"I was." She drew a breath. She had rehearsed what she wanted to say all the way here in perfect order. She had lost all of it. She looked up at him instead into his gray eyes and she said the only true thing she could find. "I am afraid," she said. "That is why I said no."
"I know." "I did not think I had the right." "Vivienne, my love, you have every right that I have. Every right anyone has." "There will be talk."
"There will."
"Cressida Halverton and I have not exchanged more than twenty sentences in the last year. Her mother wants the title for the estate. She does not want me. She will find another. She will be relieved."
"Your mother would very much like a grandchild who calls her grandmother and does not flinch."
"She has told me so repeatedly." She almost laughed then. It came out as a small wet sound, half laughter and half something else.
"Alaric," she said, "if I say yes and it is hard, and if it costs you, and if in a year or five years you look at me across a room and think she was not worth it, I will not survive it."
He came the last step then and took her face in both his hands. They were warm despite the rain. His thumbs brushed the water from her cheeks, and it was not water only.
"Vivienne," he said, "listen to me. I am not a man who says pretty things. You know this. Then hear me plainly. I have run this house for six years, and I have not been happy in it once. In the last week, you have made me laugh three times. You have made my niece speak. You have made my mother sit up straight at breakfast. You have made the dogs follow you into rooms where they are not allowed. I do not require pretty things. I require you. If in five years I look at you across a room and think anything at all, it will be gratitude that you did not run."
She closed her eyes and let his hands hold her face. The rain was cool on her forehead where his fingers were not and warm where they were. She could hear, over the rain, the small quick sound of her own breath. "You did not run when the bees came," he said. "Do not run from me." She opened her eyes. "I will not run," she said. "I do not know how to do this, but I will not run." "That is all I ask." He did not kiss her then.
She was glad. She was not ready. He only bent his forehead to hers gently and stood a long moment in the rain with his eyes closed. She felt his breath on her mouth. She felt the whole of the last week press down on her chest and lift again easier now, as though something had been set down. "Come home," he said. "You are shivering."
"I am." He put her up on her horse himself. He led both animals through the wood, one rein in each hand in the rain. She watched the back of his head and the set of his shoulders, and she thought without any drama, without any wonder, only with a quiet certainty. Yes. This was a man she could walk beside.