He stepped forward. “Say the words,” he encouraged. “I will not let you drown.”
Her face crumpled. “Please.”
“Say them,” he repeated.
“I love you,” she whispered, ducking her head. “I have loved you from the first moment I met you. But we both know I have nothing to offer you.”
He frowned at how easily she accepted that she would lose. That was the place she had been placed for so long. By her family and friends…by him. When they were married, he would help her with that. He knew she could find her confidence. Emma had, after all, and she had been very similar to Helena when she and James first wed.
“You have yourself,” he said softly as he tucked a finger beneath her chin and made her look up at him. Tears sparkled in her eyes, and they broke his heart. “You are worth more than gold.”
“I am not,” she said. “And that isn’t what we’re talking about.”
“No, we’re talking about money,” he said with a sigh. “A topic that should never have to be mixed with love.”
“But it is!” she burst out, stepping away from him. “I know your position, Baldwin. I have accepted it as best I can. Please don’t rip my soul to shreds like this. I can hardly bear it.”
“Helena, listen to me.” He caught her hands so she couldn’t pull away, and she instantly stopped trying. She stared up at him and the first tear began to fall. She had been so strong, so good when it came to what he could and couldn’t do for her.
Now he saw how much of a struggle that had been. How cruel it had been to her. He hated himself for making her suffer even for one moment.
“Matthew offered to marry you,” he said.
She jerked back, her eyes going wide. “What?”
“I explained everything to him after yesterday after he saw us together in the parlor. Everything about my financial situation, about you and the cruelty your uncle’s has shown to you. I told him why I couldn’t be with you, despite my feelings, and he rightly called me out for what I am: a coward. He offered to marry you and save you from what your uncle could do—will do, if left to his own devices.”
Her breath was so short now he feared she would collapse. “I-I don’t understand. Tyndale would marry me?”
He nodded, and his stomach churned with even the memory of that moment. “Yes. When he made that offer my entire world shattered. I knew it would solve your problems. That it would allow me to see you safe. But it killed me to think of it. And I knew, without a doubt, that I could not live in a world where you weren’t mine.”
Her lips parted in shock. “Baldwin…” His name was a whisper on her lips, barely audible.
He continued, “I’ve kept the secret of my father’s bad behavior, and my own, for years. But for you I’ve told my family.”
She drew away. “You told your family?”
“Everything. Ewan has offered to help. And if he does, then there is some hope for me. I cannot promise you the life that Tyndale would. He has funds, he could make you a princess if you wanted to be treated as such. You deserve that. But the life that I will promise you is filled with love, Helena. I will not lie and say it wouldn’t be a struggle. It would be austere. There may be scandal if some of those debts are revealed. But I love you.”
“You are offering me a future?” she asked. “Baldwin, that is throwing away everything you could have! Many of the prospects would help get you out of the situation entirely. You could rebuild, you could—”
“I want you.” He cupped her cheeks gently. “I love you, Helena. And that has come to matter far more than anything else in this world. I love you and I want to marry you.”
She was blinking. Just blinking. Like she didn’t understand. Like she couldn’t.
“You would give up everything for me?” she whispered.
He drew back, for he had long ceased to think of marrying her as giving anything up. It would be gaining everything. And yet she still didn’t understand that. “I would walk across the sun for you,” he said. “I would swim across the sea. I would give up my title, my name, any small thing I had left. I would die for you, Helena Monroe. And I will live for you if you just stop looking at me like I’ve gone mad and tell me that you’ll be mine. My wife. For the rest of my days, be they short or long. Please, please say you’ll marry me.”
She was trembling now, her façade cracking. “And what if you come to regret it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I never could. Don’t you understand? You are the only person in this world who I can be who I am, truly who I am, around. You lighten my every load, how could I ever regret that? Please. Please, Helena.”
Her breath drew in on a sob, and she nodded. “Yes. Yes, I love you, and the idea of being away from you, of being alone without you, has broken me into so many pieces. If you are sure, then yes. I will marry you, Baldwin.”
The joy that flooded him was so powerful and so foreign that he nearly buckled under it. He drew her in and kissed her, his fingers smoothing over her cheeks as he tasted her tears, tasted his own. She wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted against him, flattening her body to his like she feared she would lose him. That this was a dream or a fantasy.
And it was. Just one that they would get to live out together forever. In that moment, he fully put aside his worries and surrendered to the gentle passion of her kiss. To the realization that she would be his now. Forever.
