He held her carefully but kissed her passionately for a long, hard moment, then eventually, he brushed his mouth over hers and drew back. Much to her delight, he didn’t put her down. He was the only person who managed to make her feel delicate without making her feel small.
“Marry me,” he said, his eyes dancing with happiness.
She startled. “I’m sorry?”
“Marry me.” His eyebrows lifted with the corners of his mouth. “I’ve spent the entirety of the last week trying to think of how to keep us together, and that’s how. Marry me, Scarlett.”
Wait, had he just proposed? No matter how much she loved him, it was too soon, too reckless, and entirely too much like a business deal. Her mouth opened and shut a few times, but she couldn’t quite make the words come out for a few embarrassing seconds. “Put. Me. Down.” There they were.
He held her tighter. “I can’t live without you.”
“You’ve only lived with me for two months.” Her mouth tightened as she lectured her foolish heart to keep quiet.
“I wish I’d lived with you for two months,” he whispered, his voice dropping to that low, growly tone that turned her insides to mush.
“Oh, you know what I mean.” She laced her fingers behind his neck, more than aware that he had yet to do as she’d asked and lower her.
“We could live together for the rest of our lives,” he said softly. “One home. One dining room table…one bed.”
“You can’t seriously be suggesting that we rush into marriage because you’d like to get me into bed.” She arched an eyebrow. Not that she hadn’t thought about Jameson that way. She had. Frequently. Too frequently according to her morals and not frequently enough, according to the ladies she lived with.
His eyes flared with humor. “Well, no, but I love which piece of furniture you focused on. If I just wanted to get you into bed, you’d know it by now.” His gaze dropped to her lips. “I want to marry you because it’s a foregone conclusion. It doesn’t matter if we date another year, Scarlett, we’re going to end up married eventually.”
“Jameson.” Her cheeks flushed, even though she resented how good it felt to hear those words.
“If we do it now, we won’t be separated.”
“It’s not that simple.” Her heart warred with her head. There was something utterly romantic about running off to marry a man you were head over heels in love with and had only known two months. There was also something naive about it.
“It is,” he assured her.
“Says the man who won’t lose his job.” There were about a dozen reasons flitting through her mind about why this was a horrid suggestion, but that one shouted the loudest.
He blinked in sheer confusion, then slowly lowered her to the ground. “What do you mean?”
She took his hand, and they started toward the car. “There’s no place for me at RAF Church Fenton. Believe me, I’ve inquired, and if I marry you”—a small smile lifted her lips—“I can’t guarantee I’d be reposted. We’d still be apart unless I left the WAAF for family reasons.”
His face fell. “The only part I liked about what you just said was ‘if I marry you.’”
“I know.” She had to admit, she liked that, too.
Their situation was damnable. Even if she thought she could do something so reckless, she could never abandon Constance. They’d agreed to see out this war together. But if Constance was willing to seek a transfer—
“You love your job, don’t you?” he asked, as though admitting defeat.
“I do. It’s meaningful.”
“It is,” he agreed. “So what do we do?” he asked, lifting her hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it. “In two days, I’m going to be on the other side of England.”
“Then I guess we enjoy what time we have.” Her chest ached, both with how much she loved him and the agony of what was coming.
“I’m not letting you go.” He turned and lifted her into his arms. “I might not be here physically, but that doesn’t mean we’re not together. Understand?”
She nodded. “Then I hope we’re both very good at writing letters.”
…
Of all the places she would have loved to go on leave—such as Church Fenton—spending the weekend at her parents’ London house was last on the list. To be honest, it didn’t even make the list.
The only reason she’d agreed to come at all was because they’d promised to stop feeding nonsense stories to the press, and it was her mother’s birthday.
The more she came home, the more she realized she wasn’t the same girl who’d left it. Perhaps the dutiful, biddable daughter she’d been at the start of this war had been simply another casualty in the Battle for Britain.
They’d won, and the Germans had halted their all-out assault after those horrifying mid-September days, though bombing raids were still terrifyingly common.
Jameson had been gone more than a month, and though he wrote twice a week, she missed him with a ferocity that escaped words. Every part of her ached when she thought about him. Logically, she’d made the right choice. But life was so…uncertain, and there were parts of herself that cursed logic and demanded she get on a train.
Meet me in London next month. We’ll get separate rooms. I don’t care where we sleep as long as I get to see you. I’m dying here, Scarlett. The words from his latest letter echoed through her head.
“You miss him,” Constance noted as they descended the staircase.
“Unbearably,” she admitted.
“You should have said yes. You should have run off and married him. In fact, you could go now. Right now.” Constance lifted her eyebrows.
“And leave you?” Scarlett questioned, linking elbows with her sister. “Never.”
“I would marry Edward if I could, but after Dunkirk…well, he still wants to wait until the war is over, and besides, I’d rather see you happy.”
“I will be very happy next month, when I will use my forty-eight hours to meet him here in London,” she whispered. The excitement was nearly too much to keep in. “Well, not here. I don’t think our parents would approve.”
“What?” Constance’s eyes widened with her smile. “That’s brilliant!”
“And what about you? Wasn’t that another letter from Edward I saw?” Scarlett raised her eyebrows and bumped her sister’s hip.
“It was!”