“If you become a sparrow, I’ll take good care of you. I’ll buy a pretty cage just for you.”

“Birds don’t live long.”

“That’s okay. Even for a brief moment, I’d be happy hearing your chirps. When you pass, I’ll make a tiny coffin, just the size of my palm, and give you a proper burial in the Dalton family plot. Then I’ll live as a widow, remembering you forever. Or maybe, missing the sparrow you were, I’ll remarry another sparrow.”

Ian let out a hollow laugh. Once he laughed, Laura knew her persuasion had failed.

Having cleverly escaped the crisis, Laura gently pushed Ian’s hand away and turned toward the path leading back to the mansion.

At that moment, Ian suddenly pulled her into a tight embrace, burying his face in the nape of her neck and nuzzling fervently.

“I want to kiss you. Let’s kiss, Laura.”

Laura sensed it instinctively. The stage of persuasion had passed, and now came the stage of stubbornness.

“Ian, I have to go home. I need to review the dinner menu and get it to the kitchen by five.”

“Just one kiss, and I’ll let you go.”

“No.”

“Then we’ll stay like this until night falls. I don’t mind.”

Ian hugged her even tighter.

Laura sighed. This wasn’t the understanding husband she knew. Right now, Ian was as stubborn as if he had Big Ben’s clock towers plugged into both ears.

Laura tugged at his ears playfully.

“Goodness, you’re not a husband—you’re a complete child! Stop nuzzling my face!”

Ian slowly lifted his head, his expression thoroughly sulky.

“Really, no?”

“No.”

Her firm stance softened his petulant demeanor.

‘Honestly, what a spoiled youngest son. I can see why his brother treats him like a child.’

Laura pushed Ian away and turned again. But as she took a step, he grabbed her, stopping her in her tracks.

His head was bowed low.

“Darling?”

“…”

“Ian?”

He remained silent. The silence stretched for about thirty seconds.

Laura grew anxious. Unnoticed, a moment could feel fleeting, but in this situation, it felt like thirty minutes.

Finally, he spoke, his voice low and unsteady.

“Laura, does our love truly carry the same weight?”

“What?”

“I’m always the one wanting first, and the one who keeps wanting. It’s been like that since the moment we met. I fell for you at first sight, but you rejected my proposal twice.”

“Darling, you know why. Back then…”

Laura couldn’t continue. Ian had lifted his head, and his expression was so forlorn it stopped her words.

“I know you loved me too. I understand your position back then. But those memories—I can’t forget them, no matter how much time passes. Your back as you coldly turned away in the forest. The words in the carriage that treated my love like a passing breeze. And the slap you gave me. When you struck me, it felt like my heart was torn to pieces.”

He took Laura’s hand and pressed it to his cheek.

“I said I forgot it all when you accepted my proposal, but that was a lie. I… I’m still hurting…”

Laura was stunned.

Before their marriage, rejecting his proposals repeatedly had left her with painful memories too. The moments she had to push away and hurt the person she loved. No matter how selfless her intentions or clear her judgment, Laura had carried guilt for the pain she caused him.

Still, she hadn’t realized he was this deeply wounded. To the point of shedding tears and pouring out his anguish.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Ian…”

Overwhelmed with guilt, Laura caressed his cheek.

“I rejected you because I loved you more than myself. I didn’t want to make you unhappy because of me. Pushing you away… it felt like cutting off my own arm.”

Tears welled up in Laura’s eyes.

“Please, don’t doubt my love. It was only the method that differed—my love was as life-staking as yours.”

Ian smiled.

“You love me?”

Instead of answering, Laura stood on her tiptoes and brought her lips to his.

A desperate need to comfort him made her bold. Her tongue tentatively licked his lips, as if testing the warmth of hot food. She gently rubbed her lips against his, now moist with saliva, and lightly sucked.

It was a shy kiss, filled with care rather than passion.

Laura slowly pulled back. A thin, transparent thread connected their lips.

Ian gazed down at her. The tears in his eyes had vanished. Laura felt relieved.

“That’s the first time you’ve kissed me first.”

Laura’s face flushed.

“It feels like a gift.”

“Are you feeling better now?”

“No.”

Ian wrapped his arms around Laura’s waist, a glint in his dark eyes.

