“I’ve been out riding all morning.”

Olivia looked up at him from under fringed lashes as she sat at the dining room table with her family. Staring at him with those heavenly green eyes.

“Are you staying for luncheon, Mr. Somerset?” Jenny asked.

He shook his head, his eyes never leaving Olivia’s face. He swallowed, desperate to remember all the things he’d promised himself to say to her as he rode through the woods and let Jasper have his head on the trails over the last few hours. But maybe he’d better just begin.

“I love you. I love you so much I can’t breathe sometimes. I have loved you since the very first time you showed me an arrowhead you’d found out at the cave by the old springhouse. I didn’t know what it meant then to love you, and I’ve been a fool for years watching as you nearly slipped away, but I know now. I don’t want you to go anywhere without me. I’m in love with you.”

She stood slowly and faced him. Tears were brimming in her eyes and her bottom lip was quivering. “You never told me,” she whispered. “Even when—”

He shook his head. “I didn’t. I was a fool. All I know is what I know now. I love you, Olivia Gentry. I want to marry you. I can’t bear the thought of living this life without you.”

She blinked, and a lone tear trailed down her cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb.

“I’ll hire a manager for the forge until Phillip is able to work it himself. If I need to learn another trade in Washington or wherever you want to live, I’ll learn it. Just give me a chance.”

Her lips were trembling and her chest was rising and falling in time with each breath she took. He took two steps forward and gathered her in his arms, lifting her against him until they were eye to eye, her feet dangling against his shins. He kissed her, holding the back of her head, and touching the seam of her lips with his tongue. She put her palms on his cheeks and slid her hands slowly into his hair. He heard someone clear their throat, and he walked backward until they were in the hallway.

“I love you, Livie.”

She was crying too hard to speak. She kissed his eyes and his cheeks and his mouth.

“Come away with me now. We’ll go to Middletown where there’s a hotel. I’ll find someone to marry us. Right now. I love you, and I’ve wasted too much time.”

“Wait here. Will you?” she asked.

He nodded. “This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, after all. I’ll wait forever.”

He stood in the hallway and took a quick look into the Gentry dining room through the paned glass door. Matt was glaring at him, and his wife was crying. Adam was laughing, and Mrs. Gentry was slicing something on her plate as if she didn’t have a care or worry in the world. Aunt Brigid winked at him, and he smiled at her. Olivia hurried back down the hallway from the stairs, carrying a small leather satchel. Her gloves were on and she’d pulled on a long coat and riding boots.

She looked at him. “You’re certain, Jim? This is not guilt driving you to do this? I love you desperately, but I’ll not force your hand. I love you too much for that.”

He put a finger under chin and tilted her head up to look at him. “Real and abiding love and passion like mine are not prompted by guilt. I believe there is a grand passion between us and our love will only deepen as we get older. Marry me, Livie. I love you.”

She turned away and opened the door to the dining room. “Mother,” she said. “I’m going with Jim.”

“How lovely, dear,” Eleanor said and looked at Jim with a smile. “Do be careful with Olivia, Jim. She’s precious to us.”

She rode Jasper to Middletown while he rode York. She wanted him to ride the big stallion that he’d ridden to rescue her at Harper’s Ferry. She wanted him to ride the horse her father had loved so much. The same horse that had gotten Daddy home after he’d been shot. It was silly, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted her father’s horse with her when she married Jim Somerset.

It had taken two hours on good roads, fortunately with no rain, to get to Middletown. He’d gone directly to the hotel, a rather large and lovely one for a smaller town, and reserved a room for them. She waited there while he went to speak to the preacher and lay down on the bed but didn’t not fall asleep. Jim came back in the room, and when he saw her stretched out, he growled.

“Come on, Livie,” he said. “The minister is going to marry us.”

She stood and straightened her hair. She had changed into a pale yellow dress she’d always loved. “Did you have any trouble convincing him?”

Jim harrumphed. “Well, it seems your brothers, Phillip, and I are going to put a new roof on the parsonage sometime this spring.”

She laughed. “You needn’t go to that trouble. We can wait until tomorrow.”

“No, we can’t. We’re getting married in the next hour, and then we’re going to sleep together as man and wife. Right there in that bed.”

She felt the heat of a blush rise from her neck to her face. “Then we’d best not be late.”

* * *

She stared at the wedding ring he’d slipped on her finger. She was married to Jim Somerset. All of her girlish dreams had come true. She looked up at him as they walked back to the hotel, hand in hand. He was smiling and nodding as people passed, and tipping his hat to the ladies. He was hers, she thought, suddenly. He was hers alone and she was his.

