Martin took a breath. Then another. He looked at the ceiling, at the floor, at the spines of the books surrounding them…anywhere but at her.
"About a month ago," he began, "I received a package. It arrived at Montehood House without warning, no return address, no accompanying note. Just a bundle of letters, tied with blue ribbon, addressed in a hand I recognized."
Vanessa's stomach dropped.
"Your hand," Martin continued, still not meeting her eyes. "I knew it immediately. I had seen it on notes you had written to Edward, on letters you had sent to mutual friends. I would know your handwriting anywhere."
"Martin…"
"I should not have read them." The words came out in a rush now, tumbling over each other. "I knew they were private. I knew they were not meant for me…or rather, they were addressed to me, but never intended to be sent. I understood that the moment I opened the first one. And I should have stopped. I should have burned them, or returned them, or done anything other than what I actually did."
"Which was?"
"Read them." He finally looked at her, and the expression on his face was raw…stripped of all pretense, all protection. "All of them. Every word. I read them once, and then I read them again, and then I kept them in my desk and read them a third timebecause I could not…I could not believe what they said. What they meant."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the ambient sounds of the bookshop seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of them suspended in a moment that felt infinite.
"You know," Vanessa said quietly. It was not a question.
"Yes. I know that you…" He swallowed hard. "I know how you feel about me. How you have felt, for years. I know about the supper waltzes and the longing glances and the…" A strangled laugh escaped him. "The cushion incident. You wrote about the cushion incident. Did you know that was the moment I become forever yours.”
She stared at him. "I beg your pardon?"
"The cushion. When you threw it at my head and called me a pretentious pedant. That was the moment." His voice was rough, unsteady. "I had admired you before then…how beautiful you were…how clever... But that was the moment I realised I was in trouble.”
"I didn't call you a pretentious pedant. I called you an insufferable pedant."
"Ah. My mistake." A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. "The distinction is important, I suppose."
"Very important. Pretentious implies you were putting on airs. Insufferable implies you were simply... yourself."
"And my natural self is insufferable?"
"Frequently."
The familiar rhythm of their banter settled something in her chest, loosened a knot she hadn't realised had formed. This was still them. Whatever revelations lay between them, whatever secrets had been exposed, they were still Martin and Vanessa, still capable of arguing about word choices in a dusty bookshop on a Tuesday afternoon.
"I should have told you immediately," Martin said, his voice sobering. "When the letters arrived. I should have come to you and explained…should have returned them to you, let you decide what to do with them. Instead I…" He broke off, shaking his head. "I kept them. I read them over and over. And then I used them."
"Used them?"
"The meeting in the park. That was not coincidence, Vanessa. I knew you rode there, you had written about it. I knew the time, the path and the fact that you preferred the eastern trails because they were quieter." He looked sick with guilt. "I engineered the encounter. I wanted to see you, to be near you, and I used your own words to make it happen."
"I know."
He blinked. "You... know?"
"I suspected. After…well, after everything. The park, the gift, dinner, last night." She met his eyes steadily. "You were different, Martin. You had been different for weeks. Looking at me in ways you never had before. Saying things that felt... significant. And I kept thinking about the letters, kept wondering if somehow, impossibly, you had received them."
"You suspected." He said the words slowly, as though testing them. "All this time, you suspected, and you said nothing?"
"What was I supposed to say?'Excuse me, Your Grace, but have you by chance received and read six years' worth of my private confessions?' It seemed rather forward."
"Forward." He laughed, a proper laugh this time, startled out of him. "You were worried about beingforward?"
"There are rules, Martin. Social conventions. One does not simply accuse a duke of reading one's diary."
"Those letters were hardly a diary. They were…" He stopped, and something shifted in his expression. Something warmer,more tender. "They were the most beautiful things anyone has ever written about me. Or to me. Or for me."
