“No. I’d rather stay here.” He said it openly, with no conflicted feelings and only a wonderful tenderness in his face that made her want to gaze at him forever.

“Why?” she managed to ask, still not daring to hope. She knew how much tackling the Kestrel Gang meant to him. If he was willing to walk away from them, that would be the best possible birthday present.

“I find there’s a girl in Washington I care too much about to leave. I decided to stick around and pursue her.”

A whole new world of possibility was beginning to open up for her. She squeezed his hands tighter, still keeping her gaze locked with his but her voice carefully nonchalant. “My goodness. She must be something special to tempt you away from the lure of Milwaukee.”

A corner of his mouth twitched. “I thought about her all the way to Key West and back.”

“What sort of thoughts?”

“I thought about how lucky I was to have found her. She’s as elegant and pretty as a rose, but she’s got a spine of pure steel. She’s loyal. And patient. She knows how to weather a storm without ever losing a bit of class. Mostly I thought about how grateful I am that she’s stuck with me through some of my own storms. Thank you for that, Caroline. I’ll never be able to express how much that meant to me.”

He gave her one of those famous closed-mouth smiles that always made her heart pound. But she still wasn’t ready to declare all forgiven.

“Why didn’t you come see me right away?”

“I needed to square things with Wilkie. Get my replacements trained and on their way to Milwaukee. And I didn’t want to come back to you empty-handed. Gray and I have been working on obtaining the perfect birthday gift, and it took a little more effort than expected. I hope I wasn’t too forward in buying it. I don’t know if you’ll like it or—”

“I’ll like it,” she interrupted. Maybe it was foolish, but receiving gifts always thrilled her, no matter how big or small, and the fact that Nathaniel was willing to walk away from Milwaukee still had her over the moon. He could buy her a stick of gum and she’d love it.

“Your brother helped pay for it, so he deserves a lot of the credit,” Nathaniel said. “It’s over there.” He nodded to the boxy object he’d tossed the piece of canvas over when she arrived.

“Can I open it now?”

He nodded, his trepidation growing ever more apparent. She stood and walked to the canvas, lifting it away, and almost fainted when she recognized what it hid.

“Where did you get this?” she gasped.

“From the Corcoran.”