“I need to tell you something,” she managed, her voice thin. “Something I should have told you weeks ago, but I was too much of a coward.” She drew a shaky breath, tasting tears at the back of her throat. “Last Tuesday, I was passing your study. The door was open, and I heard you speaking with Rafe.”
Understanding flickered across his features, but before he could speak, she raised a trembling hand. “Please. Let me finish or I will never have the courage.”
Her fingers resumed their torture of her gown, needing something to destroy that was not the fragile hope in his eyes. “I learned that you were trapped. That you did not enter that riddle challenge willingly. That you were...” The words emerged between shallow gasps, her chest too tight for proper breathing. “You were drunk. You did not understand what ‘traditional stakes’ meant. You thought it was just gambling for money, not marriage.”
Tears coursed down her cheeks unchecked. “Mrs. Dove-Lyon tricked you just as thoroughly as she tricked me. More so, because at least I knew what I was agreeing to. You thought it was just another wager, just coins and banknotes, and instead you got...” Her voice cracked. “Instead you got trapped with me.”
“Victoria—”
“No, please, there is more.” The words tumbled out faster now. “After I heard you, I could not bear it. The guilt is crushing me. So today I went to the Lyon’s Den.” She saw his sharp intake of breath but pressed on. “I begged Mrs. Dove-Lyon to break the contract and offered her everything I had. Surely, there must have been some way to free you.”
Her hands clenched so tightly that her nails bit into her palms; the small pain was nothing compared to the agony of confession. “She said the contract is ironclad. Legal and binding until death. There is no breaking it, no escape clause, no amount of money that could dissolve it. We are bound permanently, trapped together for life because of my desperation and her manipulations.”
The sob that escaped her felt like it tore something vital from her chest. “I am so sorry. God, Rees, I am so desperately sorry. You are imprisoned with me forever because I was too selfish to face ruin alone. You can never be free, never have the life you should have had, never choose a bride you actually wanted.”
She hunched forward, arms wrapped around her middle as if she could hold herself together. “Sterling destroyed my reputation for sport, but what I have done to you is worse. He took my good name, but I have taken your entire future. Your freedom. Your choices. Everything.”
The silence that followed felt infinite, broken only by her ragged breathing and the ticking of that clock. She could not bear to look at him, to see disgust replace the concern that had marked his features. Instead, she stared at the carpet’s intricate pattern, watching her tears darken the wool in spreading circles.
“I understand if you hate me,” she whispered to the floor. “I understand if you can never forgive this. I just—I could not keep pretending I did not know. Could not keep accepting your kindness when you do not even know the full measure of what I have done to you. You deserved the truth, even if it destroys whatever we have built between us.”
***
The sight of Victoria, crumpled in on herself with shoulders shaking from sobs, shattered something fundamental in Rees’s chest. It was not anger at her confession, but a desperate need to ease the guilt consuming her. He dropped to his knees before her chair, reaching for her hands as they clutched her gown. Her fingers were ice-cold and trembling so violently that he had to wrap both hands around them to still their frantic movement.
“Victoria, look at me.” His voice emerged rougher than intended, thick with emotions he could not quite name. When she kept her face averted, he freed one hand to touch her chin gently, coaxing her to meet his gaze. “Please, darling. Look at me.”
The endearment slipped out without thought, but it made her eyes fly to his, wide and swimming with tears that caught the lamplight. The despair in those dark depths constricted his throat, but he forced himself to speak with careful deliberation, each word weighted with importance.
“Do you want to be free of me?” The question hung between them, delicate as glass. “If there were a way to break the contract, some legal mechanism neither Mrs. Dove-Lyon nor the courts recognize, would you take it? Would you want to be released from this marriage?”
Her head jerked up so quickly that he worried she might injure herself, her expression shifting from despair to shock. “What? No!” The words burst from her with a vehemence that surprised them both. “No, I do not want—that is not why I—”
She gulped air like someone drowning, trying to form coherent sentences through her tears. “I love you. Do you not understand? That is what makes this so terrible. I love you, and I want to be your wife, want the life we have been building, but I have trapped you into something you never chose and—”
“Stop.” He tightened his grip on her hands, feeling the frantic pulse at her wrists gradually slow. “Victoria, stop. You are torturing yourself with guilt over something that no longer matters.”
“How can you say that? You were trapped—”
“Yes, I was.” The admission came easily, free of the anger that might have accompanied it weeks ago. “I was drunk, confused, and I signed something I did not understand. I was furious when I realized what had happened. Those first weeks, I could barely look at you without resentment.” He felt her flinch and squeezed her hands more firmly. “But Victoria, that anger is gone. It has been gone for weeks now.”
He shifted closer on his knees, bringing their joined hands to rest against his chest where his heart beat with sudden clarity. “These past weeks, getting to know you, falling for you, had nothing to do with any contract. No legal document forced me to laugh at your observations about grain futures. No obligation made me look forward to our evening conversations or feel proud when you played at Lady Thornbridge’s salon.”
“But if you could undo it—”
“I would not.” The words rang with conviction. “Victoria, even if Mrs. Dove-Lyon appeared right now with some magical document that could dissolve everything, I would not sign it.”
Her breath caught, eyes searching his face as if looking for deception. What she found instead must have been convincing because fresh tears spilled down her cheeks, though these seemed different—less desperate, more wondering.
“You are the best thing that has ever happened to me,” he continued, lifting her hands to his lips and pressing kisses to each knuckle. “Yes, I was trapped initially. Yes, I was angry. But somewhere between your first smile at breakfast and the way you demolished Lord Fairweather’s assumptions about textile manufacturing at dinner last week, that trap became a gift.”
“Rees—”
“I love you.” The declaration emerged with the force of absolute truth, brooking no argument. “Not because I am obligated to, not because we are legally bound, but because you are brilliant, brave, and kind. Because you make me laugh with your observations about society. Because watching you play the pianoforte feels like witnessing something sacred. Because you see patterns in my investments that I have missed after years of study.”
He released her hands only to frame her face between his palms, thumbs brushing away her tears. “I love your determination to save your family even at the cost of your own happiness. I love the way you hum Mozart when you think no one is listening. I love that you steal bits of my toast at breakfast and pretend you have not. I love your courage in facing down society’s censure.”
“You love me?” The words emerged so softly he barely heard them, wonder replacing despair in her expression.
