“No.” She glanced down into the fire. “I don’t understand how you could even ask that. I am — I /was/ — so unhappy my father promised my hand in marriage to the person who could make me smile again.” A few tears slipped down her cheek. “The servants are kind to me, but they aren’t my friends. They aren’t /you/.” Very quietly, she added, “I was happier in the week I was at Hale Castle with you than I’ve ever been.”
“Your father…he wants me to stay here with you and…I want to go home, Summer, but this is your home, where you were to grow up and I don’t…is it right for me to take you away from that?” he murmured, sounding as if he were in fact talking to himself, before he flinched and reached out to brush away her tears. “I just want to make you happy, Summer.”
“This isn’t my home,” she whispered. “I don’t — any home I have now is with you. Wherever you are. Before you, the only home I’ve ever known is the village I grew up in. Y-you took me away from that.” She turned her face into his hand. “I’m only happy with you.”