Only when the Earl raised his head did she gasp in a rapturous little voice that he could hardly hear,
“I love you – I – love – you! But I did not know – it until you – kissed me.”
“And I love you, Minella! I have loved you, my darling, since the very first moment you came into the room and I thought I had never seen anybody so exquisite or so perfect in every way.”
“Do you – really love – me?”
“I love you more than I can begin to tell you.”
Then he was kissing her again, kissing her passionately and fiercely, as if he was afraid of losing her.
She was not afraid.
She knew only that, because in some ways he resembled her father, he was the man who had always been in her dreams, the man whom she had prayed that one day she might find.
Then they both realised that the engines were pu
