Chapter 26

The coach rumbled to a halt as Leah stepped down to the ground in front of her brother's house. For a moment, she stopped and stared at the grand edifice, thinking how odd it was that the last time she was here, she was leaving on the arm of Mr. Bernard and headed for the fated Cyprian's ball. It seemed as though that was a lifetime ago, so much had happened since then. The least of which was her brother's involvement with trying to overthrow the Crown.

It was almost unfathomable for her to process, but as the door opened and a smiling Agnes came floating down the steps, Leah's attention was cut short by her sister-in-law's brilliant arrival. Gone were the dark circles beneath her eyes and the modest demeanor. She was a woman who had been freed from her bonds—and it showed.

She embraced Leah warmly. "I'm so glad you are here. No doubt it was the last place you wanted to return, but believe me when I say there was a reason that I wished to summon you here so hastily."

Leah nodded her head and glanced at Matthew who gave her a wink of encouragement. The edges of her mouth twitched and she followed Agnes into the house and into the front parlor. Again, it was an odd sensation, because she had been entertained here just a few short weeks ago. This time, the reception was entirely altered. There was no chill to the air, no frosty greetings, just kindness and a sense of… relief.

Then again, there had been no love lost between Leah and her brother. They had been at odds since the day she'd been born. While she had never wished any harm to Henry, she did not approve of his actions either. Especially when Agnes revealed the vicar's true nature. Now that her sister-in-law had the freedom to wear gowns of her choosing, the fashionable lowered necklines and puffed sleeves, it also heightened the dark bruises on the side of her neck that were no longer concealed.

"Did Henry do that to you?"

At her query, Agnes lifted a hand and absently brushed the marks staining her skin. "My husband was not a kind man most days," was all she offered. "He had a temper that he blamed on everyone but himself. He believed that women had to know their place." To Leah's surprise, Agnes reached out and grasped her hand. Her eyes were filled with supplication. "You must forgive me for not coming to your aid with my brother, nor telling you the whole story of our association, but I was afraid for my life should I say anything, and for yours if you were to learn the truth."

"I don't blame you in any way," Leah returned. "You were an innocent victim to their crimes, just as I was."

"At least something good can come from all of this," Agnes declared with a soft smile. She moved to the escritoire in the corner of the room and removed a paper that she brought back to her. "This is the address of the solicitor in London that Henry used."

Leah read the name but shook her head. "I don't understand what this has to do with me."

"You are Henry's sole heir," she proclaimed.

Leah blinked. "What? But you're his wife."

"That may be, but he wouldn't have dreamed of leaving me a single ha'penny. He has always had your name on his will, thinking that you wouldn't outlive him, for one reason or another. Since it is unlikely that Henry will be with us for much longer after he committed high treason, I thought you should know that, while the manor house shall be left to the next vicar, you are welcome to sell off all the furnishings as you see fit."

Leah blinked. "I—" She stopped, because words had abruptly failed her.

"There is nothing to say," Agnes said firmly. "I am glad to leave this place with the few belongings I came with and return to family who will ensure that I'm properly settled as a future widow."

A shiver crawled up Leah's spine when she considered Henry's demise, but she reminded herself that he was in a prison of his own making.

"While my brother has suffered the same fate, I can no longer worry about anyone other than myself and my future happiness. I married Henry at the behest of my parents. They were under the impression that a vicar would be a good husband. But all of us were fooled by his even demeanor. However, when my dowry was soon wasted and Henry began to show the man beneath the outer cloth, I knew I was in trouble. By then, it was too late." She sighed heavily, her focus softening. "I don't mean to lay all of this at your door. You have had your share of troubles, but I do know that you and Henry were not close, so don't feel guilty for taking what will soon be rightfully yours. There may not be much for you, but perhaps it will help you get a fresh start."

Leah thought of Harlan and how she was yearning for him. "I was rather hoping I might have found someone to share that burden with me," she murmured.

Agnes smiled. "Don't ever give up hope. It is all that we truly have that no one can take from us."

Leah spentmost of the day with Agnes, and when it was time to go, she gathered her valise and told Agnes she would think about what to do with the rest. She had burst into tears the moment she'd spied her mother's miniature in her bag, thinking that it might have been lost forever. If Henry hadn't been caught in his part trying to overthrow the queen, it very well might have been.

She was grateful that Agnes was a kind, caring woman who held no bitterness toward her. She could have decided that Leah was guilty by association just being Henry's sister. Following their conversation, she could rest easy knowing that things were amicable between them.

While Leah was still uncertain about her own future, she had to believe that when Harlan was well enough for them to speak, she would talk to him and see if she should stay in England or sell off her brother's effects and perhaps, return to France. She would be nursing a broken heart, but she wouldn't beg for Harlan's love. He had to give it freely, or not at all.

Dusk was starting to fall across the valley as the coach departed. It had been a long day and considering the unease she'd been made to suffer wondering about Harlan, she found it easy to doze off.

"Stand and deliver!"

Leah awoke with a gasp, her hand flying out to catch herself before the coach lurched and sent her crashing into the window as it had before.

Instead of fear, her throat ached with unshed tears. If she didn't know better, the voice outside sounded just like—

The door wrenched open and there he was.

She went from sadness to shock in the same instant. "Harlan?" She took in his mask and the dark clothing and wondered if she was dreaming.

But when she would have pinched herself, he climbed into the carriage and put his hands on her face. Bending down, he took her mouth for a kiss so sweet and sensual that it literally stole her breath.

When he pulled back, she shook her head, still dazed. "What are you doing?"

