“I only did what was right. I should have done it sooner.” She indicated the carriage beside them. “I suppose you know its owner?”
Percy nodded. “Lady St. Alban is inside your shop with the girls?”
“Eva has found her dream muses.” A hesitant beat passed. “She’s rather nice.”
Percy didn’t need to ask which she. “She is.”
“I can see why you would have fallen for her.”
Even as Percy grew impatient with this line of conversation, he knew he must offer an explanation. “We were young.” It was only the truth, and hopefully it would be enough, for he didn’t want to talk about that woman. He had other words to say to this woman. “About our marriage.”
“I don’t particularly care to hear the details of your marriage to her,” Isabel said quickly.
“Not of my marriage to her. My marriage to you.”
“If you will recall, there was no marriage to me.”
Percy jerked his thumb toward the shop. “That’s not what that lot in there believe.”
“And why is that? I had a rather strange conversation with your daughter.”
“What with managing Montfort and his official story, then hieing off to Spain, I never found the time.”
It was a reason, but not the truest one. Why was he avoiding what he’d come here to say and . . . ask? Because she had every reason to reject him, that was why.
“Thank you.”
“What are you thanking me for?” Percy asked, exasperated. A feeling of indebtedness wasn’t how he wanted to approach what he’d come here to say.
“For protecting Eva.”
“The bullet that finally found Montfort had been on its trajectory for decades. Your sister only pulled the trigger.”
“Will he—?” Isabel began and stopped, unable to ask the terrible question aloud.
“Report it to a magistrate?” he finished for her.
She nodded.
Percy shook his head. “He doesn’t want his good name blackened by the revelations that would follow.”
“What an ugly situation.”
She was correct, but Percy didn’t want to talk about ugly situations, but, rather, potentially beautiful ones. He tried again. “About our marriage.”
“I won’t hold you to it, of course. It wasn’t real.” An uncertain beat of time passed. “None of it was.”
“None of it?” he asked. “Some of it felt very, very real.”
Subtle pink brightened Isabel’s cheeks. “You take my meaning, Percy.”
“What if—” He held her gaze steady. “What if I enjoyed being falsely married to you?”
“Enjoyed it?”
Her breath hitched in her chest on a swift intake, and his heart raced like a green youth’s. “What if—?” he began again.
“Yes?”
“What if I want you to hold me to it?” He reached out and tucked an errant wisp of hair behind her ear. No longer could he not touch her. “What if I would like to stop pretending and make it the truth?”
“Impossible,” she uttered on a whisper.
Impossible was such a definite word, but the way she spoke it left an opening. He intended to slip inside it. “What impossibilities stand in our way? In case you don’t remember, I’m the son of a duke, there isn’t much in this world that isn’t possible for me.”
Gone was her breathlessness. In its stead had settled her familiar quiet resolve. “I won’t marry you simply because you don’t want to admit to your family that we aren’t truly wed.”
“The thought never crossed my mind.”
“We knew each other for such a short time. Was it long enough to know if it isn’t only desire? If it is truly—”
“Love?” he finished for her.
A sudden spark of fear flared through him. Was it possible he’d come all this way only to lose her?
It wouldn’t happen. He wouldn’t allow it.
She would believe in their love.
“Here is what I know about Isabel Galante. You have nerve, tenacity, and intelligence. When you enter a competition, you play to win. Family is first, even other people’s family, and you will defend it until your last breath.” He stepped closer. “I love your unflinching green eyes. I love your lush, red lips, particularly when they wrap around my—”
Her eyes went round with shock. “Lord Percival!”
Her chastisement only emboldened him. “And your face, Isabel, it’s the loveliest I’ve ever beheld. The way it transforms when you cry out in rapture.”
“You really shouldn’t speak such words on the street.”
“I don’t simply love these things about you. I love that they combine to form you, my addiction.”
“Your addiction,” she repeated. He could see the word didn’t sit well with her.
“Before you, I thought an addiction was all wickedness, and I did everything in my power to stifle it. But you helped me see it is how I use my nature that matters. Let me love you. Let me keep you safe, for the rest of our lives. Since you entered my life, I’m a better man. But if you feel what was between us was purely physical and no love can exist, then I shall walk away from you, a better man.”
She closed the distance until they were separated by only a thin sliver of air, its molecules pulsing with the energy specific to them. “I would die.”
There it was, conjured up by three small words. All their desire. All their love. The two mixed together, inextricable.
“Lord Percival Bretagne, I shall love you to my dying breath.”
The earth could have stopped spinning on its axis for all Percy knew, for all he cared, for all he saw in her direct green gaze. Nothing else mattered.
Percy reached one hand around to the small of her back and the other to the downy nape of her neck. He angled his face, and his lips met hers in a tentative touch, a light press of his skin upon hers, her sweet scent of sunshine and honeysuckle wrapping him in her warmth. It was a moment he could live inside for all eternity.