"I have been thinking about our bargain," he said. "You married me to save your name and to carry Stepan's words to me. Your name is safe; the print is forgotten, and the words have been carried." He did not look at her. "You have done everything you promised, and a great deal more. I will not hold you to a cold arrangement for the rest of your life. You may have a house of your own, wherever you choose. Or, if you wish, you may sail with Stepan in the summer. You could see St. Petersburg again. You could find your nurse's grave. I would see to everything; you would owe me nothing."
Anna heard him out from the middle of the carpet. Then she crossed the room and stood in front of him so that he had to look at her.
"You are doing it again," she said.
"Doing what?"
"You told your brother that if he went, he need not write. You would not ask him to stay, so you told him to go. And then you blamed yourself ever since because he went." Her voice was shaking, and she let it. "Now you are telling me I may go wherever I like. You are making me a very generous offer so that you never have to find out what I would say if you asked me for something. I will not take it. I will not be sent away kindly. If you want me to go, say so. And if you want me to stay, Lawrence, then for once in your life, ask."
For a long moment, the Duke did not move. She watched the words go into him. She watched him understand them. And then something gave way in his face—the whole careful structure of it. And what was underneath was not cold at all.
"Stay," he said. His voice was very low. "Not for your name. Not for Stepan. For me. I have loved you since you sang to that old man on the floor in the dark. Perhaps since before that. Perhaps since you said, 'I do, Your Grace,' across a counter, as if you had been waiting all your life for somebody to ask." He took her hand. "I am asking. Stay with me, Anna."
"Yes," she said. And then, because she had been choosing her words so carefully for so many weeks, she said the plainest thing she had: "I love you. I chose you before I knew it. I am choosing you now."
He drew her close and kissed her there by the long, open window, with the sound of the sea coming in. It was not the kiss on her fingers at her wedding; it was nothing like that at all. When at last she drew back a little to breathe, he kept his arms around her and rested his forehead against hers. And she felt him smile—not the almost, the whole of it, for the first time.
"I will still take you to St. Petersburg," he said into her hair. "Not to send you—to go with you. You will have to do all the talking."