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“I do,” Harry agreed. He let himself look at his love, her gray eyes full of mirth, her face a rare day of English sunshine, golden dappled beauty. He wanted to hear her laugh.

“So, you’ve come,” she said.

“You probably knew I would before I knew it myself.”

She nodded. “Mr. Goldsworthy paid us a visit.”

“It took three days for his express to reach me,” Harry explained.

“The express mattered a great deal, I suppose,” she said.

“It did to me. When a man courts a woman of property, he wishes to be beforehand in the world.”

“And are you—”

“I bought back Richard’s mortgages. Mountjoy belongs to the Clares again.” He realized a heartbeat too late what she was asking.

“—courting a woman of property?” she finished with a smile.

Adam came to Harry’s rescue. “Captain, you happy at the inn.”

“I am,” Harry said. He took Adam’s hand and received one of Adam’s vigorous, two-pump handshakes.

“Queenie ran away,” Adam announced.

“I’m sorry,” Harry replied. He sat on the bench next to his old friend and stretched out his legs.

“Still have Lucy,” the old man continued. “Lucy safe.”

“Thank you for keeping Lucy safe, Adam.”

“You stay here, Captain?”

Harry looked at Lucy. “If a certain room is available, I’d like to stay the night,” he said. It seemed to him a long time, possibly as long as the interval between two heartbeats, before she answered.

“I think we have just the room for you, Lord Mountjoy.”

* * * *

There was the usual inn business to be got through, stage passengers to feed, the tap to close, lingering guests to send off to bed, and Adam to care for, before it was time for Lucy to follow her love upstairs. She found him sitting by the fire in the inn’s best room, the one her father had chosen for him weeks earlier. He had made himself comfortable in his shirt and trousers, his stocking feet stretched out, a glass of wine in one hand. She could not imagine he felt her sense of raging impatience.

Then their gazes met and held.

“I couldn’t be sure you would come.” He had not moved, but she sensed some internal shift in him.

“How could I not after you invited Radcliffe to shoot you rather than me?”

“I couldn’t bear it if he shot you.”

“Ah,” she said. “I felt the same way about his shooting you. The point was to be together.”

“And so you’re here.”

She nodded.

“I have to kiss you,” he said, and he moved, easily and swiftly, so that she hardly noticed how he managed the wine and the chair and crossing the room.

“I rather hoped you would.”