He shook his head. “I suppose after spending most of my life either watching love be twisted into something ugly or avoiding the pain it might cause, I am not adept at recognizing it. I never dared to hope that you could love me from the beginning.”

“Well, I do. I know that love is frightening to you. I know why it would be so, considering what you went through. But you can’t run from it all your life. It is too powerful and lovely and beautiful to avoid.”

“You think I’d like to avoid it?” he asked. “Avoid what I declared to you?”

“Under duress, and now you might be trying to think of a gentlemanly way to take it back, even if you might mean it deep in your heart.” She touched his face.

“Now it is you who is blind to the truth.” He turned into her hand and kissed her. “What I was going to say, wife, was that the last way I wanted to admit my feelings for you was in a moment that might have been our last together. But I knew I would say those words to you. I’ve known for some time, actually, that my heart belonged to you.”

Her mouth dropped open at that easy confession, not hindered by drama or withholding or fear as she’d thought it might be. “You have?”

“Yes. And like you, it probably began happening the moment I was introduced to you. You have become the greatest light in my darkness, the path that leads me home, the person I wish to see first in the morning and last before sleep steals me. You are my heart and my life. And that has nothing to do with duress. It is just the truth. You have bewitched me and I have never been so happy to surrender to a spell in my life.”

She blinked. “I am having such a hard time with this. I thought I would have to fight you and draw you to me and convince you that love is worth having and sharing.”

“Well, you could still do that if you’d like.” He smiled. “I would very much enjoy being the recipient of all your focused lessons on love.”

He leaned down to kiss her. The kiss was brief and shockingly chaste, but no kiss before had ever been sweeter. No kiss had ever been so powerful. Because no kiss had ever been given or received with the knowledge of her heart and of his. So it was like the first kiss, and he reveled in it before he drew away.

“We must go back to the house now. There will be the guard to manage and the household to calm,” he said. “We will be expected to be the earl and the countess now, but I want you to know two things.”

They began to walk and she rested her head on his shoulder with a content sigh. “And what are those?”