“Not about the arrangement,” he said. “The arrangement was what it was, and it was what we agreed on. I am not going to pretend the terms were unreasonable or that either of us made a mistake in Brighton.” He held her gaze. “I was wrong about what happenedafterBrighton. About what I allowed myself to believeand then refused to believe and then…” He stopped. “I said you were a responsibility.”
“Yes,” she said clearly.
“That was not the truth. It was something I told myself because the truth was considerably more frightening, and I had been telling myself that particular version for long enough that I had convinced myself it was accurate.” He released a breath. “You were never a burden or a responsibility. You are the first thing in ten years that I wanted entirely for myself, without any of the duty or the obligation or the management that I had arranged my entire life around. And that frightened me more than anything Harwood could have arranged on a beach.”
She did not respond.
“I have spent twenty years,” he continued, “being careful about exactly this. About not beginning something that could become what my parents had. I watched love destroy everything it touched in that house, and I decided, at nineteen, that I was not going to build it. That I was not capable of building it correctly.” He paused. “I was wrong about that, too.”
The courtyard was very quiet. The children’s voices were distant and ordinary. The bare tree did not move.
“Cecily,” he rasped, “I am not afraid anymore.”
She looked at him.
“I was afraid in the study. I was afraid when I came home from the garden and lay in the dark and thought about my parents’ carriage and the solicitor’s office and every breakfast table I had sat at in a house full of noise. I was afraid when I sat across from you and said what I said and watched you digest it.” His voice was level and entirely honest.
“I have been afraid since the second morning you were in my house, because you walked into it and made it into something I did not know it was capable of being, and I understood that I was not going to be able to keep my distance.” He paused. “And then I tried anyway, because I am… because I have always been better at maintenance than at admission.”
“You are,” she said, very quietly.
“Yes.” The corner of his mouth curved. “I know that about myself.”
The cold air moved between them.
“Cecily, I do not want a marriage in name only,” he said. “I do not want an arrangement. I did not want an arrangement six weeks ago, but I told myself otherwise. I was wrong, and I have been wrong about several things in the past month, but that was the one that cost the most. I am not–” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Oh God, I’m rambling. I am not going to stand here and think about how to say this. I am going to say it plainly because you are a woman who has always preferred the truth to a comfortable version of it, so here I am.”
She was looking at him intently.
“I love you.” He felt the words leave him and stood with vulnerability. “I have loved you since you argued with me over the butter dish.” He held her gaze. “I love you, and I am not going to regret it, and I am not going to call it a mistake, and I am not going to step back.”
Something broke in her expression. She gasped, tears filling her eyes, and he itched to wipe them away.
“William,” she sobbed.
“I want you to come home,” he pleaded. “Not as an arrangement. Not as a convenience. But as my wife. Because I choose you.” He paused. “Because I would choose you, Cecily, in any room, in any circumstance, regardless of shores or scandals or anything the papers have said or will say. I would choose you.” He let that sink in for a moment. “And I want…”
He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and produced a folded document. He held it out to her.
She took it. Opened it. Read the first line.
Her hand went still on the page.
“Legal guardianship,” he explained. “Both of us. Her name on it, our names on it, everything Aldiss could make permanent before the end of the week.” He watched her face. “I know it is whatyou wanted. I know I told you our marriage was temporary and it would not be fair to a child. I was…” he trailed off. “I was telling myself the truth as I understood it then, but I understand it differently now. She should have a home. Arealone. With people who will stay.” A pause. “I intend to stay.”
Cecily looked at the document.
He watched her read it, saw the exact moment she read the baby’s name, the guardians’ names, the formal language that made it real and permanent and irrevocable. He saw what it did to her face and felt it do the same thing to his chest.
“William…” Her voice was shaky.
“I do not know whether you will have me. I know what I said in the study, and I know what it cost you, and I am not standing here expecting anything simply because I have said what I should have said weeks ago.” He looked her in the eye. “But I am asking. I am asking you to come home. And I will do everything within my considerable means and my apparently extensive capacity for being a thorough idiot to–”
“William,” she cut him off. “I never stopped.” Her voice broke on the last word. “I tried. I sat in Beatrice’s nursery for a week, telling myself it was foolish and I had agreed to the terms. I was not going to—I tried very hard.”
She looked at him with the clear blue eyes that had never once looked at him with anything other than the full, honest weight of what she was actually seeing.
“I never stopped. I love you so much it hurts.”