“I’ve asked to have our meal delivered to our room,” he said. “I’m hungry as a bear, and I interrupted your noonday meal. I’m going to the bathhouse for men on the first floor of the hotel, and I’ve asked to have a bath sent up for you. By the time we’re both done, dinner will be ready for us.”

“You’ve thought of everything,” she said.

He smiled and kissed her hand. “I’ve been imagining this day for a long time.”

Olivia bathed and hummed a tune as she did. She was a married lady. She dried and pulled on a green satin nightgown she’d had made the last time she and Mother were in Philadelphia. It hung from thin straps to the floor with lace edging the neckline and the hem of the robe. How happy she was she’d remembered that she had it and thrown it in her satchel at the last minute.

“Livie?”

She opened the door. He’d shaved his beard and mustache completely off and was more devastatingly handsome than she thought it possible for him to be. He was staring at her now and licked his lips. He stepped in the room as the hotel staff wheeled a cart with plates covered with metal lids and a bottle of something chilling in a bucket of ice to the door.

Jim pulled the cart inside their room. He poured them both a glass of champagne, drank his in one swallow and tipped the waiter. He’d already told the man he didn’t want them disturbed until morning. He turned and looked at her. At his bride. She was as lovely as he’d ever seen her.

“You’re so very beautiful,” he whispered. “So perfect.”

She shook her head and unbuttoned the robe she wore over a silky gown. She shrugged her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. “I’m not perfect,” she said. “If I were perfect, I could control myself. But I can’t. I want to touch you.”

He pulled his shirt over his head and sat down on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots never taking his eyes from hers. He unbuttoned his pants, took them off, and stood in front of her in just his flannel knee-length drawers. She looked at him slowly, up and down. He bent down on his haunches and picked up the hem of her gown and looked up at her for permission. She was breathing heavily and her eyes were dreamy. She nodded. He stood, pulling the gown over her head as he did.

He palmed her breasts, and she fluttered a long sigh as if she’d been waiting forever for him to touch her. Her nipples hardened against his hand. “Lie down,” he whispered. “I want to taste you everywhere.”

Her eyes widened as she lay back against the pillows and he pulled off his drawers. He was as erect as it was possible to be. She stared at his cock and then looked up at him from under her lashes. She licked her lips and touched him there lightly with her fingers, finally wrapping her hand about him and running her thumb over the tip. He moaned, barely able to drag his eyes away from her hand as it moved up and down, up and down.

He broke her hold on him, stretching out beside her, kissing her openmouthed, moving his tongue in and out of hers, tracing her lips. He moved down her body, running his tongue over her nipples until she groaned, and licking one and flicking the other with his thumb. She arched off the bed and cried out as he held her full breast in his hand and sucked hard on the nipple.

“I love you, Livie. I’ll love you forever.”

He kissed her stomach and lower still, her eyes on him as he kissed her inner thigh and spread her legs wide. He could not stop staring at her there.

“Jim. I can’t . . . I don’t . . .”

He knelt between her legs and touched his tongue to her then. She jerked and he held her hips still while he prodded her with his fingers and licked her and found the spot that made her writhe against him, pulling at his hair, until she threw her arms above her head and stilled. The look on her face was wholly erotic, her cheeks flushed, her mouth parted as she touched her tongue to her top lip, threatening to make him spend before he could satisfy them both at the same time.

“Jim,” she whispered. “Jim. Please.”

He climbed above her, positioned her hips, and thrust into her. He worked himself slowly back and forth until she opened her eyes and reached up to pull his face down to kiss him openmouthed. She was wet and warm and tight around his cock and lay passive beneath him until she began to move again, her eyes fluttering half open and then closing.

“Come with me, Livie,” he said and strained. She arched off the bed, and he threw his head back, letting himself plant inside of her at the deepest point. He shuddered and dropped onto her, her arms around his neck.

He was far too heavy to laze around on his wife even if it felt as though every bone in his body had turned to jelly. He rolled on his back, pulled her with him, and kissed her head and mouth.

“I love you, Olivia Somerset. There’s babies in our future,” he whispered.

“There are. I love you, husband,” she said and smiled up at him dreamily. Her eyes opened wide then and she looked up at him. “Where did you ever learn about . . . about putting your . . . you know . . . there,” she asked, her face suddenly flaming red.

He smiled at her and rolled her onto her back. “There’s books, Livie. Lots of them. The Romans wrote them.”

She smiled back at him. “Then we must make a study of them. Together.”

“Yes,” he said. “And we have a lifetime to do it.”