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“That everyone I allowed myself to love could be taken from me, and that the safest thing a man could do was shut everyone out. I could not afford to grieve, because grief would have unraveled me. I could not afford to trust anyone, because trust is simply loss on a longer timeline. So I locked the west tower and threw myself into my quest for vengeance. I called it duty and told myself that was the same thing as finding justice.”

He took a step toward her.

“And then you came,” he said. “And you changed all of it. It has been slow, realizing all of this, but I see it now.”

Laura felt her eyes sting but did nothing to stop it. She just looked at him and let the tears come.

“From the moment you came here, you changed all of it.” His eyes lit up. “In the garden that first week, with dirt on your wrists, letting Iris, a six-year-old, correct your planting because you understood that being corrected by her would matter more to her than being taught by you. I watched you open every curtain in a castle that had been gloomy for three years. I watched you make her laugh in a way I hadn’t heard since Isabella died, and somewhere along the way, I understood you had stopped being her caretaker long before I noticed. You were family. You are family, regardless of how our marriage began.”

“Nathaniel…” Laura let out a shaky breath, emotion rising in her throat.

“And… I have been afraid of how much I care for you, Laura,” Nathaniel added. “Terrified of it. Because caring for someone means leaving myself vulnerable, and I did not believe I could survive that twice.” He closed the distance between them at last, stopping close enough that she had to tip her head back to hold his eyes. “But I don’t want to run from it any longer. I’m tired, Laura. I’m tired of being a man who guards himself so carefully that he ends up alone in a study at three in the morning while his family sleeps two floors above him.”

“I’m tired of that too,” she said softly, her lips curling up.

“I love you,” he murmured. “You are the reason my life is something other than grief and duty. And I do not want a marriage where you follow a set of rules I laid out on our wedding night because I was too frightened to imagine anything better. I want a real marriage. I want you beside me for all of it. The ugly parts as well as the easy ones. I want to share my life with you, not merely house you in it. In sickness, in health… in all of it I choose you. Over and over.”

For a long moment, Laura could not speak. It was not only his words, though they undid her thoroughly. It was that he had come here to say them. That he had not waited for her to wear him down, had not let her guess at his meaning through action alone the way he had for months.

He had chosen her out loud and handed her the whole raw truth of what it cost him to do it. He was not protecting her from his pain anymore. He was trusting her with it.

“I never wanted you to carry it alone,” she began when she finally found her voice. “That is all I have ever wanted, Nathaniel, from the very first argument we had in your study. Not to be spared the hard things, but to be let in. To stand next to you while you carried them, so you didn’t have to do it by yourself. I would rather argue with you than agree with anyone else.”

“I know that now.”

“I love you.” She reached up and took his face in both hands, feeling the rough scrape of his beard beneath her palms. “I loved you before the damn ball, and I loved you through every day of the past week when you would barely look at me, and I will go on loving you whether or not you ever find what you’re looking for. That was never conditional. I need you to understand that. I did not think this was possible for me, but here we are.”

Nathaniel closed his eyes briefly.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “For pushing you away. For telling myself it was for your protection, when it was only ever for mine. For the way I looked at you in that ballroom and decided what your expression meant without asking you. I did not… I did not know how else to handle the situation. But I know now.”

“I forgive you.” Laura held his gaze. “I do, entirely, and I want you to hear it plainly. But you cannot do it again, Nathaniel. Not this way. If something breaks in you, come and tell me that it’s broken. Shout at me if you need to. Sit in silence with me for a week if that’s what it takes. But don’t shut the door and leave me standing outside it, wondering what I’ve done. I cannot live in a house with locked rooms again. I did that for twenty-two years in my father’s house, and I will not do it in yours.”

“It isn’t mine,” he corrected. “It’s ours. And I’ll try. I can’t promise I’ll always do it well, because I’ve had a lifetime of practice doing it badly and the habit will take some breaking. But I promise you I’ll try every time, and I’ll let you tell me when I’m bloody awful at it.”

“That,” Laura said, “is the only promise I wanted to hear.”

She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him. His hands settled on her waist as he slid his tongue into her mouth, exploring her, moaning at her taste.

She fisted the front of his rumpled shirt, pulling him closer with a strength that surprised them both. She tasted exhaustion and relief on him, an intoxicating combination. His hands slid to her back and up into her hair, and he made a low sound against her mouth that she felt in her core.

“I have missed you,” he said roughly against her temple. “God, Laura, this week⁠—”

“Don’t,” she said. “It was awful, but it is over. Finished.”

He kissed her again, and she had just managed to wrap her arms around his neck when a knock sounded at the door.

Nathaniel dropped his forehead to her shoulder and made a sound that was almost a laugh. “That girl,” he huffed, “has impeccable timing.”

“Your Graces.” Sarah’s breathless voice called through the door. “Lady Iris is awake and is asking for both of you.”

“We will be there at once,” Nathaniel called back.

Iris sat up against a wall of pillows when they came in, pale and hollow-eyed and, to Nathaniel’s overwhelming relief, entirely and unmistakably herself.

“There you are,” she said, her eyes brightening. “I’ve been awake for ages.”

“You have been awake for four minutes.” Nathaniel shook his head. “I’ve received reports.”