, unexpected reaction that she gasped, looking down on the dark, bent head. She could feel the faint prickle of stubble against her palms despite his close morning shave. She could feel the brush of his lashes, the heat of his breath.

      ‘Max? Max, darling?’ He looked up at that, making her colour at being caught uttering such an endearment. There was laughter in his eyes, which were no longer dark and intense. Laughter and tenderness and relief.

      ‘That’s all right, then,’ he said prosaically, making her own lips twitch at his teasing. Then he straightened up, caught her in his arms and settled her on his knees. ‘Ah. Now that is better, now I can kiss you properly.’

      As if his kisses before had not been proper kisses, Bree thought, giving herself up to the sensual slide of his lips over hers, the slow intensity of the kiss, the heated promise of his tongue, thrusting and claiming. With a sigh of complete abandon she curled into him, careless of crumpled skirts or the bows coming undone under Max’s exploring fingers.

      He could have taken her there on the chaise, she realised hazily when he finally released her mouth and stilled his wandering hands. An involuntary murmur of complaint escaped her lips and Max chuckled. ‘I want to spend the next hour with you on my knee, kissing us both into insensibility, but I suppose we should remember where we are.’

      ‘I suppose so,’ Bree agreed reluctantly. ‘Max. I love you so much, but are you certain I will make you a good wife? There are so many reasons why I am unsuitable.’

      ‘You will never be a pattern-book countess,’ Max said thoughtfully. ‘I think you would be utterly miserable if I tried to make you one. But then so would I, because what I want is you, with your intelligence and your courage and your lack of convention. You will be a perfect countess, but you will be our perfect countess, not someone else’s ideal of one.’

      ‘It was why I thought I should say no, before I realised you loved me. But if you feel like that …’

      ‘We could try being conventional in all the things that do not matter to us,’ Max suggested with a grin. ‘I know, I’ll start by asking your brother’s permission to make my addresses to you.’

      ‘Piers?’ Bree tried to imagine it. ‘He would die of embarrassment!’

      ‘No, James. I can be very pompous, which he will enjoy. We should do things in style, don’t you think?’

      ‘He won’t know whether to be furious or gratified.’ Bree laughed, tickling his ear with her breath. ‘He has no control over me, of course, but he will like to be asked. Then he will start thinking about how little I deserve such an honour—it will give him a headache for a week.’

      ‘You are a cruel woman.’ Max tightened his arms around her and tried to come to terms with being unconditionally happy. It felt extremely strange. ‘Bree, where would you like to be married from? Have you a hankering after a big society wedding in town? We’d need to wait until the start of the Season to get a really good crowd.’

      ‘Oh, no! Must we wait that long?’ Her slender frame wriggling in his lap as she sat up to look at him was wreaking wonderful havoc with his willpower. ‘And I would like to be married from home in Buckinghamshire, with Uncle George to give me away, and just a few people there.’

      Max found he was hardly listening to what Bree was saying, his attention was so riveted by watching the effect on her eyes of the rapid progress of her thoughts and emotions. There were flecks of darker blue amidst the bluebell colour, her pupils contracted, then opened wide. Then something obviously worried her and the irises themselves seemed to darken.

      ‘But should you not be in mourning? I had not thought of that. I have no idea of what the mourning period would be under the circumstances. And when it is over, perhaps you would not wish for a quiet country wedding. I am sorry, Max, I am so dazed, I am not thinking sensibly.’

      He had not thought of mourning. ‘No, I am not going to don blacks for a year, the time for that is long past. I mourned Drusilla when she left me, I made that last journey to find her and I said goodbye, but I am not going to reduce the time you and I have together by one minute more than I have to.

      ‘And a quiet country wedding would suit me. We can go from the farm to Longwater, my estate in Norfolk, for our honeymoon.’ He made a mental note to explain firmly to the Dowager Countess that it would be just the time for her to make a prolonged trip into town.

      ‘Max.’ Bree uncurled herself fully and sat up, still perched on his knees. ‘Will you say anything about your first marriage to anyone? I will not mention it unless you wish.’

      ‘No.’ He thought about it, then shook his head. ‘No. I will not make a secret of it—after all, it will have to be on the licence, even though I will obtain a special one—but we will let old history lie and not mention it unless we have to. Tell your family and Miss Thorpe, of course.’

      He found, watching her, that it was impossible to believe that she truly would be his, that he could love, was loved in return. ‘Bree?’

      ‘Mmm?’ She was fiddling with the narrow frill of his shirt as though she wanted to attack the buttons.

      ‘Will it take you very long to buy your bride clothes, do you think?’

      ‘Ages.’

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