She had almost laughed then.
Marriage, or lack of it, does not charm away fire from a grate. Nor send kettles lunging through the air, spoons and needles trembling at her nearness, or a man’s heart collapsing in his chest.
She paced along the wet line where the tide had lately been, her steps deliberate. If she could master her breathing, if she could still her thoughts, perhaps she could still whatever answered them. She counted her breaths—four in, four held, four out—an old habit from childhood when she had tried to quiet a racing heart before a difficult conversation.
The sea moved as it always had, withdrawing and returning in long grey sweeps. A fishing boat came into view from the fog, rising and falling on the water’s roll as it traced the shore. The wind cut across her cheek and caught the edge of her bonnet.
She was being foolish to even consider it.
Darcy had nearly died when she was in London. That was the fact. Whatever stirred here could not be independent of him. Perhaps distance would thin it. Perhaps time would blunt it. Perhaps she had mistaken coincidence for design. But she could not escape the understanding thatsheneeded him, andheneeded…
She was not sure.
The tide crept closer to her boots. She did not notice at first. The wet sand darkened in a slow, encroaching band. The line she had been pacing retreated without announcement. She adjusted her path a step inland and continued walking, still staring at the ground, still counting.
He anchored me.
The thought struck her harder than the wind.
She saw again the library—the weight in the air, the strange relief that came only when he was near. Not ease, exactly. Not safety. But alignment. As though something wild within her had been forced into its proper channel by the mere fact of his presence.
And the cost of it had shown on him.
Colour drained. Breath shortened. That dreadful stagger in his pulse beneath her ear. She had believed herself the one being consumed.
What ifshehad been the one consuming?
Her breath faltered.
The next withdrawal of water seemed slower. The next return heavier. Not louder—just weighted, as though something beneath the surface pressed upward against it.
Elizabeth glanced up at last. The anchored boat beyond the breakwater tugged hard at its rope, snapping taut before slackening again. The fisherman repairing his net paused and looked toward the swell with a frown.
There was no change in the wind. Perhaps the tide was coming in.
She resumed walking, though more slowly now.
He would come.
If she sent for him—if she wrote a single line—he would come without hesitation. He would hold her when the fire leapt close. He would place himself between her and whatever force demanded… what of her?
He would call it duty. He would call it necessity. He would never call it love, but it would be that. Love of the purest sort.
She loved him.
The truth did not arrive gently. It did not bloom. It struck, complete and undeniable, like the tide against stone.
She loved him not for his endurance, nor for his rank, nor for the strange answering current that seemed to bind them. She loved him because he chose. Because even in pain, he would choose her safety above his own. Because he would bear what she would not ask him to bear.
And shecouldnot.
She could not summon him merely to watch him pale and struggle and fight for breath. She could not stand again with her ear to his chest, counting the ruin she brought upon him.
Another wave drove farther up the sand, soaking the hem of her gown.
But matters between them had changed before… were continually changing. What if it was different this time?
And if she did not go to him, who would suffer instead?
