Just before they left, Frances paused at the door.
“I am not afraid anymore,” she said.
Johnathan turned back to her. “No?”
She shook her head. “Not of my father. Not of scandal. Not even of Cranford.”
He stepped forward, brushing a kiss over her brow. “Then what are you afraid of?”
She hesitated. “That I will forget who I am when we go back. That the world will try to turn me into Lady Frances Rowley again, and I will let it.”
Johnathan took her hands in his.
“You will not,” he said. “Because now you know who you really are.”
Her eyes stung. “And who is that?”
He smiled. “You are my wife. My partner. The woman who turned a scoundrel into a man worth fighting for. You are not going back to a cage, Frances. You are returning with the keys in your hand. You are my treasured duchess.”
She laughed then, her shoulders dropping as she exhaled a breath she had not realized she was holding, the tension slipping from her limbs like dusk melting into night.
“You always know what to say.”
“I have had practice,” he said dryly. “Years of pretending to be charming. It finally paid off.”
They left the inn just as the sun climbed over the hills, casting long golden rays across the cobbled street.
As the carriage drove south, the border slipping quietly behind them, Frances looked ahead—not to London’s salons or scandal sheets, but to the life they would build. A life forged in fire and choices. One they had made together.
She no longer feared what waited in the drawing rooms or the Dowager’s glares or even the newspapers. She had weathered worse.
And now she had someone to weather it with.
They were returning as husband and wife.
As equals.
As a future that no longer asked permission.
