“I am glad you are still here,” he assured her. “My only regret about what happened was that your life was put in danger. I should have done more to protect you.”
“But, you saved me,” she said. “If you hadn’t stopped to help me that night I would have ended up Heaven knows where.”
“Well, you certainly changed my life. You have also cost me a fortune,” Myles warned her, but softened his accusation with a rueful smile.
“I have?” Her cheeks flooded with heat as she looked at the mischief on his face. “How so?”
“Well, I now owe my friends a Scottish hunting lodge,” he explained, his smile widening.
She looked at him blankly, wondering if she had missed something.
Myles tugged her against his side and led her back to the ruins. Hand in hand, they wandered absently around the fallen stones until they came to a halt beneath the heavy branches of a huge oak tree.
Myles explained about the bet he had made several weeks ago, and his friend’s shocked faces when he had returned to London and admitted he had well and truly lost, through a turnabout of events that had made him reconsider life and what he wanted from it.
Estelle stared at him. “You, lost? How? But if the bet was only made a few weeks ago you have the rest of the year yet. You could still win.”
Myles was already shaking his head. “I have to admit that when we first met on the clifftop something inside me felt drawn to you. I had never seen such refined beauty. You looked wild and free; I struggled to leave you. That attraction swiftly turned to a very real need to find out more about you and, more importantly, see you again. I think I went to London and agreed to the bet because I was trying to deny to myself that I was so deeply affected by you. When I received the note I immediately raced home but, in the back of my mind was the knowledge that you were here and I would get to see you again. It was horrifying to have you materialise in front of my curricle like that, and even more so to watch you fall beneath it and not be able to do a damned thing to stop it. I think it is part of the reason why I didn’t take you to the doctor’s house. I wanted to keep you with me on a more personal level because I would have gone quietly out of my mind being stuck at home, not knowing how you were. I just had no idea at the time I was bringing you into a killer’s home.”
“It isn’t your fault. Nobody knew,” she assured him.
After several moments of silence she smiled at him. “So you wanted to see me again as well?”
“Of course I did,” he rested his forehead against hers and then lifted it again to stare at her. “As well? You mean, you wanted to see me again?”
Estelle nodded. “But you are the local gentry. I am merely a commoner,” she reminded him gently.
“I think at this point in my life Barnabas doesn’t care whom I chose to marry as long as I am happy. He had, until your arrival in our lives, given up on a grandchild to keep the family name going, I think,” he murmured thoughtfully.
Estelle stared at him. “I am sorry for your loss,” she murmured, fighting to hide her smile.
“You have already said that,” Myles chided.
“I mean your hunting lodge. Will you miss it?”
Myles grinned and shrugged. “I am sure I will find something else to keep me occupied. One good thing to come out of everything that has happened of late is that I have a new respect for life, and just how precious it is.” He looked at her. “It is important not to waste a single moment of it, and spend as much time as possible with loved ones. I know that our relationship is still in its early days, I need you to understand that this love I have for you is no flight of fancy. It is very real, and means that I will accept nothing less than a lifetime together; if you will agree to be my wife?”
Estelle looked blankly at him for a moment while she tried to control the wild flurry of emotion that swamped her entire being.
When she didn’t speak, Myles sighed. “We need to wait out a suitable period of mourning, and I know the woods still need to be finished, the house needs a lot of work, mostly so the unused parts of the house can be restored and put into
use again, but it will make a wonderful family home. There will be no more hangers-on. Just you, me, Barnabas, and whatever children we have.” He looked at her, a question in his eyes. “If you could consider a lifetime with me?”
Estelle smiled tremulously. “After my parents died, I had nothing and only my grandma to help me. My entire life had been ripped away in the cruellest way. I had no idea at the time that my move here would bring me so much in the way of reward. While it isn’t the life I would have chosen, I am glad of it because I met you. You have saved me on more than one level because I now have a life I never considered possible, and understand that it would be foolish to waste a second of it.” She placed a hand on either side of his head and dragged him down for a very thorough and extremely daring kiss. When she did finally release him, the slightly dazed look in his eye made her grin. “I should love to be your wife, and should consider myself the happiest woman alive if we spent the rest of our lives together. Just you, me, Barnabas, and whatever children we have.”
“Happy ever after?” he whispered.
“Happy ever after,” she assured him with a nod, and knew it would be.
The End.