very first night, your shocking candidness was the first thing that drew me to you. From the beginning of it all…I’ve been inclined to believe every word from your mouth.”
The mouth he referred to fell open in abject incredulity. “Then…why?”
“Because everyone—literally everyone else—is a liar, including me, and with that, I have made my peace. But Prudence,” he brushed his thumb up her jaw, his eyes touching her face everywhere, searching for something. “You are the one person who can truly betray me, do you understand?”
She tilted her neck, pulling away from his distracting touch to shake her head with incomprehension.
“You’re going to make me say it,” he realized wryly, giving the impression of a boy squirming beneath a scolding adult’s insistence he explain himself. The electric blue of his eyes disappeared as he hid his expression behind his lids. “You are the epitome of every desire or dream I’ve conceived of since before I can remember, and that is a very specific kind of torment. An unparalleled beauty, a superb lover, a woman of grace and kindness and intellect whom I can only respect and admire. A fantasy in the flesh, here in my house. With my name.”
He lifted his empty hand to swipe it through his hair. “Christ, sometimes I have to just stand in the hall and stare at the door you sleep behind because I cannot believe my luck, my undeserved good fortune. You are here. You are real. And so is our child.”
A sob escaped her. Not one adorned by tears, but disbelief. “But…” She didn’t even know where to start. A part of her had awakened at his words, the part made of need and love and hope and happiness. “But…only this morning you thought that I—You said—”
“I know what I said.” His jaw tightened before he continued, his brow crimping with earnest anguish. “Trust is not a word I understand. Faith is a foreign concept to me. Despite that, my instincts have screamed at me to trust you.” His gaze cast down as his jaw worked over powerful emotion.
“And then that insidious voice inside of me warns that if I did believe you, and then discovered you lied? That you’d somehow swindled me, possibly the most incredulous man alive. Well…I’ve survived any number of disappointments, treacheries, and sorrows. But I don’t see the way back from that. You could break me, Prudence, don’t you see? It’s why I’ve been pushing you so hard. Why I almost needed you to be guilty, so the terrible truth—if it was a truth—would be out. So it was safe to fall for you because you were just as dishonest as the entire world. Just as deceitful as me.”
Prudence yearned to say so many things. To ask so many questions. To soothe him and set his churning mind at rest, but now that he’d begun, his torrent of words tumbled out in escape, like the freed captives of a heavily fortified prison.
Her hand stayed against his heart hammering beneath the hard muscle of his chest as he released his grip to tenderly cradle her face in his palms. The spark of warmth he’d ignited within her bloomed to an incandescent radiance, reanimating the spirit within her.
“I meant what I said earlier,” he whispered, his gaze searching hers, beseeching her. “Even though I was being an inconsiderate ass when I said it. I don’t care about scandal in the paper but for the fact that it distresses you. I’ll send anyone to the devil before they hurt you. I am a knight. A man with a code. A warrior with a creed. I vow, from this moment onward to be your knight, wife. Someone who is honor bound to protect your name, your life, and your soul. I swear to you, that before this child is born, the world will know who did this. And they will know you didn’t.” His voice grew in fervency until he finished with the one thing she’d yearned to hear. “They will believe you, as I believe you.”
His words eroded any thought of erecting barricades between them. Her next sob was filled with joy as she flung her arms around his neck, pulled him toward her body, and brought his lips down to receive her kiss.
The kiss that contained her heart.
She was lost. She’d been lost to him since the moment she’d tumbled into his lap. A fated fall, she realized, as if destiny had pushed her over.