“You still do not quite understand, do you?" she said softly. "I do not want you to change. I fell head over ears in love with you the first time I saw you just because you are who you are.”

“Why have you done all this for me?" She turned her head to look at him. "Tell me the truth."He shook his head slowly."I don't think I could have been more terrified of the devil than I was of you," she said, "when it was happening and in my thoughts and nightmares afterward. And when you came home to Willoughby and I realized that the Duke of Ridgeway was you, I thought I would die from the horror of it."His face was expressionless. "I know," he said."I was afraid of your hands more than anything," she said. "They are beautiful hands."He said nothing."When did it all change?" she asked. She turned completely toward him and closed the distance between them. "You will not say the words yourself. But they are the same words as the ones on my lips, aren't they?"She watched him swallow."For the rest of my life I will regret saying them," she said. "But I believe I would regret far more not saying them.""Fleur," he said, and reached out a staying hand."I love you," she said."No.""I love you.""It is just that we have spent a few days together," he said, "and talked a great deal and got to know each other. It is just that I have been able to help you a little and you are feeling grateful to me.""I love you," she said."Fleur."She reached up to touch his scar. "I am glad I did not know you before this happened," she said. "I do not believe I would have been able to stand the pain.""Fleur," he said, taking her wrist in his hand."Are you crying?" she said. She lifted both arms and wrapped them about his neck and laid her cheek against his shoulder. "Don't, my love. I did not mean to lay a burden on you. I don't mean to do so. I only want you to know that you are loved and always will be.""Fleur," he said, his voice husky from his tears, "I have nothing to offer you, my love. I have nothing to give you. My loyalty is given elsewhere. I didn't want this to happen. I don't want it to happen. You will meet someone else. When I am gone you will forget and you will be happy."She lifted her head and looked into his face. She wiped away one of his tears with one finger. "I am not asking anything in return," she said. "I just want to give you something, Adam. A free gift. My love. Not a burden, but a gift. To take with you when you go, even though we will never see each other again."He framed her face with his hands and gazed down into it. "I so very nearly did not recognize you," he said. "You were so wretchedly thin, Fleur, and pale. Your lips were dry and cracked, your hair dull and lifeless. But I did know you for all that. I think I would still be in London searching for you if you had not gone to that agency. But it's too late, love. Six years too late.”

“Eunice Goddard," he said, all pretense of sleepiness gone from his eyes, "will you marry me? I have no flowery speech prepared and would feel remarkably idiotic delivering it even if I had. Will you just simply marry me, my love? Because I love you? Will you take the risk? I am fully aware that there is a risk. I can only urge you to take a chance on me while I promise to do my very best to love and cherish you for the rest of my days and even perhaps beyond them.”

“I do beg you to have some regard for my pride. A million years? I assure you I would stop asking after the first thousand.”

“I am free, you see," she said, "to love or to withhold love. Love and dependence need no longer be the same thing to me. I am free to love. That is why I love you, and it is the way I love you.”

“And I need you, my love," he said. "I need you so much that I panic when I think that perhaps I will not be able to persuade you to come back with me to Enfield. I need you so much that I cannot quite contemplate the rest of my life if it must be lived without you. I need you so much that—Well, the words speak for themselves. I need you.""To look after Augusta?" she said. She dared not hear what he was surely saying. She dared not hope. "To look after Enfield? To provide you with an heir?""Yes," he said, and her heart sank like a stone to be squashed somewhere between her slippers and the parlor carpet."And to be my friend and my confidant and my comfort. And to be my lover.”

“If I had smiled and fawned over you at Lady Mannering’s ball,” she said, “and if I had simpered and giggled during the drive in Hyde Park, you would have lost interest in me in a moment, Lord Ravensberg.” “Good Lord, yes,” he agreed. Perceptive of her. “I would thank you not to take the Lord’s name in vain,” she said so primly that he was momentarily enchanted. “I see that I have behaved in quite the wrong manner with you. I should have encouraged you.” “There is always time,” he suggested, moving his chair half an inch closer to hers, “to mend your ways, Miss Edgeworth.”