He did not say he would fix it all or that there would be no fear. He did not offer a pretty lie and call it comfort.
“I know,” she said.
Amelia pressed one hand to her chest and thought of her mother in a ruined tower seven centuries away, clutching a satin purse and loving a daughter she could no longer reach.
“I hope she knows,” Amelia whispered.
Thomas’s voice was low. “What?”
“That I was loved here too.”
He turned her in his arms.
“She will.”
Amelia wanted to ask how he knew. Wanted to press the fragile place until certainty came out. But some things could not be proved. They could only be held.
So she nodded.
Behind them, Alyson’s sleepy voice rose from inside the hall. “Where’s Amelia?”
“Lady Amelia,” Walter corrected.
Alyson groaned. “That’s too many syllables.”
Thomas’s mouth curved against Amelia’s hair.
Wat said, “She’s with Thomas.”
“Lord Ashcombe,” Walter corrected again.
Hob laughed. “Give up, old man. You’ll not reorder the house tonight.”
“I can try,” Walter said.
“You always do.”
Amelia smiled through sudden tears.
Thomas bent and kissed her, slow and soft, with the hall glowing behind them and the cold stars above. When he lifted his head, Amelia rested her palm against his chest, over the steady beat of his heart.
“I love you,” she said.
His breath caught, as if the words still had the power to surprise him.
“I love you,” he answered.
Together, they went back into the hall, where their children waited, where friends argued and laughed beneath smoke-blackened rafters, and where the life Amelia had chosen opened before her, not safe, not simple, but hers.
And when the door closed behind them, Ashcombe held.
EPILOGUE
One Year Later—Present Day, England
Bree Donnelly had worn waterproof mascara to her own wedding and only cried through half the ceremony, which, considering she’d married a man she’d known for eight days, seemed like tremendous personal growth.
She hadn’t worn waterproof mascara to the chapel tour which had been rather poor planning on her part.
