Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

" D o you remember the plan?" Cora asked, looking into the cheval glass in their bedchamber. They'd arrived at Norton with the early morning light, and it bled through the window now, spilling across the pale skin of her décolletage and threading gold into the dark strands of her hair.

Liam stepped behind her. "It's barely a plan. A better question might be where is the whisky?"

"But do you remember it?"

He kissed the side of her neck, her pearl earbob knocking against his chin. "I do." Now the time to take what he wanted for himself, damn others' opinions and desires. Now the time to carve a life for himself because if Cora could stop at the finish line and turn her back on what she thought she'd wanted to grasp fully, what she truly desired , so too could he.

So too must he. To deserve her. She'd found strength in his love for her, and he would find strength in her love for him. No more running. No more scraping and bowing and pretending.

She slipped the other earbob on and faced him, looking fresh and beautiful in a gown of crisp green. More importantly, her eyes glowed with hope and a determination that made him want to lock the door and forget their families existed.

She straightened his cravat and pushed a lock of hair behind his ear. "It will not be long until we are alone. As we'd originally planned."

He grasped her wrist, tugged her closer. "It is not a simple thing we do, no matter how simple the plan seems."

"I know." She looked down.

And he could not stand to see her waver. "We will take control, though, Cora, you and I. We cannot live our lives doing as they please, letting them move us about."

"Just so." The smile she lifted to him punched a hole through his gut. So bright, so confident. "We will figure everything out as we go along." She offered her arm, and he took it, and together, they left the room and marched toward the stairs and down them.

The door they strode for was open, and they sailed into it without a single hesitation. Everyone was gathered. Liam's grandmother resided on one end of the room, and Liam's mother and Angus occupied the other.

Liam tugged at his cravat. "Ah. I see even the children are here." They were dressed in evening finery, sprawled across the floor at the back of the room, looking at books. He leaned over to Cora. "Did we mean to invite the children?"

"What is this about?" The dowager hurtled toward them. Did she even need that cane?

Cora stepped forward to greet her. "Thank you for gathering. Now, we would like you all to leave."

"Leave?" the dowager sputtered. "Then why call us here?"

"Not just this room," Cora said. "This house. It is time everyone returns to their homes."

The dowager slammed the end of her cane into the floorboards. "I have every right to this house. More than you or your husband."

Liam's mother stepped forward, her gaze skittering to the children who watched with eager anticipation, books forgotten. "Not here. Let me send them upstairs first. I didn't know this was to be an ambush. I would never have let them come."

"Do we have to leave?" Henry asked.

"Yes."

The girls groaned.

Henry stomped toward the door. "We never get to stay for the interesting bits." He left, though, a dutiful son, and even after he disappeared into the hallway with his sisters. His mother closed the door, shutting off the children from whatever was to come, but Liam could not shake the image of his brother from his mind. Those crossed arms, that pouty lower lip—an expression Liam knew well that meant I do not wish to do what I am doing, but I see no way out of it .

"What does Henry want?" he asked slowly, letting the word weigh heavy on his tongue.

"Henry is a child," his mother said, "and he is not yet ready for the responsibility of adult conversations."

"That's not what I meant." If Liam crashed about doing only as he pleased, he'd hurt others as he had been hurt before. Pleasing had its place. But the person doing it had to be strong enough to understand when to bow and when to stay steady and strong, who to seek smiles from and who to refuse. A child with his entire life ahead of him? A child still rosy with hope but already chafing under the shackles of growing up, of obeying those who knew better… a child like that should have some say. No one had ever asked Liam what he wanted at all. Except for Cora. Henry shouldn't have to wait two decades to find someone who cared about his dreams and desires.

Liam should get what he wanted.

But so should Henry.

Liam placed his hands on Cora's shoulders, stepped into the soft gray fog of her eyes. "I want to have children with you."

Her smile stretched far too small and sad. "I want that, too."

He faced his mother, and yes, Angus, too. "And I want Henry to live a life of his choosing."

Another smack of the cane against the floor. "If you weren't so selfish, he could have the life of a viscount one day!"

Finally, he turned to the dowager viscountess. "I will give him the education of a viscount. If he wishes it. I will keep him by my side and include him in every decision I make. If he wishes it. If he does not, I will watch him make wine and praise him. Or adventure across the world or write poetry or… do whatever pleases him. And I will praise him, and if he is never viscount, I will still treat him like one. And as I do that, I will do what pleases me, which is loving my wife and giving her children. Which is running this estate and making it stronger. Oh, and it will also please me to fire Edmonds."

