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"No" She’d never thought, never iined, that someone like Quin could love her Still, she understood instinctively that he had to--he absolutely had to--respect her He had to trust her even when his instinct was to deny her "His father is gone I am the only person in the world who cares for hio to him" She held his eyes "My personal safety is immaterial This is a question of ethics"

There was a moment of tense silence

"You have a point," Quin finally said, his voice reluctant

She held her breath

His arhtened about her "You are Olivia, after all"

"What do you iveYou love Lucy with her bitten eyelid You even love your uided parents"

She cleared her throat "You omitted one person in that list"

"You are the ive up Rupert’s secrets; you will never steal a man whom your sister wants Therefore, obviously you could not live with yourself if you did not make every effort to be with Rupert"

Olivia opened herabout how ether fascinating man who stood before her, but there was a splash, followed by the sound of an anchor being lowered as quietly as possible

"Very well," Quin said tightly "I don’t like it But I understand"

Olivia reached up on tiptoes and brushed a kiss across his lips again "I love you"

His hands tightened on her ar But it didn’t matter Olivia understood love as well as any other woman, and when aall mixed uphe loves her, whether he articulates it or no

She so"

Twenty-seven

"And Miles to Go Before I Sleep"

Up on the deck, the first thing Quin realized was that the rowboat was far too ser than his bathtub It would barely take his weight, let alone his and Olivia’s And it certainly couldn’t take a third person, dead or alive

The captain of the Day Dream leaned close, his voice low "It’s the only one I have with h the water with noin a pond For those with a need to reach the shore quiet-like, this is the one"

The ler Quin paused, then nodded, consciously releasing the tension in his jaw If they survived the next few hours, he didn’t want to keel over like Rupert’s father; he had noted that tension had an extremely deleterious effect on the human body

Two dead dukes, both betrothed to Olivia and neither with a surviving heir, would be absurd

He cautiously lowered himself from the schooner into the little boat and reached up for Olivia, whos sharply bent, knees pressed against knees, Lucy clutched in Olivia’s ar of desire he always felt at her touch, ordinarily so thrilling, was now an irritant, a spur to his underlying sense of panic

But he slipped the muffled oars into the water, and indeed, the boat made no more sound than a reed in the wind Rocks reared on the port side, and in the near distance a blur of sand shone in the ht

He mentally calculated the exact place where the inlet let into the sea, and was gratified to catch a patch of darkness just where he’d predicted it would be So with the gentle sound of the waves Olivia’s eyes were shining "I love the smell of the sea," she whispered, her voice just a thread of sound in the night