"Stealing what I've wanted from the very first moment I saw you." He placed his hand over her chest, directly where her heart beat fast and steadily. "But I would like it more if it was given to me without hesitation."

She blinked, her brain still trying to process what was happening.

He removed his mask and tossed it to the seat across from them. When she saw the unspoken sentiment in his adoring, hazel eyes, she couldn't look away.

"I thought that I would have to offer some sort of grand gesture to win your hand," he explained somewhat sheepishly. "I had a plan, you see. So, you must forgive me for deceiving you at the palace."

"You mean to say—?"

He scratched the side of his jaw. "I wasn't quite as sick as I pretended to be? Precisely."

Leah wanted to be angry at him, furious, but she was too overjoyed to see him flashing that broad smile that she couldn't summon the proper aggravation.

At her resounding silence, he said softly, "I know that you aren't with child."

Faced with the reminder, Leah nodded her head. "It's true."

"I also want you to know that I don't care. I will happily take on the opportunity—many of them—to see that the job is successfully completed. But only if you say yes."

The image of the two of them wrapped up in the bedclothes, their bodies writing with passion was something she was eager to duplicate—many times. "Yes."

She started to reach for him, but he held her at a distance. "You did understand what I was asking, correct?"

She frowned. "Making love."

He chuckled and the depth and seductiveness shook her to her core. "That is part of it, yes, but I was asking something a bit more… permanent." He brushed a stray strand of hair from her face, tucked it behind her ear, and then his focus landed back on her. "I am no longer working for the Home Office. I tendered my resignation with Wellington because I found something worth more than trying to follow in my father's footsteps and falling to my demise in the pursuit of honor and glory. It is nice to be appreciated for one's efforts, but not if there is no one by your side to share them with." His eyes crinkled slightly at the corners. "I used to think that my mother died of a broken heart after my father's passing. I still believe that holds true. For the longest time I eschewed any sort of attachment because I didn't want anyone to suffer as she had. But I started to ponder something else. She had the privilege to have the sort of love that most only dream about."

He cupped her face. "I would die a thousand deaths thinking that you might end up like my mother, despondent and at a loss of what to live for any longer, but I find that I'm greedy, in that I want to shower you with everything that I have to give during what time we are granted together. I want to have children with you, I want to share the same bed night after night and wake up to see you lying beside me. It might be a temporary heaven on earth, but I am willing to take what I can for the time we have together. What I want to know is are you willing to take the same risk?"

Harlan wasn'tsure whether her silence was a good sign or not.

And then he saw the single tear trickle down her cheek. It was followed by another, and another. Her amber eyes were lit up with all the brilliance of the sun, and while he had always heard the expression of someone taking his breath away, he had never actually believed it until this moment. His heart skipped a beat and his chest ached with the emotion that was tearing him up from the inside out.

When she finally spoke, her voice was broken, but it was the sweetest sound that he'd ever heard in his life. "Harlan, the one risk I'm not willing to take is being without you. I have been in torment wondering if you would still want me when you found out I wasn't with child. I want nothing more than to share all the good days of our life together, and all of the bad days, because I will get to share them with you. That is all that matters. You are all that matters."

Harlan's vision became watery by her admission. "I love you so much that I don't know how to express it in any other way."

"I love you, too."

When they came together for another kiss, this one was slow and filled with all the promises they had made thus far, and the ones that were to come. It was a sealing of souls, an emotional stamp on two hearts that would never be broken.

Reluctantly, he pulled back. "Let's go home, shall we?"

She hesitated, a strange look on her face. "I was starting to wonder where that might be."

He threaded his hand through hers. "Wherever I am, that's where you need to be." He leaned out the door and said, "To Dove Haven!" He knocked on the roof of the carriage and they set off.

"Who were you talking to out there?" she asked curiously, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

He grinned. "My band of merry men, of course."

She laughed. "Don't say Benjamin, Hugh and Lucas all came to see us back to London?"

"That's just it," he said, hoping that the next surprise would be just as dear to her as it was to him. "We aren't going to London. We're heading back to Gravesend."

She glanced at him curiously, and he realized, without a doubt, that he'd made the right choice. He could look at that face, whether young or weathered and lined with the passage of time, and she would still be achingly beautiful. "To the cottage?"

"You'll see."

She sighed but allowed the subject to drop. But then she got a sly look in her eyes and said, "How long will it take us to get there?"

Harlan dared to hope he understood what she was inferring. "A few hours."

She reached out and closed the shade of the window. "That should give us plenty of time for what I have in mind."

His cock immediately responded when she straddled his lap and rubbed her core against his pulsing manhood. He exhaled slowly, his senses coming alive. "I like the way you think, Miss Lindquist."

"Call me Mrs. Mathis," she purred. "I think I am going to like the sound of it rolling off of my tongue."

His focus penetrated her. "I know something else I like on my tongue…" With that, he lifted her by the waist and laid her back down on the carriage seat, then he promptly disappeared beneath her skirts and found the heart of her desire.

As she writhed beneath his eager embrace, Harlan closed his eyes in bliss and pleasured her mercilessly, until she was crying out his name with her release.

When he crawled up her body, he loved the flushed look on her face and the way her breasts were nearly falling out of their confines. He couldn't wait until he had her naked beneath him once more. Until then, he positioned his cock at her glistening entrance and slid all the way inside her. She moaned and reached out, digging her fingernails into his hips. His cock tingled on the brink of orgasm, but he wasn't going to give in to the pleasure just yet. Waiting, he thrust into her time and time again until she lifted her hips as waves of ecstasy rolled through her.

When she was fully replete, he allowed himself to fall over the edge and directly into the arms of his love.