* * *
They slept wrapped in each other’s arms until dawn. At which time the light crept in through the curtainless windows and roused Gregory. His breath billowed out like a cloud when he yawned. He reached over to the log box, extracted the last log and tossed it onto the fire.
From somewhere deep beneath the covers Prudence lifted her head and squinted up at him crossly.
‘Lie down,’ she complained. ‘You’re making a draught.’
‘I’m taking care of you, you ingrate,’ he countered happily.
She shifted against him, snuggling closer. ‘You are,’ she conceded. ‘You got up some time in the night to fetch extra blankets, didn’t you?’
‘All on my own,’ he jested. ‘Without any help from a servant.’
He felt her smile against his chest.
‘I suppose we ought to get back to the house before anyone notices we are missing,’ said Prudence.
He snorted. ‘Didn’t you see the curtains twitching last night? They all know exactly where we went. So...’ he rolled on top of her ‘...you will have to marry me now.’
‘You said that last night.’
‘I still mean it.’
‘So do I,’ she said, wrapping her arms round his waist and hugging him hard.
In this position, he approved of hugs. In fact there was a great deal to be said for hugs at any time of day. So long as it was Prudence doing the hugging.
‘So you are still of a mind to marry me, in spite of my being a duke?’
‘I think I shall have to,’ she said. ‘Not because of what we did last night. But because I could not bear the thought of life without you. Although,’ she said, wriggling rather deliciously before swatting his bottom, ‘I am still cross with you for not telling me the truth about your station before we got here. You might have warned me, and then I wouldn’t have felt like such a prize idiot.’
‘I was too worried about how you might react to broach the subject,’ he admitted. Now that he was sure of her, it felt safe to confess many things. ‘I’d been trying to think of ways to tell you about my being a duke long before we got here. But... Well, for one thing I wasn’t sure you’d believe me. I had visions of you saying that you must have hit me really hard with that rock for me to suddenly start getting delusions of grandeur. Or of you becoming afraid that I was a dangerous lunatic, escaped from some asylum, and trying to run away from me again.
‘I couldn’t let you go,’ he said, dropping a kiss on her brow. ‘I needed to keep you near. Actually,’ he admitted, with a burn of something that felt like guilt heating his cheeks, ‘I’d even considered claiming to get lost and not finding Bramley Park at all just to prolong our time together without the dratted title coming between us.’
‘You would really have rather stayed out on the road, facing farmers with guns and eating stale bread that I’d earned by singing, than come back to all this?’
‘Without question.’
‘But you didn’t,’ she pointed out, pragmatic as ever.
‘I couldn’t, in the end.’ He sighed. ‘On account of your feet. You were in pain, Prudence. And you needed a decent meal and clean clothes. It would have been monstrous to keep you in that state just to preserve the illusion that I was an ordinary man. Besides which, if I’d succumbed to the temptation to put off the moment when you discovered what I really am you might have thought it was because I was still trying to win that wager. And I couldn’t have you ever thinking that I’d put something so trivial before your welfare. Whichever path I chose, I risked losing you. I was...’ he shuddered ‘...caught on the horns of a horrible dilemma.’
‘Oh...’
She gazed up at him with eyes full of what looked like understanding—at least he hoped it looked like understanding. And appreciation. And love.
‘You really are the most darling of men,’ she said at last.
‘Event though I’m a duke?’
‘Yes. Although...’
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s just that I don’t want you to ever regret marrying me,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Are you sure? When you were so set against marrying? Even more than I was, by the sound of it...’
‘That was only because I hadn’t met you,’ he countered, seeing the real anxiety in her lovely brown eyes.
‘No, be serious,’ she said, swatting his bottom again.
Which he was starting to like.
‘I want to be the best wife I can be for you,’ she said. ‘Only I don’t understand how I can do that. I’m certain to let you down...’