Page 161

He did not rush to continue. He watched her, allowing the truth to settle between them with the quiet certainty of a confession that had waited far too long to be spoken.

"Sophia's child is not mine."

Eliza stared at him, her emerald eyes searching his face for some indication that this was another misunderstanding, a kindness spoken merely to comfort her, yet she found nothing except sincerity.

"The kiss you witnessed..." His expression tightened, as though the memory itself caused him shame.

"She forced it on me before I had the opportunity to prevent it, and my greatest failing was not that I welcomed it, because I did not, but that I hesitated before ending it. I had spent over ten years believing Sophia would one day become my wife. I had imagined a lifetime with her, mourned that future well after it was truly lost and carried the memory of it so faithfully that, when she stood before me again, I found myself... bewitched."

He lowered his gaze briefly before looking back at her.

"I should have pushed her away immediately. I should have thought only of you. Instead, I concerned myself with sparing the feelings of a woman who had once meant everything to me and, in doing so, I neglected the feelings of the woman who had stolen my heart.”

The distant music from the ballroom became little more than a faint melody carried on the evening air, whilst, somewhere beyond the stained-glass windows, guests laughed softly amongst the gardens, blissfully unaware that the world inside the conservatory had narrowed until it contained only two people.

His thumb resumed its slow, absent journey across her cheek.

“For over a decade, I convinced myself that losing Sophia was the greatest tragedy my life would ever know. I carried that grief so faithfully that I ceased imagining any future that did not begin and end with duty, so that my loss would not be in vain. I told myself that such sacrifice was simply the price of being the Duke of Buckingham.”

“And then, when given the chance to embrace the very thing I had spent ten years believing I wanted, I did so.”

His thumb stilled against her cheek.

“And in that single moment, I realised I did not deserve you.”

A pained smile touched his mouth.

“That kiss will be the deepest regret of my life.” A faint smile, filled more with disbelief than amusement, touched the corner of his mouth.

"When you arrived at Winworth, at first you did little more than irritate me."

Despite herself, Eliza felt the corners of her own mouth threaten a smile of their own.

“At first, you merely occupied my thoughts. Then you began stealing my admiration, until one day I realised there was not a corner of my mind, a moment of my days, or a single one of my senses that did not belong to you.”

"I cannot tell you the precise moment it happened because I do not know it myself, only that I know a certain green-eyed chatty woman quietly stole every last affection I still possessed."

For weeks, Eliza had carried the certainty that, however kind Arthur had become, there would always remain a part of him that belonged to somebody else, a place she could never hope to reach because it had been claimed years before she had ever arrived at Winworth. Every day of distance between them had only strengthened that belief, until it had hardened into a truth she no longer thought to question.

Standing before him now, beneath the towering palms and marble pillars of the conservatory, with the scent of orange blossom hanging in the still evening air, she thought back to the conversation that had broken her. To the man who had listened as she laid bare her heart and confessed that she loved him, only to turn from her and walk away.

Her eyes began to burn at the memory.

She could hardly reconcile that man with the one standing before her now, telling her that there was not a single part of him that did not belong to her.

"How could you?" With so many words trying to escape her at once, those were the only ones that broke through, and they emerged little more than a whisper, fragile beneath the weight of everything she had carried alone for so many weeks.

"I told you I loved you..." Her voice faltered, the memory still sharp enough to steal the breath from her lungs. "I confessed that I loved you, Arthur, and you turned away from me as though my heart was something you could simply leave behind."

The warmth of his hand against her cheek suddenly felt almost unbearable. He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments.

"I thought I was protecting you. I lacked confidence in what would become of you if I gave in to my feelings."

She shook her head slowly, forcing herself to step backwards until his hand slipped reluctantly from her face.

"I never asked you to protect me from loving you." The tears she had fought so fiercely finally escaped, slipping silently down her cheeks as she searched his face for an answer she suspected did not exist.

"I asked you to love me."