Livia searched his face. "You truly believe that?"
"I do." He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. "You are not a shame I am bringing home...You are the woman I am choosing."
The carriage rocked gently beneath them. Livia looked down at their joined hands, trying to breathe around the ache in her throat.
"And your mother?" Livia asked.
Richard's thumb paused where it had been stroking slow circles over the back of her hand. "Now that," he said, "is where you might have gotten some pushback."
Livia shifted slightly in the carriage, watching him. "She won't like me?"
"Oh, she would have liked you eventually. But she would have been the same with any woman. I am afterall her only child." Richard smiled faintly. "She was the strict one. My father is strict too, but level-headed. She would have thrown a total tantrum first, of course. My father would have paid heavily for it."
"She sounds frightening."
"She was." His smile turned quieter. "And wonderful."
