Lillian felt her breath catch. "You love me?"
"I do not know what else to call it." His voice was barely above a whisper. "I have never felt anything like this before. I do not know the rules, the patterns, the proper way to proceed. I only know that when you are in distress, I cannot rest until I have done something to ease it. That when you smile, something in my chest loosens. That when I imagine a future without you in it…." He broke off, his jaw tightening. "I cannot imagine such a future. I do not want to."
Lillian's vision blurred with tears. "Daniel—"
"You do not have to say anything. You do not have to feel the same. I know the obstacles between us, I know what the world would say, what my position demands, what practicality requires." He reached out and took her hand, his fingers wrapping around hers with desperate gentleness. "But I needed you to know. Whatever happens from here, I needed you to understand why I did what I did."
Lillian looked at their joined hands. At the man before her; this guarded, wounded, impossible man who had spent his entire life building walls against emotion and was now standing before her with his heart exposed, risking everything on the chance that she might feel the same.
She thought about her father's advice:Be careful. You have always led with your heart.
She thought about her mother's words:Perhaps it is time to want something for yourself.
She thought about the folly, and the kiss, and the way Daniel had said her name like a prayer.
And she made her choice.
"I love you too," she said.
The words came out quiet, almost trembling, but they were the truest words she had ever spoken.
Daniel's expression transformed. The walls crumbled. The mask fell away. And what remained was simply a man, vulnerable and hopeful and terrified, looking at the woman he loved.
"Lillian." Her name was a breath, a benediction, a question and answer all at once.
"I love you," she said again, stronger this time. "I do not know how it happened, or when. I only know that somewhere between the muddy hems and the practical observations, I fell in love with a man who does not know how to feel things safely but I do not care. I do not care about the obstacles or the propriety or what the world will say. I care aboutyou."
He kissed her.
It was not like the kiss in the folly—tentative, questioning, careful. This kiss was fierce and desperate and full of everything that neither of them had words to express. His arms came around her, pulling her close, and she went willingly, her hands clenching in the fabric of his coat, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might burst.
When they finally broke apart, breathless and trembling, Daniel rested his forehead against hers. There was worry in his eyes.
"What happens now?" he asked, something foreign in his voice.
Lillian laughed; a shaky, joyful sound. "I have no idea."
Chapter Fourteen
The Morning After
Daniel had not slept.
The candles in his study had burned down to stubs hours ago, their flames guttering and dying one by one until only darkness remained. He had not risen to light new ones. He had not moved from his chair. He had simply sat, motionless, while the night pressed in around him and the words he had spoken echoed through his mind.
I love you.
He had said it. He had actually said it, that word, that impossible, dangerous, destructive word, and he had meant it. In the moment, with Lillian standing before him in his study, her eyes bright with tears, her voice steady with conviction, he had meant every syllable.
And she had said it back.
I love you too.
The memory should have brought him joy. It should have filled him with the warmth and hope that lovers were supposed to feel when their feelings were returned. Instead, it filled him with a cold, creeping dread that had settled into his bones and refused to leave.
He had made a terrible mistake.
The grey light of dawn was beginning to seep through the windows, painting the study in shades of ash and shadow. Daniel watched it spread across the floor, watched the familiar shapes of his desk and his books and his carefully ordered life emerge from the darkness, and he felt nothing but fear.
