‘Oh, yes. I think so. Something beyond friendship, something beyond a practical agreement. And when I saw the letters you had written to your friends, the shaky handwriting, the few smudges that looked suspiciously like tears, I was almost certain you felt it, too.’
Ivo stood up, held out his hands and, as she took them, brought her to her feet. ‘Jane, I love you. I want to marry you. Am I right—can you love me?’
‘But you did not say.’ She shook her head, more to clear it than in denial.
‘You came to me and broke the engagement, seemed relieved that now you had an excuse. I was suspicious, but I had to be certain. And I could not abandon Daphne, not when she had done such a staggeringly foolish thing as to run to me. Time was short and there was none to spare for the quiet, honest conversation that you and I needed to have. We still do,’ he added, smiling down at her.
‘Ivo.’ She found she was in his arms, tight against him, his heart beating in time with hers, fast and hard. And true. ‘This is not a dream,’ she said, her voice muffled against his shirt.
‘No,’ he agreed, somehow hearing her. ‘It has seemed like a nightmare these last two days, but it is not a dream. If you want to be free, Jane, if what you told me when you released me was the truth, then say so now because I do not believe I can endure this suspense for much longer.’
‘You cannot?’ She leaned back against his arms so she could look up into his face. ‘Neither can I! Oh, Ivo, what if I had not been passing that awful alehouse when I did? What if those wagons had not collided and held up the traffic?’
‘What if you had not found a footman willing to pose for you and you had not been sent off to Bath in disgrace?’ he countered. ‘We were fated to meet. And now, my infuriating, stubborn, brave, adorable Jane—can you love me?’
‘Yes,’ she said, a second before he kissed her. ‘Always,’ she added when he finally lifted his head and they both could breathe again. ‘Ivo, can we stay here tonight?’
His eyes were dark with a heat she had never seen before and his hands on her were possessive. For a moment she thought he was going to say yes, then, slowly, he shook his head. ‘For one thing, they remember us from before and think we are brother and sister, for another, your cousins will be expecting you home eventually and, thirdly, my Jane, I suspect that when I do have you in my bed we may not get out of it for some considerable time.’
There was a knock on the door and they managed to step apart before the maid came in with the wine. Jane kept her face averted and pretended to be searching for something in her reticule although it could have contained anything from vipers to diamonds for all she could tell.
‘One glass to drink to the future.’ Ivo poured the deep crimson liquid with a hand that shook, just a little. That small, betraying movement made something warm and tender blossom inside her and it was an effort to keep her own hand steady as she took her glass from him.
‘To our future,’ she said and laughed as they both tossed off the wine. ‘I am going to be tipsy, although I do not think that I actually needed wine to make me feel so dizzy.’
‘We will go now, before we both become utterly irresponsible and drunk on love.’ Ivo tossed some coins on the table and took her hand. ‘Come with me now.’ He drew her close, his voice tender. ‘Let me take you back to your cousins tonight. Tomorrow I will go down to the Tower and when Miss Lowry can leave her sister you and she can return to Batheaston for the wedding.’
‘But we cancelled it,’ Jane realised. ‘How on earth are we to explain?’
‘I have a confession to make.’ Ivo looked at her quizzically and tucked her hand under his arm to lead her out. ‘I am going to tell you in the stable yard in the hope that you will not berate me too severely if we have an audience.’
‘You may confess to almost anything except a secret wife and I will forgive you,’ Jane said as they emerged into the yard.
The coachman and groom were leaning against the carriage, tankards in hand, but when they saw them they drained their ale and ran to check the harness.
‘Very well,’ Ivo said. ‘No plans have been cancelled, no letters have been sent. The wedding is going ahead as planned. I took the risk that you might not truly wish to leave me.’
‘Just because of the traces of what might have been teardrops on my letters?’ Jane stopped dead and twisted round to look into his face.
‘That was a hint that gave me hope. Call it instinct, perhaps, or blind faith or wishful thinking.’
‘Oh, Ivo Merton, I do love you.’ Jane threw her arms around his neck, pulled down his head and kissed him fiercely, ignoring a whoop from the door to the taproom, a burst of giggling from the maids crossing the yard and an outburst of whistles from the stables.
She broke off when Ivo swept her up and carried her towards the carriage. ‘Well, you had better marry me and make an honest man of me, because my reputation on the Bath Road has been quite ruined.’
She heard him say, ‘Lady Harkness’s residence, if you please’, before the door slammed closed and they were rumbling out of the yard with her on Ivo’s knee and his laughter warm on her neck.
‘Tell me one thing before I kiss you all the way back to Mayfair,’ Ivo said. ‘Did you believe that I was still in love with Daphne when you agreed to marry me?’
‘I did not know you had ever loved her until I began to understand the hints and clues. Your grandfather was anxious that I was not expecting a love match, I would have had to be stupid not to understand what your aunt was hinting so very clearly—and then I found the inscription in the hermitage. I almost called it off, I lost a lot of sleep,’ she confessed. ‘But Daphne was married, I trusted you to be faithful and I thought that it might be as though you were widowed and one day you might come to love me as well.’ She snuggled closer and smiled to herself. ‘I thought you were worth being patient.’
‘And I was confusing nostalgia and guilt for love,’ Ivo said. ‘I think your patience would soon have been rewarded once we had married.’
‘My friend Verity says men are not very good at recognising their own emotions. But poor Daphne,’ Jane murmured.
‘You are very forgiving.’ Ivo sent her bonnet flying on to the opposite seat and was doing interesting things with the buttons on her pelisse.
‘I feel sorry for her and that, I find, helps. She is not very intelligent and she had been indulged and spoilt. I do not think she has much natural empathy for other people or has ever been encouraged to look at herself through the eyes of anyone who