Spinster Ever After (The Spinster Chronicles #7) - Rebecca Connolly Page 0,103

future could be before them.

Setting her jaw, she moved to him and grabbed his arm, yanking hard. “Come here.”

“Ow!” he protested, though she swore he laughed as well. “I can walk, Charlotte.”

“I don’t trust you for a minute,” she snapped as she continued to drag him forward. “Not a single minute, and I have had enough.”

“So I see.”

She ignored the note of humor in his tone and pulled him to the only ground in this house where she felt she could do this moment justice.

Her own parlor. Where endless Spinster columns had been written, plots had been hatched, and hundreds of conversations with this very man had taken place. This was her fortress, and he was her captive.

If she could get the words out.

She released his arm as they entered the room, turning to close the door firmly.

“I take it you wanted to see me,” Michael said with a laugh.

She could hear him moving about the room, but she kept her face to the door just a moment longer, breathing slowly and praying she could get through this.

With a final exhale, she turned to face him, surprised to see him leaning against the back of the sofa and staring at her with a crooked smile. Waiting.

“What?” she asked, disarmed by it.

“Nothing,” he replied, shrugging a shoulder. “Go on.”

She hesitated, unsettled and more than a little wary. “Michael…”

He said nothing, that maddening smile remaining on his lips. His chin lowered just a touch, and a certain light in his eyes caught fire. Daring her to go on.

Oh, he was a clever wretch, and now she was just as trapped.

Perfect.

Without a single word of her practiced speech in her mind, Charlotte opened her mouth. “I have been blind, Michael. Nearly every day of my life, I have been blind and foolish and utterly stupid. I always thought that I needed a sweeping romantic story for the ages, one that broke all constraints and sent us to our knees with longing for each other, whoever he would be, and that nothing else would do. I was waiting for that storm to find me, expecting to be knocked aside and forever changed. What I did not, and could not, expect was that something quite different lay in store for me.”

Michael’s smile remained, but his eyes had darkened, and his attention seemed more pronounced. More dangerous.

More intense.

“Something deeper,” Charlotte went on, her entire frame pulsing in time with her heart, “and something softer. Something gradual, and ever-increasing. Something that had always been there, and always will be. Something so intertwined with everything I am and everything I hope to be that I didn’t even recognize that it was there until it was…” She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and lowered herself to her knees.

Michael’s smile faded and his eyes widened, the heat still swirling there.

“But it still brings me to my knees all the same,” Charlotte whispered. “And the longing I have felt these past few weeks surpasses anything I ever thought I would feel. Because I’ve found the love I’ve always sought, Michael. And it’s…”

A knock at the door sounded, bringing Michael’s eyes to it, and curling Charlotte’s rising tide of passion into a wave of unfettered temper.

“So help me,” she barked towards the door, “if there is one more interruption of this particular conversation, I will kill the interrupter with my bare hands!”

Silence met her threat, and shuffling steps retreated quickly.

Charlotte wet her lips, and returned her attention to Michael, who was now trying not to laugh and giving her an almost adoring look that made her hope.

“Get up, Charlotte.”

Perhaps not.

“But…” she protested, then stopped herself and looked at the ground, gathering herself, “I need to have this moment.”

“I’ll give you the moment, but please, get up.”

She shook her head firmly. “I need to be submissive. I need to prove my point.”

“For the love of God, woman, you can prove your point standing on your own two feet, submissiveness be damned.”

Charlotte looked up at him, amusement rising, his expression of exasperation utterly perfect for this moment. “You don’t think it suits?”

His smile spread with glorious slowness. “I don’t think it should have any part of you, and I think I know you well enough now to say so.”

She shrugged, pushing to her feet, and sobering as she did so.

There was only one thing left to say, really, and perhaps she should have started with it.

Steeling herself, she met his eyes, willing her trembling fingers to still before her. “I’m in love with