Courting Magic (Kat, Incorrigible #4)(36)
“You thought a great deal of rubbish,” I said through clenched teeth. I closed my eyes, fighting back the rest of my tears.
“Perhaps I did,” Alexander said. “Or perhaps my heart was breaking, too.”
My breath caught in my chest. I opened my eyes. His face wasn’t haughty or closed off anymore. His intent green eyes were fixed on mine, passionate and determined and full of an emotion I couldn’t help but understand.
My head spun as I stared back at him. Deep inside me, a giddy glow began to burn, thawing nearly the last of my numb misery away.
“Henshawe told me I was still needed in the capital,” Alexander said. “He didn’t give me any missions, though, so I spent my first few days after I gave my evidence kicking my heels alone in my boardinghouse.”
“In the same city as me,” I whispered. “All those days…”
His expression turned rueful as he watched me. “I wanted to be anywhere but there. I wanted something to do, a villain to fight, anything to take my mind off…”
“I know what you mean,” I said, and swallowed hard. “Keep going.”
“Well, and then they called me in.” He shrugged, his face filled with disbelief. “They’d stitched the whole thing up without a word to me beforehand. There was to be no public ceremony, due to the secrecy of the magical issues involved, but the title was securely mine. The estate was already legally mine. The…”
He drew a deep breath, his shoulders squaring. “Kat, you have to understand, I’m still not wealthy, and I never will be. My father sank himself deep in debt, and his estate has only barely recovered under the care of the managers that the Crown installed there during the last six years. There’s still so much work to be done to make it solvent, and I don’t know how to do any of it. I never studied land management. I never expected—”
“That’s all right,” I said. There were tears in my voice again, but this time I didn’t even try to hold them back. “We can learn how to do it all together.”
The smile that curved Alexander’s lips, then, turned his expression fierce with joy. He leaned down toward me, slowly and deliberately, until his broad shoulders filled up the borders of my vision and his warmth curled all around me, eating up the space between us while something like magic filled the air. “Was that by any chance a proposal of marriage, Miss Stephenson?” he asked softly.
My skin was tingling and a laugh was bubbling up inside my chest, but I lifted my chin and gave him my haughtiest, most queenly expression as I stood up as tall as I could on my tiptoes, until our lips were nearly touching. “We-e-ell,” I breathed, “if you require me to explain it to you, Lord Ravenscroft…”
“For God’s sake, man!” Frederick Carlyle bellowed across the room. “At least wait until you’re alone before you kiss her, if you please! Remember, her family is watching you, and we haven’t had our dinner yet!”
The room burst into laughter as we spun around, shocked out of our perfect, two-person bubble. Alexander’s face was flushed and his thick brown hair falling out of its carefully windswept arrangement, but his grin didn’t fade a bit as he grabbed my hand in his, looking younger and happier than I’d ever seen him before.
“It’s too late,” he told me, loudly enough for everyone else to hear him. “You’ve already proposed to me in front of your whole family. I’m yours now, Kat Stephenson, whether you like it or not.”
Mine. My love and my partner and my perfect match—not lost after all, but mine, forever and always.
I looked up at him with everything I felt brimming in my chest. His face shifted in response, his own chest rising and falling as his eyes widened, and I knew, I just knew, if we could only run away for one single moment, turn invisible long enough to find a private corner, we could…
“Don’t even think about it, Kat!” Angeline called out, laughing. “You can’t run away from us now. It’s time to introduce your young man to the family again. But properly this time!”
“Ohhh, my family!” I groaned.
But my lips tugged into an irrepressible grin as I turned around to find my sisters and their husbands all watching me together. Elissa was blatantly holding Mr. Collingwood’s hand in hers—a positively shocking act of impropriety by her standards—looking misty-eyed as she smiled proudly at me. Angeline tipped her head against Frederick Carlyle’s shoulder as she watched us, giving me a warm, mischievous smile that hinted at dangerous secrets.
I wasn’t sure whether I should anticipate or dread the marital advice that she would give me, but I couldn’t wait to find it all out.
Papa wore an expression half-stricken, half-joyful, as he discreetly wiped his eyes. Stepmama held both of her hands squeezed tightly in front of her chest, her eyes wide with wonder and delight…and, I was only too hideously certain, with a vast array of wedding plans already brewing inside her, just waiting to explode upon Alexander and me with stunning force. Nearby, Lucy blew me a kiss from beside her own astounded-looking fiancé.
Mr. Gregson beamed at Alexander and me alike like a proud godfather to both of us.
“Angeline’s right,” I told Alexander. “We can’t avoid it any longer. It’s time for you to become a part of the family.”
But we’ll find our own private moment later, I promised him. My voice was a teasing whisper inside his mind, where no one else would hear us, now or ever.