Her vision blurred. The tears she had refused at the altar, at the breakup, at the last dance, at every moment where the grief had been too large to let out, rose and fell freely.
“I love you,” she said. “I have loved you since you named an orphanage after a constellation I taught, and I was too stubborn to say it because I did not believe a man like you could want awoman like me. But you did. You do. And I am done pretending otherwise.”
Lucien cradled her face in his hands. His thumbs brushed the tears from her cheeks. Her spectacles sat crooked between them, and he straightened them with the same careful touch he had used in the schoolroom, in the alcove, in every moment where he saw her clearly rather than look away.
“Marry me,” he said. “Truly, this time. No ruse, no arrangement, and no end date. Marry me because I cannot imagine my life without you in it, and I do not want to try.”
“Yes.” The word left her mouth whole and certain, carrying no hesitation, no qualification, no fear. “Yes, Lucien. A thousand times.”
He kissed her. In the church, in front of the vicar and the empty pews and her furious stepmother and her stunned step-siblings, the Duke of Fairmont kissed the bespectacled wallflower, and it was not fierce or desperate or stolen. It was tender and unhurried and tasted like the beginning of something that had no end.
“Where is my daughter?” Lord Morland, stood in the entrance hall of his London townhouse the following morning, leaning on a cane but upright, his color improved, his eyes carrying the fire of a father who had received a duke’s letter and traveled through the night.
Lucien stood beside him. They had met at dawn, Lord Morland’s carriage arriving at Fairmont House before the servants had finished laying the morning fires.
The older man had gripped Lucien’s hand, studied his face, and said, “Take me to her.”
Elinor came down the stairs. At the sight of her father, the composure she had held through the wedding, the confrontation, and the long, sleepless night gave way.
“Papa.”
She ran to him. He gathered her close, and she buried her face in his shoulder as he held her as he had when she was a child, his hand steady at the back of her head.
“I am here,” he said. “I am here, and I am sorry I was not sooner.”
Rebecca appeared at the top of the stairs. The color drained from her face.
Lord Morland released Elinor and straightened. The gentle father vanished. In his place stood the Marquess of Morland, a man whose authority in his own house had been absent too long.
“Rebecca.” His voice was quiet and final. “You will pack your things. You will leave for the country estate by this evening.You will remain there until I decide otherwise, which may be permanently.”
Rebecca’s hand gripped the banister. “William, you cannot possibly?—”
“I have read the duke’s letter. I know about the arranged marriage. I know about Lord Bramwell” His voice did not rise. It did not need to. “And I know that Dr. Helmsworth has been reporting to you, not to me.”
Rebecca’s face went white. Not the calculated pallor of a woman performing shock, but the genuine drain of color that came with being caught.
“Every letter I sent to London, you intercepted or delayed. Every time I asked to travel, Helmsworth cautioned against it. Rest, he told me. The journey would be too taxing. London air would worsen the condition.” Lord Morland’s grip on his cane tightened. “I trusted that man with my health, and you turned him into your gatekeeper. You kept me in the country so you could do as you pleased with my daughter, and I was too ill and too trusting to see it.”
“William, the doctor acted in your best interest. Your heart?—”
“My heart survived a night that nearly killed me and a dawn carriage ride to London. My heart is not the organ in this family that failed my daughter.” He drew a breath, steadying himself. “You are my wife, and I will honor that bond, but you will not remain in this house, and you will not come near Elinor again.”
He turned to Belinda and Gilbert, who stood frozen on the landing.
“Papa.” Elinor touched his arm. He looked at her, and she saw the fury battling the gentleness, the father at war with the marquess. “Give them a chance. Send them away but give them a chance to become better. Belinda is young, and Gilbert is foolish, but they are not beyond repair.”
Lord Morland studied his daughter. The pride in his eyes was so fierce it burned.
“You are a better person than I am, Elinor.”
“I am your daughter. That is all.”
He turned back to Belinda and Gilbert. “Six months. You will go to the country with your mother. You will return to London in six months, and when you do, you will conduct yourselves with the grace and dignity your stepsister has shown. If you cannot manage that, you will not return at all.”
Belinda’s face crumpled. Gilbert, for once, said nothing.
“Joanna.” Elinor looked up the staircase. Her stepsister stood on the landing above, her face streaked with tears, her hands clasped. “Please let Joanna stay. She has shown me nothing but kindness.”
