The Duke Is Mine - Eloisa James [128]
A low cry tore from his lips. “Not—not so fast,” he gasped. He came down on his elbows and kissed her. “I love you.” The words came out low and fierce, a warrior’s vow. He drew back, thrust again. Stopped. “There’s no reason to live without you, Olivia. None.”
Her lips trembled and her eyes swam with tears. But he bent his head, caught her mouth again. “No tears,” he said. “You lived. I lived. We lived.”
“I love you,” she said, her hands trembling as she tried to pull him even closer. “I love you so much, Quin.”
Their eyes met. “Please,” she gasped, not really certain what she was begging for. But Quin knew. He came home to her, and she took what he gave her, took it and gave it back.
Thirty-three
The Merits of Simple Words
Quin did not find the right words until they had washed in the stream and put their clothes back on. But for once it didn’t bother him that the words he wanted didn’t come immediately: what he and Olivia felt was more than language. It was like light, he realized. Something plain and simple that split into a rainbow when examined closely.
“You have changed my heart,” he said at last. “I’ll never be comfortable without knowing where you are.”
The shimmer in Olivia’s eyes threatened to spill over again. But she was safe and in his arms. He began to walk, bending his head to kiss away a tear or two.
There was still a long tramp through the forest to the inlet overhung by trees, and he hadn’t slept in two days. But Olivia’s whispers gave him strength, and everything she told him, even the silliest of limericks, really meant only one thing. She loved him, that cold and unemotional man whom Evangeline had declared unlovable.
When they reached the rowboat, Grooper was asleep on the riverbank, Lucy curled up under his arm. And the world—Quin’s world—was in place, and would be for the rest of his life.
When their carriage drew up at Littlebourne, followed by another, which was hung with black and carried Rupert’s body, the household poured out to greet them.
The Duke of Canterwick—still unsteady from his bout of unconsciousness—clung to their hands, thanked them over and over for bringing his boy home, and then left, a broken man.
The Dowager Duchess of Sconce broke her most cherished commandment as regards a lady’s composure and burst into tears in plain sight of the entire household.
Miss Georgiana Lytton screamed, grabbed her sister, and shook her. It hardly need be said that an outburst of sobbing, happy hysteria indicates that a person has (if only momentarily) cast aside precepts such as “Your demeanor should ever augment your honor.” It was a good thing that Georgie and Olivia’s parents were not there to see the general laws of the universe dispensed with (at least, to Mrs. Lytton’s mind).
Poor Mrs. Lytton would have been even more shocked if she had overheard the conversation between her daughters later in the day.
“But you cannot bear Lady Cecily for more than a half hour! You’ll be driven mad by within a week. Don’t you remember the trip here, when you and I—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Georgiana said firmly. “Lady Cecily’s nephew is an Oxford don, Olivia. A don!”
Olivia put down her teacup and eyed her sister. “Being a don must be a good thing.”
Georgiana ignored that; she was bubbling with excitement in a very un-Georgie-like fashion. “Mr. Holmes begins a series of lectures on Laplace’s Mecanique Céleste and Newton’s Principia next week. Women are not allowed to attend such lectures, but he obviously cannot deny his own aunt!”
“And her companion. But Georgie, are you quite certain you can endure it? Remember, lecturing seems to be a family trait: you’re facing hours of Lady Cecily’s opinions regarding digestive processes.”
“Lady Cecily is very kind, Olivia. Just think; she’s going to sit through those lectures for my sake.”
“She’s going to do exactly what I would do in that situation, and sleep through.”
“If I had to be a companion to a murderer in order to go to those lectures,