“Here we are,” Stratford said, lowering her to the ground. Emmeline looked about the small cove in confusion.
“Why are we here?”
Stratford dismounted and took the horse’s reins. “We are here because we need to talk.”
Emmeline shook her head. “I have said everything I wish. And anything you want to say could have been said at the house. Now I am damp and cold and annoyed. Take me back.”
“Not yet.”
Emmeline blew out a breath. “What else is there to say, Stratford? Why drag me all the way here to tell me the same thing you have already told me? You cannot expect me to continue to bare my soul when you do not trust me enough to bare yours.”
“That’s why I’ve brought you,” Stratford said. “To bare my soul. To give you my heart as well, if you’ll have it.”
She stared at him, but he gestured behind her, and she turned to see the opening of some sort of cave. The angle meant it was hidden from view until one was almost upon it. “Shall we?” he asked.
The man was mad. Speaking of baring souls and now expecting her to enter a cave.
“Emmeline, please,” he said.
She blew out a breath. “Aren’t there bats in caves?”
“Not this one,” he said. “It floods at high tide, which is hours away.”
She must have looked dubious—bats and floods did not appeal—because he went on, “Duncan assured me the cave is quite deserted but well worth a look.” He stepped inside, leading the horse. Emmeline stood outside. It was too far to walk back. And she had never been inside a cave before. She took a step closer and saw that Stratford had brought some sort of torch. He lit the end of it, and the smell of sulphur and pitch stung her nose.
She edged closer, past the horse, who was contently munching from a feed bag now, and further into the cave. Stratford watched her, torch in one hand, saddle bag heaved over the other shoulder. She pointed at the bag. “What is in there?”
“I thought we might have a picnic.”
Emmeline could not be certain she heard him correctly. She stared at him, at his smiling face, and shook her head. “You are mad. If you wanted to have a picnic, why not simply ask me? Why throw me over a horse and jostle me to within an inch of my life over two miles of rocky road? And all this to persuade me I should eat inside a dark, damp cave?”
“Would you have said yes if I’d asked?”
She stared at him. “Of course not. I have nothing more to say to you.”
He offered her a hand. “Which is why I did not ask.”
She stared down at his hand.
Finally, Stratford sighed. “Emmie.” It was what her family had called her when she’d been a child, and she looked up at his use of the name. “You will have your apology. You will have your groveling. Just let me finish my grand gesture.”
Her heart sped up. Did this mean he did want to marry her? And if he did, was that still what she wanted? He’d hurt her, disappointed her. Did she really want to give him the opportunity to do it again? She looked past him and into the dark cave, where she could hear water dripping. “That is your grand gesture?”
“Yes?” he said, tone laced with uncertainty.
“Fine.” She put her hand in his and allowed him to lead her into the depths of the cave.
Once they were through the initial low, tight entryway, the cave opened up. Emmeline could stand straight and when Stratford lifted the torch, she gasped in amazement at the glittering surface above. “What is it?”
“Duncan says crystals grow on the cave formations. Apparently, they are not valuable, just pretty in the firelight.”
Emmeline looked about her at the crystals winking in the glow of the torch. Long, cone-like formations hung down, some of them bare but many almost covered with crystals like a formal robe might be encrusted with jewels.
“Come this way,” Stratford said. “There’s a place to sit deeper inside.”
Emmeline held his hand and tried not to step in the small pools of water gathered in the uneven floor of the cave. They squeezed through another opening and stepped into an even larger room. She immediately saw where Murray had thought they might sit. There was a long, flat ledge at the far end of the chamber. Stratford led her there, opened the saddle bag, and laid down several blankets. The bottom two were thick and would keep the damp and chill from reaching the top two. As he worked the end of the torch into a space in the wall nearby, Emmeline sat and pulled her knees close to her chest. Like the other room, this room glittered with crystals. The cone-like formations were smaller and there were fewer crystals, as though this chamber had been formed later than the other, but the smaller formations meant it looked almost as though the ceiling of the chamber was studded with stars.
“It is so quiet in here,” she said. “I cannot even hear the waves.” She looked up at him, at the way his blond hair burned almost golden in the firelight, and his handsome face, so familiar to her, was filled with tension.
“I must tell you something,” he said.
“I have no choice but to listen.”
He winced. “About that. I should have asked—”
She waved a hand. “I like it. You are the last man I would expect to plan something reckless and wild like this. I like it,” she repeated.
He sat beside her, took her hand. “I have loved you for as long as I can remember. First, when we were children, I loved you as I loved my sisters, and then as we grew older, I loved you as a friend. But...” His eyes took on a faraway look. “Do you remember your first Season?”
Even the mention of it made her a little sick. She had been such a dismal failure.
“It was before I went to war, before I left for the Continent. I saw you at a ball. I don’t think you knew I was there. I wasn’t escorting you, but I caught a glimpse of you, and my breath lodged in my throat. You were so beautiful, Emmeline.”
She shook her head. “You know that’s not true.”
He took her hand. “It’s true to me. It’s what I thought in that moment. You were dancing, your ivory skirts swirling about, and you were telling your partner something—by the look of it, correcting him on some point.”
Her Very Bad Habit, of course. She laughed. “That was before I realized men did not wish to be told when they were mistaken.”
“No, we do not, but that has never stopped you. You always say what you think, what you mean. And I realized that you were the last person to pretend the circumstances of my birth did not matter if they did. They truly do not matter to you.”
Her hands tightened on his, her heart clenching. “Stratford, if I had known, all those years, that you felt so unloved, so unwelcome, I would have done more, said more.”
“I know you would have, but that was not your role to play. I wish I had not been made to feel like a mistake, but what I have realized—what you have helped me realize—is that does not have to be my role to play. I do not need the baron’s love. I do not need my mother’s affection. I have become the man I am without them. But there is one person whose love and affection I do need.”
Emmeline began to tremble. She had dreamed of hearing these words—longed for them and dreaded them.
“I need your love and affection, Emmeline. It’s you I thought about when I lay in a ditch in France, waiting for dawn to launch an attack and not knowing whether it was my last night on earth. It is you I think of when I see a beautiful painting or landscape. You I want to share it with. And when I think of my childhood—my lonely childhood—the bright spot in that darkness is always you.” He released one of her hands, moved off the ledge, and knelt on one knee.