“I am going to go back outside…and run towards the gazebo near the gardens,” she whispered. Then she turned around and ran away. Ignoring the marchioness’s muttered gasp of ‘outrageous,’ and Lady Edith cries asking him not to leave, Sebastian gave chase.
Theodosia held her dress, sprinted through the hallway, and out the door as if the devil were on her heels. She glanced over her shoulders, and when she saw him chasing her, a ripple of appreciative laughter broke from her. She did not stop running, and he did not stop chasing. Out the cottage, they went, through the forecourt and on to the uneven country road. At one point, she stopped, turned, and rushed back into his arms. Sebastian caught her against him and hugged her fiercely. “I had to come back…what did you want to say to me?”
“Are you asking for that private meeting now?”
She laughed tearily. “Yes. I should have stayed and talked with you when you asked me to. Instead, I was running because I was so afraid of what you might say. But I am not a coward!”
“But you came back.”
“I did,” she said on a sob.
He brushed his lips over hers, as light as a breath. “Marry me. That’s what I wanted to ask you.”
His Theodosia laughed into his neck, then pulled back to stare up at him in astonishment. “You were never going to marry Lady Edith?”
“Never.”
“I’ll not give up my club,” she cried, fisting his jacket in her hands.
“I would not ask you to.”
As if she couldn’t help herself, Theodosia kissed him. “You say that because you are not aware of how scandalous we can be,” she whispered against his mouth. “They are my family…they…”
“I would never ask you to,” he repeated. “We do not speak of it much, but I know what the club means to you.”
Her breath hitched on a sob. “You cannot be real. To be your wife means I would be aduchess. Such a role will come with enormous responsibility and scrutiny.”
“You’ll be more than my duchess. You’ll also be my friend and my lover.”
Something tender and shockingly vulnerable suffused her lovely face. “I love you,” she whispered achingly. “If running the club might bring shame to you…to our family, I will step down. I’ll never leave my friends, of course, but—”
He placed a hand over her mouth, humbled by what she was willing to sacrifice to walk fully into his world. “You’ll be the duchess of Hartford. You can do whatever you want, except quit your club.”
She flung her arms around his neck and squeezed tightly.
“Do not choke me,” he muttered.
She giggled, and he hoarded the sound deep inside his heart. “I love you, Theodosia. Now say you’ll marry me.”
“Yes! I’ll marry you!”
Epilogue
Five days later…
Maidstone.
“Ithought you would have been frightfully angry,” Perdie whispered, her mouth trembling with the effort to hold back her tears.
Sebastian opened his arms, and with a sob, she rushed into his embrace. He rested his chin atop her head while she cried and shook in his arms. “There is no need for tears,” he said gruffly.
“Oh, Sebastian, I have caused you so much worry and heartache. I know the full of it, how worried you were. Mama scolded me most fiercely when I returned to Maidstone.” She withdrew from him and swiped at her cheeks. “I was most ashamed when I reflected on my actions. I…I should have been brave enough to tell you of my feelings.”
He considered his sister and also the truth of his feelings. “It is entirely possible if you had told me I would have insisted you still wed Lord Owen to avoid a scandal. Your feelings as they were might have been secondary.”
Her eyes had widened as he spoke. She sent him a painfully hopeful look. “But now?”
“Now, I want to trust you to make the decisions that impact your life. You were unhappy enough to run away from home…from your family. I failed you.”