He pressed one last, slow kiss to the inside of her knee, then lifted his head.
Elinor lay with one arm across her eyes, her chest still rising and falling in uneven drafts. Her spectacles had been pushed up into her hair at some point, and without them the room softened to shapes and firelight. Her lips were parted, and a flush spread from her cheeks down her throat to the skin he had bared.
She felt the fabric of her dress drawn back over her shoulders. He did not refasten it. He simply covered her, the way one draws a blanket over someone who has fallen asleep, and then he shifted onto the chaise beside her.
The narrow cushion was not built for two. He settled on his side, and Elinor turned into him without hesitation, her forehead pressing against his collarbone, her hand resting flat on his chest. His heart hammered beneath her palm.
Neither of them spoke. The fire crackled. The room smelled of wood smoke and something warm she could not name, and Elinor let her breathing slow against him.
Her fingers curled once against his shirt, then relaxed.
He pressed his lips to the top of her head and held her, and she let him, because the quiet of this room asked nothing of her, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she did not feel the need to perform anything, not composure, not gratitude, not the careful smallness her stepmother demanded. She simply was.
When she stirred, he did not move. He let her be the one to pull back, to blink up at him, to reach for her spectacles and settle them on her nose.
The room came back into focus. So did the rest of the world.
“This cannot happen again.”
Elinor said it first. She sat in the chair with her cloak pulled around her shoulders and her hair falling in loose waves, andthe words tasted like ashes, because she did not mean them. But she said them because they were true, and because if she did not build the wall back now, she would never be able to.
Lucien stood at the window with his back to her. He nodded.
“It cannot,” he agreed. “Not if we wish to continue the ruse.”
The wordrusesat in the air between them and felt smaller than it once had. Thinner. Like a garment worn too many times.
“If this becomes real,” Elinor said, choosing each word with the precision she gave her lessons, “then when it ends, it will destroy us both. You said yourself that you cannot offer what a husband would offer. And I cannot afford to love a man who believes he is incapable of staying.”
She watched his shoulders tighten at the wordlove,and she knew she had found the wall he could not climb over. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. Vivian had taught him that love was the thing people used to leave, and no amount of wanting could undo eleven years of believing that in a single night.
“So, we continue as we were,” he said. “The engagement runs its course. You find a suitable match. And this…” he gestured at the room, at the chaise, at the space between them that was both too wide and not wide enough. “This was what you asked for. One night.”
“It was.” Elinor rose and fastened her cloak. At the door, she paused, one hand on the frame.
“Thank you,” she said. “For giving me what I asked for. And for telling me about Vivian. I know that cost you something.”
He turned from the window. His face was drawn, his eyes holding hers with an expression that looked like a man watching something precious slip through his fingers and choosing not to close his hand.
He nodded.
She slipped through the door and was gone.
Chapter Nineteen
“You went downstairs for a glass of water.”
The voice came from the darkness of the corridor, and Elinor’s heart seized so violently she nearly lost her footing on the top stair.
A silhouette stood against the far wall, half-hidden by the curtain that framed the landing window. Moonlight caught the edge of a pale nightgown and the loose fall of dark hair.
Joanna.
Elinor opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her cloak was still damp from the night air, her shoes muddied from the lane behind Morland House, and her hair hung in the same loose state she had left in. No amount of invention could explain what she looked like at this hour.
Joanna stepped forward. Her expression held no accusation, no curiosity, only the quiet resolve of a young woman making a decision she had already weighed.
“You went downstairs for a glass of water,” she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper. “That is what I saw, if anyone asks. You were thirsty, and you came back to bed. Nothing more.”
