He groaned. They were both so stupid. They had both been so blinded by their own insecurities, it took away four goddamn years of their lives.
“Thornton.” She leaned in, that divine scent of powder and chamomile entrancing the last of him. She lifted her eyes from his chest to his face in what he could only describe as Persephone submitting to her fate. “I thought unlacing my heart after Adam would never be possible. But thank God you came along to prove me wrong. Thank God there was you. Please don’t give up on me. Please give me another chance.”
It took every breath left within him not to grab her and make love to her there on the marble floor of the foyer. “You know what I want for us, Magdalene?” he confided. “More than anything?”
She was quiet for a moment. “What?”
“To be able to start anew.” He reached up and outlined that pretty, oval face with the tip of his finger. “Court me. Court me for a few weeks in front of all of London before we make our way down that cathedral aisle.”
She pulled in her chin. “Court you? Whatever do you mean? As if I were some…debutante in her first Season?”
“Yes.”
“Off with you.”
“Magdalene. Neither of us were equals to our spouses in our last marriage. I say we not only rise above that, but change it. I say we change everything that made us first come together.”
She blinked. “And what is your definition of…courting, exactly?”
“Carriage rides, picnics in the park, a boat on the lake. You know, the things we never got to do because we were always too busy griping about our dead spouses and thinking the worst of what in the end was actually the best? We deserve to swallow and know bliss.”
Their eyes locked.
The glittering awareness in her dark stare hit him with the strength of a bamboo rod.
She’d never looked at him that way before. Not ever.
Edging toward her, he drew in a calming breath and leaned in toward those incredible full lips, needing to make this real.
She leaned away, lifting a reprimanding brow. “You and I are not doing this here.”
He leaned back, squelching his disappointment.
She grabbed his hand. “We will do this elsewhere. And you had better be ready to pull off those trousers, given that I have been shamelessly eyeing them for years.”
His stomach flipped as he savagely squeezed her hand, submitting to the frenzied idea that… Oh, God.
He tried not to panic. It had been far too long.
She steadily walked them past the charred parlor and past the main stairwell and sconces whose candles had burned halfway to their stubs. Her gaze remained intently focused on the path before them, whispering of exotic possibilities he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
She veered them to the left, into the silence of her candlelit study. Releasing his hand to slide the double doors shut, she latched them and grabbed his hand again, guiding them over to the chess table beside the drawn curtains of the study.
In dazed exasperation, he watched her pull out the cane chair he always sat in. This wasn’t exactly—
“What are we doing?”
She grabbed him by the shoulders, turning him, and pushed him down into the chair. “We never finished the game.”
His throat tightened as he glanced at the chess pieces before him. They had all been left untouched since…that afternoon when he had lost the last of his rational mind by giving in to the one thing he had wanted to do for years: kiss her. Some of the pieces were still knocked over from his attempt.
Rounding over to her side of the table, she elegantly alighted into her chair, arranging her verdant satin gown about herself. Letting out a delicate breath, she shifted and lowered her gaze to the board, taking on that pensive look of concentration she assumed to slay him at chess.
He stared. “You can’t be serious.”
“Play.”
“Why? I thought—”