“I’m afraid so,” she whispered, and the terror she hadn’t ever fully shown George was clear on her face.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” the earl asked. When his wife was silent, he bent his head, shame on every line of his countenance. George had never seen that before. That grief of regret. “B-because of what I did to you over the years. Because you feared I wouldn’t care the way you needed me to.”
Alice very kindly got up and went to the window, staring out and giving the family some space. Lily didn’t move. She only held George’s hand tighter.
“I’m here,” she whispered.
He nodded to her, holding her gentle stare a moment to ease the spinning around him.
“I love you, Louisa. I have been piss poor at showing it, but you are my world,” his father confessed, with a great deal more passion than George had ever heard him talk about anything. “My God, I think of the years I wasted being a fool, acting as a man of my station instead of the man you deserved.”
George drew back at that statement. Not only because it showed him that his father might not have always loved his mother well, but he had loved her truly. He also couldn’t help but be struck by that notion of wasted years.
Would that be what George lamented if he waited for the time to be “right” or for there be a time when no scandal would touch what he felt for Lily? Would he hate himself for not being more courageous or stronger? Would he lose her because he wasn’t brave enough, hadn’t been brave enough since the first moment he touched her and realized in some deep, primal place that she was his?
“I forgive you,” Louisa said. “I forgave you long ago, the moment you came back to me and I could see that you had changed. If my life is to be shorter than I hoped, I also want the last weeks or months or years of it to be good and happy. And with you.”
“They will be,” Lord Pembrooke promised, and kissed both her hands. “They will be. For all of us.”
He looked back at George and he knew his parents would also support whatever he did. Hadn’t they always, even when they shook their heads or rolled their eyes at his antics? Neither of them would hesitate if he declared a future that was as bright as he wanted it to be. And if they did? Well, it didn’t matter.
Because he was going to claim it.
He turned toward Lily. “I love you. I love you, Lily.”
Her lips parted and she glanced at his parents with a blush.
“I know, I know this isn’t the optimal way to do this, but wasted time is the worst waste of all. My father has just reminded me of that. I almost lost you because both of us were trying to live for the happiness of others. I cannot do that again. Lily, I want to marry you.”
* * *
“George,” Lily somehow managed to choke out when she couldn’t breathe and all she could see was him, even though his parents were both staring at them and Alice had jolted back toward them with a little gasp.
He never looked away from her. And there was no denying that every word he said, he meant. “Iloveyou,” he repeated. “Enough to face whatever comes, as long as it’s us together.”
Lily struggled to respond, not because she wasn’t certain of her feelings or his. She was very clear on both. But she had lived a life trying to please others. It was a hard habit to break.
“I was married a-a long time,” she said softly. “And didn’t have children. Your legacy is tied to that ability. If I denied you that…” She trailed off, for she couldn’t further voice that personal pain.
George stared at her. “You never mentioned this before.”
She shook her head. “You never could have been mine before. What would have been the point?”
Lord Pembrooke cleared his throat and without releasing his wife’s hand stepped a little closer. “It isn’t my place to interrupt, but if you did not have children with Thomas Manning, it was more likely his fault rather than anything to do with you.”
George’s eyes went wide even as Lily’s cheeks burned at this uncouth subject. “What do you mean?”
“Er, this will be indelicate but when we were youths we all used to make these idiotic wagers. Manning was the worst of them. One memorable one was when he claimed he could walk the length of a fence rail surrounding one of the meanest bulls in the county. He tried, the bull bumped the fence and Manning fell straight down with the fence…er…well he landed quite hard on his…”
George’s brows lifted. “He smashed his bollocks?”
“George!” his mother gasped out and Alice lifted her hands to bright red cheeks.
Lily couldn’t be shocked though. Not by the crude description at any rate. Her surprise came from the crux of the story, itself. “But he…he blamed me for my lack of breeding,” she whispered.
“Oh Lily,” Alice breathed with tears in her eyes.
“To do so was a cruelty to be certain,” Pembrooke said with a kind expression. “But likely untrue.”