“I’m burning up.”

Their lips collided again.

His other hand firmly grasped the back of her head.

Laura’s parasol dropped with a thud.

“Mmm, mm…”

Their breaths mingled through their lips.

Her heart pounded fiercely. She could feel Ian’s chest, pressed against hers, beating just as wildly.

She wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck.

‘You think I don’t want you as much as you want me?’

Laura clung to him tighter, trembling.

‘I’m just shy and hiding it. If you don’t beg, I’ll be the one begging. I love being like this with you… shamelessly so.’

Her mind grew feverish. Her stomach burned even hotter. Her skin, sticky with sweat, became hypersensitive.

His hands began to roam her back. Laura trembled. For a moment, she forgot time and space. Even her sense of self slipped away. She only wanted, blindly, for him to touch her more, to make her feel him more.

Then.

“Wow, is that their tongues?”

A young girl’s voice pierced Laura’s ears. She turned toward the sound.

About twenty paces away stood a dozen or so girls, mouths agape.

They were between twelve and sixteen years old, all wearing floral dresses with calico aprons and sunbonnets, carrying baskets full of wild strawberries.

Laura instantly recognized them as the church choir girls, faces she saw every Sunday.

The moment their eyes met Mrs. Dalton’s, the girls shrieked and fled toward the strawberry-laden hill they’d just come from.

Ian chuckled.

“Well, this is definitely going to spread.”

Laura stumbled back from her husband and collapsed onto a tree stump.

“Oh… oh…”

She buried her face in her hands, too shocked for tears.

The incident in the carriage could be dismissed as unseen, but this was undeniable. The girls would surely confirm with each other as they left the forest that the couple was indeed the Daltons, certain they hadn’t imagined it.

And when they reached the village, they’d tell everyone they met, spreading the gossip: the Daltons of Whitefield were in the forest, kissing so passionately it looked like they were devouring each other.

Just thinking about it made Laura want to run to the Dalton family plot, dig a grave, and find eternal rest.

“No need for that, Laura,” Ian said, patting her shoulder.

“What’s wrong with a married couple sharing a kiss? A few years ago, the Starrs had the same kind of rumor. No one remembers it now.”

“They don’t forget—they just don’t talk about it. It’s too embarrassing to whisper about. Things like that are never forgotten. Never… Oh, what will people think when they see us?”

“That we’re a young couple in love,” Ian said in a carefree tone, as if it were someone else’s story.

“Laura, think positively. They didn’t catch us in the middle of something more passionate.”

“It’s the same, darling. We live in a conservative rural area.”

“Then let’s make it a bit more progressive. I’ll ask Oliver Starr to preach that a kiss between a married couple is God’s will.”

Laura was starting to get annoyed.

“You’re not bothered by this?”

“It’s amusing. Did you see the girls’ faces?”

He glanced at the path where the girls had fled, chuckling as if he’d released a rat in a classroom. His mischievous, boyish grin was a far cry from the tearful, anguished expression earlier.

‘At least he’s in better spirits,’ Laura thought, trying to let it go. But seeing his face—so similar to George Fairfax’s when he secretly put a caterpillar on Olivia Fairfax’s head—stirred a quiet suspicion. In her shock at his tears earlier, she hadn’t considered it.

“Darling, were those tears… genuine?”

His chuckling stopped abruptly. He turned to Laura with an awkward expression.

“Uh, what?”

“You didn’t fake them to get a kiss, did you?”

His guilty look confirmed it. Laura’s suspicion hardened into certainty.

“Ian.”

Her stern expression snapped him to attention, and he waved his hands frantically.

“No, Laura, no!”

“Really?”

“Really!”

“Swear it?”

“I swear.”

“On your honor?”

“Yes.”

“On the Dunville Park family?”

“Yes!”

“On our love?”

“…Yes…”

Laura let out a deep sigh.

“On your mother and father in heaven and the God watching over us?”

“…”

Ian finally hung his head.

“…I’m sorry.”

A brief silence followed, broken only by Laura’s increasingly heavy breathing. She bent down, picked up her fallen parasol, and stood.

Thwack!

Startled by the sudden strike, Ian looked at Laura. Her face was flushed, clutching the parasol tightly, breathing heavily, tears welling in her eyes.