Summer's Distant Heart - Laura Landon Page 0,43

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“Does this mean—?”

His eyes drilled hers as if he could ferret out her answer to his proposal merely by looking deeply enough.

And then his boyish hesitation set her laughing. Lia strove to offer her answer with a modicum of decorum, but he would not allow it. With a rakish wink he coaxed the words to gush from her.

“Yes, my Lord Atherton. I shall indeed have you.”

No sooner had she breathed the words than he took away the remainder of her breath by twirling her right there in the grand foyer.

“Then we will marry as soon as I can procure a license.”

He set her back on her feet, though he seemed unable to let her go.

“Wait, my love. Would it be possible to wed while we’re still in London? Might we marry here, at Aunt Mildred’s house?”

She prayed that the hopeful look in her eyes would prove to him that she was as eager to become his as he was to become hers.

“Of course we can. Nothing would please her more, I’m sure. We shall ask her this very moment.”

Lia’s heart burst with joy. With his heroic care and his eager, heartfelt proposal, Lord Hunter Montclaire unleashed in her the confidence that a wish she thought had been a distant impossibility would now become reality.

. . . .

A whirlwind of special licenses, nuptials, and private celebrations consumed the following weeks. Hunter often found himself standing apart from the groups of well-wishers, simply watching them interact with his beautiful bride. She charmed. She cajoled. She employed a clever wit that kept them supremely entertained. And inevitably, it was she who would draw him back into the group with a teasing look or a melancholy gaze.

Hunter found it impossible to remain far from her. His solitary nature had swiftly crumbled—at least when it came to her. He went to ingenious lengths to manage his business matters in ways that allowed him to indulge his need to remain near Lia. As he was tonight.

“Are you happy,” he asked, after they’d loved one another more than once.

“I’ve never been happier in my life. I can’t wait to return to Rainwood and put everything back to normal.”

“And what,” he asked, “do you consider normal? I daresay we haven’t experienced a day that’s been normal since we met.”

Hunter stroked her fair skin and nuzzled his cheek against the cascading tendrils of her hair. No, nothing about their time together had been remotely normal.

He sighed. “I would give the world to have presented you with a family, dearest. At the very least, a doting grandfather for our children.”

“Hush now,” she said as she laid a finger against his lips. She drew a breath as if to say more, but no words broke the tender silence.

“What?” Hunter turned to see his wife contemplating the rich tapestry that hung over their bed. “Darling? What?”

Now it was Lia’s turn to utter a sigh. “I wrote your father a letter.”

Hunter drew himself up on one elbow, unable to reconcile the shocking effect her words had on him.

“You wrote my father?” Hunter was incredulous. “After everything he did?”

Lia turned to him. “Yes, husband. I wrote him a letter.”

He started to speak but she shushed him and sat up. “I told your father that I understood the early breech that was allowed to fester between father and son until it seemed impossible to heal. I told him that even though he was unable to mature in his thinking, his son had. And for that reason I thanked him for bringing you into the world, a man so rooted in kindness that I knew my future and the future of our son would be not only secure, but blessed.”

Her words drilled through layers of bitterness and seemed to open a festering vault in his own heart. As his feelings of resentment poured from it to disappear in a mist of forgiveness, he felt renewed. Cleansed. Her words had done that. Such a simple act, writing a letter. But how it had begun to free him from years of acrimony toward his father.

An image of who he might become if he continued to harbor such thoughts loomed in his mind. He’d grow old and angry, bitter and defeated. Like his father.

But she was saving him from that.

Hunter wondered at this newly revealed dimension of his wife’s character—this compassion for a soul that deserved none. He looked up and saw apprehension on her face as she waited to see his reaction to her boldness in writing to