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He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Well, thank God for that,” he said, collapsing back onto the pillows with her. “I can’t tell you how crushed I felt in that moment.”

“Oh, Gervaise!” she said, looking dismayed and leaning over him. She cupped his face with her hands. “I would never, never think such a thing, let alone say it! Please believe me.”

“Well, it did seem a bit dramatic, even at the time,” he conceded, “for my sensible Caroline to say such a thing. Even if you were overwrought.”

“I was terribly upset! I thought—I thought you had finally tired of me!” she said in a stricken voice. “That it was all at an end and I couldn’t bear it. I have been so unspeakably happy here in London with you and the thought of never seeing you again—” She grew choked up, tears filling her eyes and spilling down her face.

Gervaise wrapped his arms around her, drawing her down onto his chest and kissing her quivering mouth over and over. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he murmured between kisses. “I will never tire of you, my pretty governess, my maenad, and I never could. Do you know why?” She shook her head.

“Because I love you, Caroline,” he said with quiet conviction that had her gasping.

“You do?” She faltered, her gaze seeking his.

“Yes.” He frowned. “If I had told you that before, would it have made a difference, I wonder?”

“Of course it would,” she breathed.

“To how you answered me, I mean,” he said, stroking a thumb down her cheek.

“You mean, when you told me we should probably marry?”

“Told you?” He hesitated, casting his mind back. “Are you saying I did not propose properly the first time I broached the subject?” he enquired.

“Well…” She glanced off awkwardly to the side. “You did not really propose at all. You said we might end up having to marry due to circumstances, and then you suggested it as a convenient way of clearing up any confusion.”

Gervaise winced. “Yes, I do seem to have fumbled the business, now I come to think of it.”

“We could…well, we always could revisit the proposal at some future point,” she suggested. “Like we revisited our first meeting at that Christmas party.”

He smiled, liking that idea. “I was telling Teddy about that earlier.”

She looked alarmed. “You were?”

“He was most curious about when you secured my affections.”

Her cheeks filled with color. “I must confess I am a little curious myself,” she said wistfully.

Gervaise frowned consideringly. “It crept up on me,” he answered finally. “I was more shocked by the realization that I genuinely liked you. It was not until that morning outside The Plough that I realized I did not want to part with you at all.”

“When you stared up at my window?” she recalled.

He nodded. “That was the first time I consciously started scheming ways to keep you,” he admitted.

“Improper ones, you mean?” she asked with a faint smile, and he tightened his arms around her.

“Yes,” he confessed. “But that never sat entirely right with me either. By the time we reached London, I was already rapidly revising my strategy. When I announced you were my wife at my uncle’s house, it satisfied something deep inside me.”

He touched his chest in wonderment. “Even before that,” he said slowly. “When I started calling you my countess on the road to London, it felt so natural that I really should have come to my senses.”

“At The Red Lion, you mean? When you embarrassed yourself by telling off that poor servant?”

“I was not remotely embarrassed. I liked it.”

“Scolding servants?”

“No, you scolding me,” he corrected her. “You took me to task and I reveled in it. All should have become apparent to me then.” He sighed. “What I ought to have done was demand Canon Petrie perform his offices at once and marry us. Instead, I set myself up for a lot of needless suffering.”

Caroline rubbed her hand comfortingly against his chest. “Did you really suffer, Gervaise?” she asked in a low voice. “I hate to think of it, when I was so…so ecstatically happy. For the first time in my life.”