Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,65

for your forgiveness. Not for your mercy. But for you. Mercy. For you. Will you be mine? Will you let me call myself yours?”

She studied his face for a hint of artifice, and what she found there broke open something inside of her that exploded into incandescent sparks of the purest exhilaration. Life with this man. Discovery. Travel. Adventure. Pleasure.

Love.

Wasn’t that worth any sort of risk?

A sliver of doubt dimmed his smile. “I know you didn’t want to be the property of man, Mercy. And I’d never ask that of you. You own me heart and soul, but I don’t think I’d love you this passionately, if you could truly be possessed—”

“Stop.” She seized him and pulled him to his feet. “Stop. I cannot take any more joy or it’ll split me apart. Of course, I’m going with you. Of course, I’m yours. I was yours the moment you kissed me, you dolt. Now do it again before I change my mind.”

With a smile brilliant enough to illuminate the night, he swept her in his arms and claimed her mouth, sealing their bargain with a kiss that was impossible to maintain through their unrelenting smiles.

“Come,” he urged, linking his arms with hers. “Let us leave all this chaos behind.”

They walked hand in hand through the shadows of the dark night, knowing that their brilliant future lay just on the other side.

Epilogue

Raphael broke through the surface of the warm waters off the Antiguan coast with a mighty surge of his limbs. The sun felt like the very smile of God on his face, and he wiped the ocean from his eyes to be greeted by a view that never ceased to strike him with pure wonder.

The gleaming white sands and the indescribably clear blue water provided the perfect backdrop for a tangle of vibrant vegetation and exotic trees. The opulent Villa de la Sol was part Spanish cathedral, part Persian palace, resplendent in the noonday brilliance.

But what made this place paradise, was the goddess draped in a hammock beneath a tasseled umbrella.

The sight of her humbled him into stillness, and Raphael treaded water, taking advantage of a rare moment to observe his wife unaware.

He woke every morning anxious to make certain he hadn’t dreamed his good fortune. Mercy Goode had consented to make an honest man of him at sea—provided they omitted the part about her obeying or submitting to her husband.

When asked what word might replace the original, she’d studied him for a moment, then decided “adore.”

They’d been true to their word. They loved, cherished, honored and most assuredly adored each other.

She nestled in a pool of thin white skirts; her bare leg draped over the side of her hammock. In her hand was The Affair of the Benighted Bride, the latest adventure of Detective Eddard Sharpe. The gentle ocean breeze teased locks of her unbound hair, only shades darker than the sand she kicked at with her toe, encouraging a gentle sway.

She glanced up as the Duchesse—Amelie—filled her dainty glass with a juice made from the local guava fruit she’d mixed with champagne.

The women toasted each other, and Amelie must have said something witty because Mercy tossed her curls back, exposing her elegant throat as she laughed with unrestricted abandon.

A wave of joy threatened to drown him.

Christ, he worshiped her with such uninhibited devotion, he became jealous of the sun’s own caress on her skin.

Raphael disrupted a school of tiny, colorful fish as he displaced the water with powerful strokes. He swam until he could use his feet against the sand to propel him through a tide that tried its utmost to hinder his advance.

By the time he’d reached the beach upon which the women reclined, the two were locked in an animated discussion, gesturing wildly.

“... And that is why women belong on the bench and in juries.” She waved her book. “J. Francis Morgan is plainly saying that surely such a gross miscarriage of justice would not have occurred should a woman have had ought to do with the case. She would have seen through the ruse right away. Why must it be a man’s world when they do a right proper job of cocking it up?”

Raphael kept wisely silent on the subject as he made his approach.

Amelie wrapped her arms around her bent legs and rested her chin on her knees. “Women know that it isn’t a man’s world. Not completely. We simply have a more subtle influence. We change things when men are not looking, thinking