George took a few steps toward him. “Did you forget something?”

He took a deep breath. “Yes. You.”

She stared at him, her expression unreadable.

“I don’t want to leave you, George. I don’t want us to live in separate rooms, let alone separate houses or separate towns.” He took another deep breath, and forced the words out that had been stuck in his throat for so long. “I want us to stay together, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live.”

“You do?” she whispered.

“I do. I love you, George—oof!” He staggered back, battling for balance as he hung on to his wife, who had run at him full pelt and hurled herself bodily into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his waist and clung to him, kissing him frantically, plastering his face with kisses. “Oh, I love you, Hart, I love you so much, I know you didn’t want love but—”

“Who said I didn’t want love?”

She pulled back a little. “You did.”

“I can’t have been such an idiot.”

She gave him a misty smile. “You were. We both were. I didn’t want marriage and now I can’t imagine life without you.” She kissed him again and he thought his heart would burst.

With George still wrapped around him, planting small kisses on every available piece of skin, he carried her inside and marched straight up the stairs to their bedroom.

They made love again, and afterward, shared the thoughts and feelings they’d bottled up so long, too careful, too respectful of what they imagined the other had wanted.

“When you said you had to go to London, I thought you meant that was the end—you said, you actually said it was the end of our delightful sojourn. What else was I to think?”

“Not that. I’m a clod, a stupid, unaware clod. I do need to go to London, but all I meant was that it was the end of our time here. Our time, not my time. I’d assumed we would all go to London together. But when you asked to stay behind . . .” He hauled her close and said into her hair, “I felt like I’d been kicked.”

She stroked his neck tenderly. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I trapped you into marriage in the first place. I wasn’t going to force you to stay with me, just because I . . .”

“Because you . . ?”

“Because I was madly, deeply, thoroughly and permanently in love with you.”

“Oh, that’s lovely.” Her eyes glittered with tears and she kissed him again. “I’ve known for ages that I love you, but I didn’t want to be like your mother and use emotion to manipulate you. I would rather die than force you to stay when you didn’t want to.”

He laughed. “Anyone less like my mother, I couldn’t imagine.”