"You cannot!" the dowager roared.

"I can because the law says I can. I must live this life because of choices someone else made for me." He glanced at his mother, her pale face, her shaking hands. "I understand why you had to. But I will not let Henry's choices be taken from him."

"If you have a son, you strip him of one choice." His grandmother's voice quaked with rage.

Her words slammed into him like an ax. "I know. And I hope he forgives me for it." He could not sacrifice Henry's desires, but he also could not sacrifice his own. No easy answer.

"But perhaps," Cora said, taking his arm and hugging it tight, "we will have all daughters."

He stroked his knuckles down her cheek. "I would like that very much. Now that's settled, let us return to business." He clapped his hands. "Grandmother, you may take a room at the inn and leave for Bath at your leisure. Mother, Angus, you and the children may stay—"

"What?" the dowager screeched. "They stay and I leave?"

"Surely you can find your way to the door, Lady Norton," Liam said. "I'll wait." And he did, studying the ceiling until the door shut, loudly, behind the woman who was not his grandmother. Once she was gone, he could breathe a little easier. "That's better. As I was saying, you may stay until you are ready to leave, but Cora and I—"

His mother rushed forward and clasped her hands to her chest. "I know, I do. We should never have come. I am… I am…" Her shoulders shook until she crumpled into tears. "So very sorry." Each word a sob louder and more incomprehensible than the last.

Liam wrapped her in his arms. "I know," he whispered in his mother's ear. "I do. We will visit you in Scotland. When I am ready." He hugged her tightly until the sobbing stopped, and then he hugged her one more time, dropping a few final words past a wispy gray curl and into the shell of her ear. "I love you."

She was smiling through her tears as she pulled from his embrace. "I love you so very much, dear boy." And when she gave way to tears once more, it was into her husband's arms. Angus shared a look with Liam over his mother's head, and damn but it almost felled him. Because in that man's eyes, shaped so much like the ones Liam saw every day in the looking glass, Liam saw what he'd always wanted from his father—pride.

The look rooted Liam's feet to the floor, even after he and Cora were alone.

"Are you well?" Cora asked.

He nodded. "I did the right thing."

"The best thing you could do, I think."

"What now?" he asked. "Shall we retire upstairs?" He snaked an arm around her waist, feeling lighter than he'd thought possible a mere five minutes ago. He slipped his other hand into the silky hair at her nape, tangling, tightening, tugging until her chin tilted up, arching her neck toward him. He kissed a line down it and spoke into the hollow between her collarbone. "We've had another victory, and you've set a tradition for how we celebrate those."

"Now? After such a dramatic scene of family conflict?" She gasped as he tightened his arm around her waist, pulling her full against his body.

"Absolutely now. One thing you should know about me Cora—with you, I am insatiable." He kissed her lips, and she sighed into it.

She sighed a word, too. "No."

"No?" He pulled away to frown down at her. "Cora. Yes. That is the word you were searching for. Better yet, no words at all. Just action. Running straight up those stairs, hand in hand and—"

"Running, yes. But not up the stairs. To London . More precisely, to Hotel Hestia."

"Hotel… but why?"

"Because I should like to be someplace we can be entirely alone. Please, Liam? People, and by people I mean family, can find us here. But we might hide, for just a bit, at Hestia."

Alone. Hidden. Sounded like heaven. "Yes, well, we have learned there's much to do in coaches."

She ran up the stairs. "Excellent. I'll tell my maid. Have the coach readied. And I'll grab our list. We can add to it in the coach."

"Excellent plan. Just give me a minute to fire Edmonds." He leaned against the newel post and watched as she climbed the stairs, tossing a saucy grin at him over her shoulder.

"Liam?"

"Yes?"

"I think we ought to return to Circe's. There's much we can learn there. Together."

His heart pounded, and his already hard body tightened further, a bow string pulled to the breaking point. "You're going to be the death of me, love."

At the top of the stairs, she leaned on the newel post and looked down at him, becoming a mirror to his own lazy lounge at the bottom of the stairs. He'd never seen her like this—free and purely happy, glowing and close to a goddamn giggle.

"And you'll be the life of me." With a bounce, she sauntered off.

Good thing, too, because she didn't see him melt like a green boy into a puddle of lovesick goo.

No, not lovesick. Love returned and multiplied, casting over his chosen life like the first rays of a sunset on a new and hopeful world.