“I . . . I beg your pardon.”
“Sing,” he ordered again, but our feet were already moving.
I glanced at Anderley and Maggie as we swung about to see what they were thinking, but Gage swiftly pulled my attention back to him by spinning me in a fast turn. Anderley’s voice washed over us, a surprisingly pleasing tenor. I couldn’t understand the words, sung in German as they were, but I recognized it as an art song by Schubert.
I searched Gage’s face for any sign of pain or fever, but his eyes were perfectly clear, his skin free of any excess color, except for the pink in the apples of his cheeks from the wind and exertion. The sun momentarily blinded me every time we rotated so that I faced the sunrise, but then he was always there, his pale winter blue eyes smiling at me as we turned away, waiting to steady me. Just as he’d always been there if I’d taken the time to look.
He might have left me physically behind when he departed Gairloch Castle for Edinburgh five months ago after our first meeting, but he’d never actually left. Not where it counted, in my head and in my heart. Just as I’d never left him.
I inched closer, eager to be as near to him as possible, until nothing but a hairsbreadth of space separated us. My, how the matrons at Almack’s would be scandalized. But here there was only the two of us. And as I stared into his eyes, something inside me that had never been quite right settled into place.
I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he beat me to it.
“I should have told you I loved you.” His eyes were bright with that emotion I’d so longed for and yet feared only the day before. Now I could only feel joy suffusing every inch of my body.
“Yesterday,” he elaborated when I failed to speak, too overcome to reply. “When I proposed.” He shook his head. “I was an utter fool.”
My heart clenched. “No—” But he held his fingers over my lips, cutting me off. I could smell the fine leather of his gloves.
“I never told you the most important thing. What dolt does that?” His eyes stared intensely into mine. “I love you, Kiera. Only you. I don’t care if you ever paint another portrait or investigate another inquiry. You are talented and brilliant, but that’s not why I love you. Why I want to make you my wife.”
Tears glistened in my eyes, and I thought my heart might burst from happiness. “Oh, Gage.” I gasped. “I know that now. I’m sorry I—”
He pressed his fingers to my lips again to hush me. “No apologies,” he urged. “Not today.”
I nodded, realizing that at some point we’d stopped dancing and now simply stood wrapped in each other’s arms.
“Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Do you love me?”
I smiled. “Yes.”
The corners of his mouth curled upward in an answering grin.
“I . . . I love you,” I stammered, saying it for the first time. I dropped my gaze to the spot where my hand pressed against his chest over his heart. Its steady rhythm reassured me. “You still confuse me. Perhaps you always will.” I looked up into his eyes. “But maybe that’s a good thing.”
He clasped my hand to his chest and leaned forward to press his forehead to mine. He inhaled deeply. “All right. Then one more question.”
I felt a swell of excitement, anxious to hear what he would say next. But Gage wasn’t finished teasing me yet, and after my horrible reaction to his first proposal, I supposed I owed him that.
“Now understand I’m offering you my heart this time, with the very real risk you’ll stomp on it. I’ll remind you I do have my pride.”
I swatted him playfully. “Just ask,” I whispered, unable to speak any louder.
He continued to smile, but I could see the uncertainty lurking behind his confidence. I’d done that to him. So I tried to show him with my eyes that there was nothing for him to fear. Not this time.
“Kiera Anne St. Mawr Darby,” he pronounced solemnly, making the blood rush through my veins. “Will you marry me?”
A radiant smile broke across my face. “Yes.”
The joy that shone in Gage’s eyes could only be matched by that which was in my heart.
“Though,” I drawled, unable to resist giving back some of his own teasing, “who I’m saying yes to, I’m not sure.”
His eyes widened in bewilderment.
I smiled coyly. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir. I don’t even know your full name.” He narrowed his eyes as I giggled, and then he proceeded to kiss away any desire I might have had to laugh at him. When finally he lifted his mouth from mine, I’d completely forgotten the train of our conversation, but he had not.
“It’s Sebastian Alfred Henry Trevelyan Gage,” he told me with a twinkle in his eye. “And now,” he murmured huskily, “I’ll make sure you never forget it.”