"Yes." Rosanne reached out and took her hand. "Lillian, whatever happens, whatever he says when he arrives, know that I did this because I love you both. Because I believe, truly believe, that you belong together."
Lillian squeezed her hand but did not respond. She did not know what to believe anymore.
She only knew that the next few hours would change everything.
***
The morning passed in a blur of anxiety.
Lillian went through the motions of the house gathering, attending breakfast, making conversation with the other guests, avoiding Edward's increasingly pointed glances, but her mind was elsewhere. Every sound of hoofbeats on the drive made her heart leap; every opening door made her catch her breath.
By early afternoon, she could bear it no longer. She excused herself from the ladies gathered in the drawing room and slipped out to the garden, desperate for solitude and fresh air.
The rose garden was empty at this hour, most guests having retreated indoors for the warmth of the fires. Lillian found a bench tucked into an alcove, hidden from casual observation, and sat down to wait.
She did not know what she was waiting for. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps Daniel had ridden somewhere else entirely; to London, to visit friends, to escape for reasons that had nothing to do with her.
Perhaps Rosanne's letter had meant nothing to him at all.
She was still sitting there, lost in thought, when footsteps on the gravel path made her look up.
And there he was.
Daniel stood at the entrance to the alcove, looking as though he had ridden through the night and most of the day. His clothes were rumpled, his hair disordered, his face pale with exhaustion. There were dark circles under his eyes and mud on his boots and a wild, desperate expression on his features that she had never seen before.
He looked, Lillian thought distantly, like a man who had ridden to the edge of a cliff and did not know whether to jump or turn back.
"Lillian." Her name emerged from his lips like a prayer or perhaps like a plea. "I need to speak with you."
She rose slowly, her heart hammering against her ribs. "Your Grace. This is…...Unexpected."
"I know. I know it is unexpected. I know I have no right to be here, no right to ask anything of you after what I did." He took a step toward her, then stopped, as though afraid of coming too close. "But I had to come. Rosanne wrote to me. She told me about Potter, about his intentions..."
"And so you rode through the night to—what?" Lillian heard the sharp edge in her own voice and did not try to soften it. "To tell me I cannot accept him? To forbid me from making my own choices, as you have forfeited any right to do?"
"No. I mean..." He ran a hand through his already disordered hair, and she saw that it was trembling. "I did not come to forbid anything. I came to tell you...To explain…."
"To explain what? That you were afraid? That loving me was too difficult? That the prospect of happiness was more terrifying than the certainty of loneliness?" Her voice was rising now, all the pain of the past weeks pouring out in a torrent she could not control. "I know all of that, Daniel. I have always known it. What I do not know, what I cannot understand, is why you would come here now, after everything, and expect me to listen."
"Because I was wrong." The words burst from him, raw and desperate. "Because I have spent days telling myself I did the right thing, and every moment has been agony. Because when I read Rosanne's letter, when I thought of you with him, laughing with him, building a life with him, I could not breathe, Lillian. I could not breathe when I was thinking that I could lose you."
Lillian stared at him, her anger warring with something else; something that felt terrifyingly like the hope she had been trying to suppress.
"You had your chance." Her voice was quieter now, but no less fierce. "You had every chance, and you threw them all away."
"I know. I know I did." He took another step toward her, his eyes never leaving her face. "I have been a coward. A fool. I have let my fear of what might happen destroy my chance at what could be. But I am here now, Lillian. I am here, and I am asking you, begging you, to let me try again."
"Try again?" She felt tears prick at her eyes and blinked them back furiously. "After everything you put me through? You refused to see me. You treated me as though I were nothing. You looked at me in your morning room and spoke to me as though I were a stranger, and then you wished my father well as though we had never….."
Her voice broke, and she pressed her hand against her mouth, fighting for control.
"I know." Daniel's voice was anguished. "I know what I did. I have replayed that moment a thousand times, hating myself more with each repetition. I was trying to protect you or so I told myself. I was trying to save you from what I might become. But I see now that I was only protecting myself. Protecting myself from the terror of needing someone, of loving someone, of giving another person the power to break me."
"And what has changed?" Lillian demanded. "What is different now that was not different then?"
"I am here." He spread his hands, a gesture of surrender. "I am here, and I am terrified, and I do not know if I can be what you deserve but I want to try. I want to spend the rest of my life trying, if you will let me."
"Words." She shook her head, the tears spilling over despite her efforts to contain them. "You have always been good with words when it suits you, Daniel. But words are easy. What I need is proof. Proof that you will not retreat the moment things become difficult. Proof that I am worth more to you than your fear."
