In saying it, he thought of every version of her he had known: the careful governess, the frightened woman who ran, the fierce soul who had stood bound and bleeding and still refused to bend.
He lowered himself to one knee, ignoring the painful protest in his shoulder, because nothing in him would allow this moment to be anything less than wholehearted.
“Will you marry me?”
For a suspended, unbearable instant, she said nothing at all.
Her eyes filled, her lips parted, and he saw the war inside her—disbelief grappling with hope, fear loosening its grip at last. Then she laughed, a soft, broken sound that seemed torn from somewhere deep in her chest, and the laugh dissolved into tears she made no attempt to hide.
“Yes,” she whispered, shaking her head as though the word itself were too large to contain. “Yes. Of course I will.”
The relief that tore through him was so fierce it nearly stole his breath. He rose at once, forgetting pain, forgetting restraint, forgetting everything except her, and pulled her into his arms with a strength born not of possession but of absolute certainty. He kissed her with unguarded joy, with reverence, with the unshakable knowledge that this…
This was what he had been moving toward all his life without knowing it.
EPILOGUE
ONE MONTH LATER
“Breathe.”
The word reached Madeline through the thick hum of the chapel like a lifeline thrown across deep water. She knew it had come from somewhere inside her own chest, but she obeyed it all the same, drawing in a slow breath that trembled despite her best effort to steady it.
The doors stood closed before her.
Beyond them waited the sound of a congregation already seated, the low murmur of voices, and the faint scrape of shoes against stone. The weight of a moment that had gathered itself around her life with almost unbearable gravity hung suspended. The air smelled faintly of flowers and polished wood and candle wax.
Her hands curled briefly in the folds of her skirts, fingers brushing fabric chosen with care, with intention, with a kind of wonder she still had not entirely learned to trust.
Then the doors parted just enough for Tessa to slip through, her small figure darting forward with quiet mischief. Before Madeline could speak, the child reached for her, wrapping her arms around her waist in a quick, fierce embrace.
“I wanted to see you,” Tessa whispered, pressing her cheek briefly into Madeline’s skirts as though memorizing the moment. “Just once before the ceremony.”
She swallowed against a sudden swell of feeling. She lowered herself at once, smoothing a hand over Tessa’s hair, careful not to disturb the ribbons set there with such care.
“You look beautiful,” Tessa said solemnly. “Papa will think so too.”
Madeline smiled, though her eyes burned. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Now you must go back before anyone notices.”
Tessa nodded, already stepping away, but she hesitated long enough to squeeze Madeline’s hand once more, small fingers warm and certain.
“I’ll be right there,” she said, as though it were a promise.
Then she was gone again, slipping back into place just as quietly as she had come. Madeline straightened, drawing in a breath to steady herself. Then, the music swelled as the doors began to open.
Madeline’s heart stuttered painfully in her chest as light poured into the entryway, bright and golden and unignorable. She lifted her chin and stepped forward, the movement feeling at once utterly familiar and entirely new, as though she had been walking toward this moment her entire life without knowing it.
The aisle stretched ahead of her, lined with faces that turned as one. She registered them in fragments at first—the soft blur of color, the hush that fell, the collective intake of breath—but then her gaze lifted, found the altar, and everything else ceased to exist.
Wilhelm stood waiting.
He was dressed in a restraint that felt almost ceremonial in itself. His dark coat was fitted to his broad frame. His posture was precise without stiffness, as though even now he was holding himself in careful check. His hair was neatly arranged. His expression was composed, but she saw what lay beneath it instantly, the tension she knew so well, the barely contained intensity that lived just behind his eyes.
And then he saw her. The change in him was immediate and devastating. His breath caught visibly. His shoulders eased, not into relaxation but into something deeper, as though the world had finally aligned itself around a single, irrefutable truth. His gaze locked onto hers and did not waver, and the raw, reverent, achingly unguarded look there sent a rush through her so sharp she nearly faltered.
You are here, it said.You are mine.
Madeline’s steps slowed, then her feet picked up the pace, her body remembering how to move even as her heart threatened to spill over. She felt suddenly, acutely aware of herself—of the way the fabric brushed her skin, of the heat pooling low in her belly at the sight of him, of the certainty that she was walking not toward an obligation, but toward a choice she made freely, fiercely, without reservation.
