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“I will never let anything happen to you,” he vowed. “Not while I still have breath in my body.”

“Oh, Nathaniel,” she breathed, relief washing over her in waves.

“What matters is that you are safe. That you are happy. That you wake up every morning in our home knowing you are loved exactly as you are, heir or no heir. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. “You are not a broodmare I purchased at auction. Whatever your father thinks marriage is for, he is wrong,” he declared vehemently. “You are my wife. You are Iris’s aunt. And you are enough, Laura. You, with all your fears, and dreams, and quirks, and habits, are entirely enough.”

Laura felt something in her chest crack open gently, like ice giving way to spring. It was not all at once, but enough for her to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Enough to breathe around it. Enough that, for the first time in her life, the old fear didn’t feel quite so much like a sentence. Perhaps one day she might learn to carry it differently, the way a scar made a man look more distinguished.

She leaned deeper into Nathaniel, and he pulled his coat around her like a blanket. Then he wrapped his arm around her, solid and unwavering, as the carriage rattled on through the dark streets of London, carrying them both home.

“Thank you,” she whispered, though the words were too small for what she felt.

“Always,” he murmured into her hair. “For as long as you’ll have me.”

“Always,” she replied.

She closed her eyes, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, the fear that had lived in her chest since her childhood had loosened its grip.

Not gone, not yet, but it was no longer something she had to face alone.

CHAPTER 21

The house was dark but for a single lamp left burning in the front hall when they arrived.

Laura had barely stepped through the door before she heard the quick patter of small feet on the stairs above.

“You’re back very early,” Iris said, appearing on the landing in her nightgown and clutching the banister as she peered down. “Miss Borden said you’d be hours yet.”

“We decided we’d rather be home,” Nathaniel said, looking up at her with a smile. “Is that all right with you?

Iris nodded and studied them both for a moment. “Was Lord Boiled Ham very awful?”

Laura let out a wet, startled laugh despite everything. Beside her, she felt Nathaniel’s shoulders relax before he laughed, too.

“I called him Lord this time!” Iris protested.

“He was awful,” Nathaniel said, climbing the stairs two at a time to scoop her up. “But we will not be seeing him again for a good while, so you needn’t trouble yourself over it further. Laura and I are quite fine.”

“Good.” Iris pressed her face into his shoulder, already half asleep again. “I don’t like it when Laura’s papa makes her sad.”

Laura’s chest tightened, warm and aching all at once as she went up the stairs to meet them. “I’m not sad, sweetheart.”

“Your eyes are sad,” Iris said, her voice muffled, then yawned. “Everything is all right, Laura.”

They put her back to bed together, tucking the blankets around her. Nathaniel smoothed her hair back from her forehead, and Laura pressed a kiss to her brow. By the time they eased the door shut behind them, she was fast asleep, one hand curled around the corner of her blanket.

They faced each other in the corridor.

“Come,” Nathaniel said quietly, offering his hand in the dim light. “Sit with me for a while, before you retire.”

Laura took it without hesitation and let him pull her down the corridor.

He led her not to his study, as she half expected, but to her chamber. A fire had already been laid, crackling low and warm against the evening chill.

He settled her into the chair nearest the hearth and knelt to build the fire back up. She motioned to the bell pull, and he shook his head. There was something so tender in the gesture: a duke on his knees before her fireplace, his coat discarded somewhere along the way, his sleeves pushed up.