Then she pulled her hand from his and turned decisively toward the path.
He did not hesitate. He stepped forward again, stopping her with his body alone.
“Edward—”
“Do not leave,” he said.
She tried to step around him one last time.
He dropped to his knees.
Beatrice gasped behind them, but Edward did not look away from Charlotte as he held her gaze from below.
She stared at him, stunned into stillness.
“Marry me.”
The wind skimmed across the water, carrying the words away and back again.
“What?” she breathed.
“Marry me,” he repeated, reaching for her hand once more and clasping it in both of his. “Not as charity. Not as penance. As my wife.”
Tears spilled freely down her cheeks now.
“You would do such a thing in the midst of scandal?” she asked. “For someone with no dowry, no alliances, no place in your world?”
“I do not care for dowries,” he said. “I do not care for alliances. I care foryou.”
She trembled.
“If the ton insists upon calling it strategy, let them. If it must silence their gossip, so be it. But do not mistake me—I am not offering rescue. I am asking for you. I will take you in any form you will give me. I will not let you walk away believing you are a burden.”
The lake was utterly still now.
She sank slowly to her knees before him, her free hand lifting to his face as though she needed proof that he was real.
“You would bind your name to mine in this?” she whispered.
“In this,” he said. “In anything.”
Her breath caught.
“I love you,” she said, the words soft but certain.
Something in him loosened that had been knotted tight for years.
Edward lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles, reverent and certain. Then he rose and drew her into his arms.
She came willingly.
The embrace was not frantic. It was steady. Anchoring.
Behind them, Beatrice exhaled shakily, relief evident even from a distance.
Edward rested his cheek against Charlotte’s hair and closed his eyes briefly. “I love you, too.”
William had attempted to corner her with scandal.
