“I checked it myself,” Kenworth added. “There’s no cause for concern.”
“Thank you,” Alex said.
Kenworth nodded once and withdrew. The door clicked softly shut behind him.
Only then did Georgina let out the breath she’d unconsciously been holding.
Alex crossed to the hearth and paused there, his back half-turned. “You should get some sleep.”
“So should you,” she said.
But neither moved.
He looked past the window, then back at her. “I need some fresh air. Come walk with me?”
She pulled her shawl around her, moved toward him, and placed her hand on his arm. “It would be my pleasure.”
They stepped out into the cool night. The air was clean and still, stars pushing through the mist like promises. They crossed the stone path behind the manor, passing the hedgerow and the edge of the stables. The land sloped gently beyond the garden wall, opening toward the sea. Moonlight silvered the field beyond.
Alex stopped beside an old yew tree, his hands at his back, eyes scanning the horizon.
She stood beside him, her cloak wrapped tight.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“That I don’t like not knowing who’s watching.”
She looked up at him. “You think someone is?”
“I’d be a fool not to.”
She nodded, then hesitated. “Does it ever get easier? The waiting? The watching?”
He looked down at her. “No. But it gets clearer. You start to see what matters more than fear.”
“And what matters to you?” She asked, the question soft.
He took a breath, long and steady. “You.”
She blinked.
“You matter,” he said again. “Not just because you’re brilliant or brave or infuriatingly certain when I’m not. You matter because when I look at you, I see the one thing that feels steady in all of this.”
The wind stirred her hair. She didn’t step away.
“I knew it before Sommer Chase,” he continued. “But here, now, I can finally say it without wondering if I’ve presumed too much.”
Her voice, when it came, was barely above a whisper. “You haven’t.” The words were both surrender and truth.
He reached out, his fingers brushing hers, a tentative question in the form of a touch. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Her hand closed around his.
For a long moment, they stood that way, the space between them thinning like breath on glass.
He leaned in. Not quickly, not boldly, but with the certainty of someone who had waited for the world to stop shifting. And she met him there.
His mouth touched hers, soft and steady. Not seeking permission but answering something that had long gone unspoken.
She responded in kind, her fingers finding the edge of his coat, not to pull him closer, but to stay grounded as the moment unfurled around them.
