A Magical Regency Christmas: Christmas Cinderella / Finding Forever at Christmas / The Captain's Christmas Angel

‘Marry you?’ She stared at him as if he’d sprouted an extra head, or possibly horns and a tail.

He cleared his throat. ‘Well, yes. I’d like you to marry me.’ Rather understating the case, but—

‘Why?’

Dash it all! Wasn’t it obvious? ‘You can ask that? After yesterday?’

She stared. ‘This is because you kissed me? You feel honour-bound to offer marriage because you kissed me?’

‘No,’ he said at once. ‘I’m asking you to marry me because I want to be able to kiss you and know I don’t have to stop.’ Her jaw dropped and he followed up his advantage at once. ‘And because I want to kiss you again. Right now.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Right now?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’re...not.’

‘No. Because I wouldn’t want to stop. And...’ he dragged in a breath, cast discretion, not to mention delicacy, to perdition ‘...because I might not stop.’ Oh, God! Now she knew, knew the truth. And she’d think him depraved.

‘But, sir—’

‘Alex.’ He didn’t want her calling him sir, or Mr Martindale, or anything else but Alex.

She flushed. ‘Alex, then. Don’t you see? I’m no sort of wife for you. I’ve no money. No connections. I would bring you nothing.’

She was biting her lip in a way that made him want to soothe it, kiss away the worry and then bite it himself. Even as the idea of her feeling unworthy infuriated him. ‘I’m perfectly well off and my own connections are more than adequate,’ he pointed out.

‘That’s just it!’ she said. ‘It...it would be most unequal.’

Ah. Here was the rub, then. ‘And would that bother you if our positions were reversed?’ he asked quietly.

‘Not now,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve learnt better. But before? When I was wealthy?’ Her cheeks flamed. ‘Probably, yes.’

Her bone-deep honesty and humility seared him. ‘Your aunt would have set the dogs on me, anyway,’ he said.

She managed a smile. ‘Yes. Warned me that you only wanted my money.’

He snorted. ‘Like your cousin?’

She flushed and guilt lashed him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have reminded you.’

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. Not now.’

‘Then do I have your permission to court you?’ he asked.

She blinked. ‘My permission to court me?’

He smiled. ‘Who else should I ask?’

Courting was something a gentleman did to a lady. After asking her father or guardian’s permission. Only her father was dead and she didn’t have a guardian any longer. She had her independence and he had asked her permission.

‘You want to court me?’

‘Yes.’ Alex felt that he was on fairly firm ground here. ‘It’s what a man does when he wants a woman as his wife.’ He’d watched any number of courting couples over the years. Then married them. Rather often the christening was significantly less than nine months later in the village and farming community. He slammed a lid back on that pot of thought at once.

‘What does courting entail?’

Polly’s question had him mentally scrambling. ‘Ah, well, I call on you,’ he said. ‘At respectable hours,’ he added hurriedly. ‘I can bring you small gifts. Flowers in season.’ Please God, by spring they’d be beyond courting.

‘That’s all?’

He blanked out the image of leaving flowers on her pillow. ‘We can walk together.’ That should be safe enough for her. It was far too cold for tumbling maidens in the woods.