all wrong. A woman doesn’t propose to a man.’
‘Well, perhaps a woman should, especially if she’s been silly enough to turn down a man’s proposal so many times it’s made him give up hope. Should we both suffer for the rest of our lives because I was too scared to dare believe you really felt something for me? Or because you let my wealth stand between us?’
His hands went to her hips.
‘Amy, you are so wealthy you could have any man you wanted. You can’t possibly want to throw yourself away on a wretch like me...’
‘I don’t want any other man. I’ve never wanted any other man. For some reason, you are the only one who makes me think of kissing and being held, and taking my clothes off and wrapping myself around you.’
‘Amy...’ He groaned. ‘What am I going to do with you?’
‘Love me, Nathan. That’s all I want from you.’
‘I do love you,’ he said. ‘You’re right. It is you...you as you are now that I love, but...’
She didn’t let him continue with his protests. She stood on tiptoe, plunged her fingers into his hair and kissed him.
With a groan, he surrendered. He returned the kiss with interest, holding her so tightly that breathing soon became difficult.
Eventually, she had to tear her lips away, just to breathe.
But when she looked into his face, it was to see doubt and misery lingering beneath the passion.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I can see that marriage is too big a step for you to take. So I will just have to be content with living with you, as your mistress.’
‘No! I won’t demean you by making you sink that low. You’ve already suffered enough on my account. The last thing I want is to embroil you in a scandal.’
‘It might be a bit too late to avoid it,’ she admitted. ‘On the way here I informed the most determined gossip in the county that I’m going to run away with you. If you don’t want to ruin my reputation beyond all hope of redemption, you’re going to have to marry me. And if,’ she said, lifting her chin defiantly, ‘you really can’t stomach the prospect of having another wealthy wife, then I can give it all away.’
‘What? No—I’d never ask you to do that. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘I would gladly give it away if it would mean winning you. Nathan, can’t you see that it doesn’t matter? Any more than your reputation matters?’
‘You are really ready to give everything away and ally yourself to a man whose reputation is just about as sordid as it can be?’
She nodded, her eyes solemn. ‘That’s why I’ve just destroyed my own reputation. So that it makes us even.’
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. ‘Amy, telling one woman, in a small market town in the middle of nowhere, that you’re going to run off with what she thinks is a penniless artist hardly compares with the stink I created in society.’
‘I will put that picture of me naked up for sale in the auction rooms, then,’ she declared defiantly. ‘In my father’s parish.’
He shook his head ruefully. ‘Amy, Amy, how can you want to throw everything away like this? On me of all people? I don’t know how you can be so sure I won’t break faith with you...’
‘I know because your whole life went sour when you thought you’d lost me the first time. When you thought I wasn’t the girl you’d fallen in love with, but some mirage conjured up from your fevered imagination. I know because I went through exactly the same process. I know because I’ve never been so happy as I was in Paris, with you. Even though doubt and fear lingered, I had to take what I could have of you. Just as you snatched at what you thought you could have of me. Even when you still believed I was Monsieur Le Brun’s mistress, you came and begged me to leave him and take up with you. You’d been starved of love for so long you were prepared to drink the dregs.
‘But, Nathan, you don’t have to scrape the dregs of life any longer. We can have the finest vintage. We love each other. What else matters?’
‘A great many things,’ he said sadly. ‘Though you are right about a good deal.’ He drew her against his chest, and buried his face in her hair.
‘I didn’t ever really stop loving you. Even when I thought you the worst kind of woman, when I saw you again, I couldn’t prevent myself from wanting you. My body recognised its one true mate.’
She pushed herself away just enough that she could look up into his face.
‘It was exactly the same for me. Every time I read some new story about you in the papers, I told myself I was well rid of you. But the moment I saw you again...it was as though there was nobody else in the room. I didn’t care what you’d done.’
‘I did a great many things of which I’m heartily ashamed now.’
‘I know.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘And I also know that if you were as bad as they all say you are, then you wouldn’t be ashamed. You wouldn’t care.’
‘Amy,’ he whispered, before lowering his head and kissing her as if she was necessary to his very existence.
She flowed into him, relief rushing through her in a flood.
‘They said I was too young to know what I wanted,’ he said, breaking off to frame her face with his hands and gaze at her intently. So intently that she knew he was speaking of her.
‘Too naïve to know what was good for me. They persuaded me to follow a path that led me to utter misery.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘They tried to tell me I was too silly to know truth from wishful thinking, too. But we weren’t too young. We knew we’d found the road to happiness. And now we’ve found it again.’
‘Then,’ he said and swallowed, ‘I will take it.’ Then uncertainty clouded his features. ‘If you’re sure?’
‘Oh, yes, Nathan, I’m completely sure. And I promise you,’ she said earnestly, ‘that this time, marriage won’t feel like a prison sentence.’
‘I’m not the only one who might think of it like a trap, though, am I? You’ve been so used to running not only your own life, but also that of hundreds of others, through your manufactories, that it’s going to be hard for you to give it all up. Especially when I don’t really want any of it.’
‘Give it all up? I thought you said you didn’t want me to give it all away?’
‘Yes, but once we marry, it will all belong to me.’
‘Yes, but, Nathan, you don’t want to change me, any more than I want you to become something you’re not, do you?’
‘Of course not. I want you to be happy, too.’
‘Well, then, if you don’t want me to give it all away and you don’t want to be chained to a desk yourself, why don’t we do something that nobody would expect? Why don’t we just snap our
