“Shall I have dinner prepared, Your Grace?”
“Something simple, in the family dining-room,” Marianne said. “We have had enough formality for a lifetime.”
That evening, the three of them dined at the smaller table, free of scrutiny. Catherine raised her glass.
“To surviving Venetia Carlisle.”
“To family,” Adrian said.
“To unexpected victories,” Marianne added.
They drank, and for the first time since that cursed invitation had arrived, Marianne felt wholly at peace. Venetia had been defeated not by violence or ruin, but by truth and honour.
Later, in the privacy of their bedchamber, Adrian pulled Marianne against him with newfound tenderness.
“I meant it,” he said without preamble. “What I said in the carriage. About love.”
“I know.”
“It does not mend everything. I’m still damaged, still difficult—still more beast than prince.”
“I am not in search of a prince.” She turned to face him. “I want a partner. Someone who counts my merchant blood as strength, not stain. Someone who trusts me to fight my own battles, yet stands beside me when I do. Someone who infuriates me, challenges me, and makes me feel alive.”
“And if I said I wished to lock you in this room and keep the world from you?”
“I should tell you that is fear speaking, not the man I married.”
He studied her in the firelight, wonder softening the harsh planes of his face. “How did I find you?”
“You did not. I found you—at the opera, refusing to look away.”
“The best night of my life,” he said quietly. “Even then, I knew that falling for you would change everything.”
“And has it?”
He did not answer in words. Instead, he showed her—with hands and lips and murmured vows that would have scandalised society yet delighted his wife. He loved her wholly, reverently, with a fervour that spoke of awe as much as desire—as though he still could not quite believe she was real, was his, was staying.
Much later, as dawn crept through the curtains, Marianne woke to find Adrian at the window, the wolf figurine in his hands.
“Cannot sleep?” she asked softly.
“Thinking.”
“Of what?”
“Protection,” he said. “The wolf guards the pack, but tonight the pack guarded itself. Catherine faced her ghosts. You turned Venetia’s weapons upon her. And I—” He gave a rueful smile. “I managed restraint. Miraculous.”
“We are stronger than you thought.”
“You are. Both of you.” He came back to bed, drawing her close. “It terrifies me.”
“Why?”
“Because if you do not need my protection, what use am I?”
She framed his face with her hands. “Oh, Adrian. We do not need your protection. We need you. Your love, your partnership, your presence. Those are worth more than any shield.”
“I do not know how to be that.”
