“You have already given me more than I deserve.”
“Nonsense. You deserve far more than you allow yourself to believe.” She smiled, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw.“That is one of your more infuriating qualities, you know. This insistence that you are somehow unworthy of happiness.”
“I was unworthy. For two years, I was—”
“For two years, you were grieving. You were struggling. You were doing the best you could with an impossible situation.” Serena’s voice was firm. “That does not make you unworthy, Nathaniel. That makes you human.”
He caught her hand and held it against his cheek, his eyes closing briefly. “How do you do that? How do you make everything seem so clear? So simple? When I am drowning in doubt and self-recrimination, you speak a few words, and suddenly I can breathe again.”
“It is a gift,” Serena said solemnly. “Also, I am exceptionally wise.”
“Modest, too.”
“False modesty is tedious. I prefer honest acknowledgement of my considerable virtues.”
Nathaniel laughed—a real laugh, full and unguarded—and Serena felt her heart swell at the sound. She had heard him laugh before, but never quite like this. Never with such freedom, such joy, such complete abandonment of the careful control he usually maintained.
“I love you,” he said, the words coming easily now, as though he had been saying them all his life. “Have I mentioned that recently?”
“Not in the past several minutes. I daresay I was beginning to feel neglected.”
“We cannot have that.” He pulled her closer, his arms wrapping around her waist. “I love you, Serena Collard. I love your wisdom and your wit and your refusal to let me wallow in self-pity. I love the way you look in this dress, and the way you smell like lavender, and the way your eyes light up when you are about to say something devastatingly clever.”
“My eyes do not light up.”
“They absolutely do. It is one of your more alarming tells. I have learned to brace myself whenever I see it.”
Serena laughed, leaning into his embrace. “You make me sound terrifying.”
“You are terrifying. Magnificently, wonderfully terrifying.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead; a gesture so tender it made her chest ache. “I cannot imagine my life without you anymore. I cannot imagine this house without you, or the children without you, or myself without you. You have become so thoroughly woven into the fabric of my existence that removing you would unravel everything.”
“That is rather a lot of pressure.”
“Is it? I thought it was romantic.”
“It can be both.” Serena tilted her head back to look at him, her expression softening. “I feel the same way, you know. About you, about this house, about all of it. A month ago, I was agoverness with no family and no prospects and no expectation of ever belonging anywhere. Now I am engaged to a marquess, preparing to stand in a mother’s place to three children I adore, and more terrified than I have ever been in my life.”
Nathaniel’s brow furrowed. “Terrified? Of what?”
“Of everything. Of not being enough. Of failing you, or the children, or myself. Of waking up one day and discovering that this was all a dream, that I am still alone, that none of this was ever real.”
“It is real.” Nathaniel’s voice was fierce. “I am real. This—” He gestured at the garden around them, at the house in the distance. “All of this is real. And I will spend every day of our lives proving it to you, if that is what it takes.”
“Every day seems excessive.”
“Every day,” he repeated firmly. “Every single day. Until you believe it so completely that you forget you ever doubted.”
Serena felt tears prick at her eyes—she had cried more in the past twenty-four hours than in the previous year combined—but she blinked them back. “You are very stubborn.”
“I am. It is one of my more endearing qualities.”
“I was going to say infuriating.”
“Endearing and infuriating. They are often the same thing.” He smiled, and there was something in his expression—awarmth, a certainty, a peace—that made Serena’s heart turn over in her chest. “May I kiss you?”
The question caught her off guard. They had confessed their love, announced their engagement, exchanged promises and a hundred tender words. But they had not yet kissed—not the way Serena had dreamed of during all those restless nights when she had lain awake thinking of him.
“I thought you would never ask,” she said.
