“Juliet?”
My stomach felt hollow. I loved Montgomery, but we had both changed since the island. He’d been forced to slaughter all the beasts he’d once called friends, which had hardened him. Would marriage bring a little of his softness back? And would I make a good wife? I hadn’t any domestic skills; I could barely sew a button. It was more than that, though. A wife had to surrender all her property and wages to her husband, had to seek his legal permission to sign a contract or in some cases, even to travel alone. I trusted Montgomery, but I’d been wrong about men before. . . .
“Juliet, did you hear me?” His voice was heavy with concern.
I gave a jerk of a nod. It was all I could manage.
“Is that a yes?” he asked, as his face broke into a smile.
My lips parted as I started to contradict him. I had nodded to mean I’d heard him, nothing more. The question of marriage was something I couldn’t answer so easily. Elizabeth had once told the professor marriage was a cage, and I wasn’t certain I entirely disagreed. . . .
I felt something cold on my finger and looked down to find him slipping the silver ring on my hand. My voice caught, still speechless, and he drew me into his arms and kissed my temple, my forehead, my cheek.
“I love you,” he breathed.
I stared at the ring. Good lord, how could I contradict him now? Did I even want to? Marriage was logical for us. I loved him. I wanted him. I thought of him constantly. So why did a part of me feel like I was a runaway train headed for broken tracks?
I pressed a hand to my corset, wishing I could ease it just an inch. Maybe my fear was only because this had come so suddenly; I’d never doubted my feelings about him before, except for when he’d left me in the dinghy, but we’d put that past us.
“I’m happy too,” I said. His question had caught me by surprise, but I could make it work. Just because my own parents had been failures in marriage didn’t mean I was doomed to repeat their mistakes. When I smiled, it was genuine. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
My voice only trembled slightly, and it was easy to pass off as girlish nerves.
His hand tentatively found mine, his thumb absently tracing circles around the silver ring.
“The easiest decision of my life,” I whispered.
Though was it?
Montgomery’s fingers intertwined with mine, still flexing restlessly. Slowly I realized that the source of his agitation no longer had anything to do with Edward; his eyes were drifting over my neckline, gliding over my curves. I had the wild notion that he wanted his hands to be touching all the places his eyes were.
He leaned in to brush his lips across my cheekbone. My pulse sped at his touch, as my mind drifted to being married and everything it meant . . . especially the things that married couples did, alone, things that I’d done in a heady rush with Edward but that I’d take my time about with Montgomery.
My pulse fluttered, a bird without wings. Why was I suddenly so shy around him? It wasn’t as though we hadn’t kissed, hadn’t ever touched each other, and I was hardly innocent when it came to being with men. The house creaked and settled, reminding me that it was empty of servants and Elizabeth. Save Edward locked in the basement and Balthazar guarding him, it was just us.
I crossed to the door and shut it. Engaged to Montgomery James, with his heartbreaking blue eyes. . .
Montgomery pulled me to him and kissed me so hard the stitches reopened on his arms, and I had to set him down and stitch them up again, but he kept smiling and eventually I laughed too, despite my sins, despite his, despite knowing the King’s Club would be coming for us soon, and he kept kissing me, and time ebbed away before the work was done.
“My future wife,” he whispered against my cheek.
His smile only faded at the sound of footsteps on the stairs outside, followed by the sound of the study door thrown open. Elizabeth stood there, snow still caught in the web of her hair.
I gasped, wiping my face of his kisses.
“I was out looking for you,” she said as she took in the scene with a deeply wrinkled brow. “Now please tell me where you have been, and why Mr. James is covered in stitches, and most importantly, who the young man is locked in my cellar.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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THIRTY-THREE
ELIZABETH WAS THE CLOSEST thing to a mother I had.