She nodded, feeling numb and drained. “Yes.”
“Thank you for your time, Your Grace,” Chance said, offering her an awkward bow. “I should not keep you here a moment longer. I do believe we have all the information we require.”
“We are indebted to you, Chance,” Hudson said.
The next few minutes passed in a flurry of activity for Elysande. The servants had packed some of her belongings into an overnight case. Hudson bundled her into a carriage, and soon, they were swaying over the midnight roads through London, on their way to a hotel Hudson had arranged for them.
“We could have gone to my parents, you know,” she said from his lap where he had snugly placed her before the carriage had swung into motion.
His heart was a steady, reassuring beat against her ear, his embrace tight, as if he feared he would lose her if he did not hold her to him like his most-prized possession.
“I sent word to them that you are safe and all is well, but I did not want to be a burden or a guest tonight,” he said, kissing her crown. “Tonight, I wanted just the two of us. Christ, when I think of how close I came to losing you…”
His voice cracked with emotion on the last.
She tilted her head back, searching his handsome countenance through the shadows cast by the carriage lamp’s lonely beam. “You did not lose me, Hudson. I am right here.”
“Thank God. You are everything to me, Ellie.” There was such raw, earnest love in his face, in his voice.
“You saved my life tonight,” she said, in awe of the haste with which he had acted, eliminating the threat of O’Rourke. “If you had not been there with me, he would have killed me. I am certain of it.”
Hudson caressed her cheek. “Do not underestimate your worth, my love. You saved both of our lives with your quick thinking regarding the lamp.”
“It was a calculated risk. One of us had to provide a distraction, and you were the only one with a pistol.” She pressed a kiss to his warm, rough palm. “Besides, if I had not so recently overturned a lamp myself, I doubt the thought would have occurred to me.”
He smiled. “I know it would have. Your mind never ceases to amaze me, Ellie. When we return to Brinton Manor, I want to see your electrical frying pan.”
Heavens, she had almost forgotten about her prototype entirely. She had become so wrapped up in trying to solve the murder of Mrs. Ainsley, that she had scarcely given it a moment of her time. Her every thought had been for her husband, her love. Each day had been a race against the unknown evil they faced.
Until today, when evil had stared them down from the other side of a loaded gun.
She shivered again, her teeth clicking together as another rush of shock swarmed her.
“Cold?” he asked immediately.
“No.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Merely overset. I will gladly bore you with my frying pan. I have yet to complete the design, however. It is not functional.”
And there was the possibility it would remain in its current state, that she would not complete it with enough time to see it entered in the Society of Electricity’s exhibition after all. But considering what she and Hudson had just been through together, her invention was her least-pressing concern.
They were alive. How glorious it felt. She had never truly realized how much she took her every day for granted until tonight. Never again. From this day on, she would appreciate each second, each minute, each hour. They were precious gifts, not finitely hers to claim.
Hudson stroked her cheek with his thumb. “You could never bore me, and I have no doubt you will have it functional soon. You are the most determined woman I have ever met, and I love you all the more for your perseverance.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, reveling in the wordsI love youissued in her husband’s deep, rich baritone. “Tell me again, Hudson.”
“What?” His tone turned teasing as he dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “That you could never bore me? Surely you know that you could not by now. From the moment we first met, you have dazzled me.”
“When I called upon you with Mama and Izzy?” She thought back to that day, which seemed a lifetime ago already. How much she had changed—how much they both had changed—since then. “You seemed thoroughly irritated with my lack of concern for your fountain.”
He had been brooding and grim, she recalled. Handsome, too. She had thought he would make the perfect husband, and she had not realized how right she had been, but for entirely different reasons. The old Elysande would never have imagined just how completely her marriage would alter everything she had thought she had known about herself.
As it turned out, she had not been disinterested in gentlemen. Nor had her heart been too hardened for love. She had merely yet to meet the right one, to have her walls brought down by a most unlikely duke.
“I was not irritated with you,” Hudson said, kissing her jaw, then the corner of her lips. “I was irritated with my circumstances. I had been forced to abandon the life I had known and the work I had dedicated myself to, all to shoulder the burdens of debts and a title and responsibilities I never wanted. I was a cad that day, and I apologize.”
“You were not a cad,” she denied loyally. “You do not have it in you. You were merely brooding and aloof. I found you quite handsome and intriguing, but I was determined that we should carry on with our marriage of convenience and you would go to London while I devoted myself to my workshop.”
“You found me handsome and intriguing?” He grinned down at her. “You never said.”
