Page 68 of Stealing His Duchess

“It was excellent instruction,” Hudson retorted, entirely unbothered by the criticism. “Simple, direct, and thus far entirely effective. You will not perish. I have you.”

“So you keep insisting.”

“And I intend to keep insisting for the rest of our lives, until you finally believe it without reservation,” Hudson promised, pressing a brief kiss to her temple that nearly startled her into losing her already precarious balance.

“That is hardly fair, distracting the rider mid-journey,” Anna protested, laughing despite herself.

“I have never claimed to fight fair, where you are concerned.”

“A troubling admission from a duke, I should think. I imagined dukes were meant to be paragons of honor and fair dealing.”

“I am a paragon of honor in all matters excepting my own wife,” Hudson proclaimed solemnly. “There, I confess, I employ every unfair advantage available to me.”

The trees opened suddenly onto a small clearing Anna had never before had occasion to discover. A lake lay still and silver at its center, ringed by wildflowers just beginning to bloom, and upon the grass near its edge, someone had already laid out a blanket, scattered with cushions and a modest picnic Anna suspected had required rather more planning than Hudson’s casual invitation had suggested.

“You arranged all this today?” Anna asked, as he helped her down from the horse.

“I planned to have it done yesterday, in truth,” Hudson admitted, “Before everything that transpired last night. I confess I very nearly forgot about it entirely, given the circumstances, but I found myself rather glad this morning that I had not yet cancelled the preparations.”

“What is the occasion?” Anna asked, though something in his expression suggested she already suspected the answer.

“You,” Hudson said simply. “Only you. A small token of gratitude, for everything you have given me since that terrible night I first had you dragged into my study. I do not believe I have properly thanked you for any of it – for staying, for trusting me with our children’s futures, for loving me despite every reason you had to do otherwise.”

They ate slowly, trading bites of cheese and bread and the small, sweet strawberries someone in the kitchens had clearly gone to considerable trouble to procure out of season, and for a time Anna allowed herself simply to bask in the novelty of an entire afternoon with nothing demanded of her beyond her own enjoyment. She could not recall the last occasion she had spent so idle, so entirely free of the small, constant vigilance motherhood had trained into her over the past months.

“You look thoroughly relaxed,” Hudson observed, watching her with a fondness he no longer troubled himself to hide.

“I feel thoroughly relaxed,” Anna admitted. “I had nearly forgotten what that felt like.”

“Then I shall have to arrange more afternoons such as this,” Hudson said. “Though I confess, this particular one was not planned solely for your relaxation.”

They settled together upon the blanket, and Anna allowed herself to simply enjoy the quiet beauty of the afternoon for a time – the gentle rustle of leaves overhead, the soft lapping of water against the lake’s edge, the warm weight of Hudson’s shoulder pressed against hers. But she could see, from the corner of her eye, that he seemed rather more nervous than the peaceful setting warranted, his fingers restless against the stem of a wildflower he had plucked from the grass beside them.

“Hudson,” she said gently, “Is something troubling you?”

“No,” he said, then, correcting himself, “Or rather, yes, though not in the manner you might assume.”

He set the flower aside and turned to face her properly, and Anna watched with growing astonishment as he lowered himself onto one knee before her, there upon the blanket beside the lake, his expression more open and unguarded than she had ever seen it.

“We are already married,” he began, “And I know a second proposal is hardly customary under such circumstances. But I find I want the chance to ask you properly – not out of necessity, not to salvage a scandal, but simply because I love you, and I wish to promise you formally what I have already promised you in private.”

Anna felt her breath catch, tears prickling unexpectedly at the corners of her eyes.

“I promise to love you for the whole of my life,” Hudson continued, his voice steady despite the vulnerability so plainly written across his face. “I promise never to leave you again, never to retreat into silence when honesty would serve us better, and never to mistake control for care, as I have so often done in the past. I promise to be the husband you deserved from the very beginning, however long it has taken me to become him. Will you have me, Anna? Truly, and for always?”

“I already have you,” Anna said softly, reaching out to cup his face in her hands. “But yes. Yes, Hudson, for always.”

He kissed her then, gentle and reverent, and when they finally parted, Anna found herself laughing through her own tears at the sheer unlikely joy of it all.

“I have thought, once or twice, of what I might have said to my younger self,” Anna admitted, still smiling, “Had I known, on the night Edith first confessed her plans to elope, that within the year I would be sitting beside a lake, being proposed to a second time by the very duke who ruined my reputation entirely by accident.”

“What would you have told her?” Hudson asked, curious.

“That she ought to have been rather less quick to judge, and rather more patient with the strange ways love sometimes chooses to announce itself,” Anna said. “Though I suspect she would not have believed a word of it, given how thoroughly furious she was with you at the time.”

“I do not blame her,” Hudson said wryly. “I gave her very little reason to expect anything but continued fury, in those early days.”

“All I have ever truly wanted,” she told him, resting her forehead against his, “Is for us to build this life together. To raise our children well, to support one another through whatever comes, to trust that if we love each other properly, everything else will find its way to rightness in time. I do not require grand promises, Hudson. I require only you, exactly as you are, choosing this – choosing us – every single day.”