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Her chest tightened painfully.

"For weeks..." she whispered, "I believed I had imagined everything between us. Every glance. Every smile. Every conversation.”

She drew a slow, trembling breath.

“And every day since you broke my heart, I have woken telling myself that I was a fool, because if a man truly loved a woman, he would seek her out. He would reach for her. And what a misguided soul I had been to miss all the signs, to believe I had somehow found a place in your heart when you had warned me from the very beginning that I never would. I convinced myself that you had been right all along.”

Silence settled between them, broken only by the distant strains of the orchestra drifting through the stained-glass windows.

This was the declaration she had longed for. The one she had dreamed of hearing almost from the moment she had first realised that the impossible Duke of Buckingham had quietly become the centre of her world.

She had imagined joy. Relief.

The certainty that everything which had come before no longer mattered. Instead, she found herself standing before the man she loved with every piece of her heart, wondering whether she possessed the courage to place it back into the hands that had once, however unintentionally, shattered it.

She loved Arthur. There was no use pretending otherwise.

She loved him with a depth that frightened her. Because if Arthur had convinced himself once that she would be happier without him, what was to stop him convincing himself of the same thing again?

She looked up at him, tears glistening upon her lashes.

"What happens," she asked so quietly she scarcely recognised her own voice, "What happens when you wake tomorrow, or next month, or next year, and convince yourself that I need protecting?" Eliza’s voice trembled.

Arthur closed the distance between them before she had fully realised he was moving.

Instinct urged her backwards, yet after only two hurried steps her shoulders met the cool stone of one of the towering marble pillars that rose towards the glass ceiling above. Her heart thundered so violently she wondered whether he could hear it.

Hands rested either side of her, caging her not with force but with certainty. Arthur looked at her for what felt like an age.

"I will not leave you again," he said quietly, every syllable carrying the weight of a promise rather than a reassurance.

“I do not know what the future holds, but I do possess certainty that even if I had but one day left upon God’s earth, I would spend every second of it loving you. And if, when it was over, I were condemned to Hell, I would spend eternity envying the world you continued to grace."

“And if that does not reassure you, consider me a wretch, because I cannot set you free while another man offers you the life I should have had the courage to give you myself.”

Slowly he lowered his head until his forehead rested gently against hers, the familiar gesture carrying none of the uncertainty that had once defined them. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin and for the first time since she had known him there was nothing left standing between them except the words neither had dared speak.

His hand slipped from the pillar to cradle her face once more.

"All I can offer you now is the truth I should have spoken long ago."

His thumb brushed away the tear resting upon her cheek.

"I love you, Eliza."

Simply Eliza. No title had ever sounded so beautiful.

She had imagined hearing those words a thousand different ways during the quiet hours of lonely nights, yet none of those imaginings had prepared her for the quiet reverence with which he spoke them, as though saying her name and confessing his love were the same.

Her lips parted. She meant to answer him. To tell him she loved him still, despite everything. To tell him that she had never stopped. But the words never found their way into the space between them because Arthur's restraint finally surrendered.

With a tenderness that mirrored the desperation of the moment, he caught her lips with his own, kissing her as though every stolen glance and every ounce of longing he had denied himself since their marriage had finally been permitted to exist. The roughness of his stubble brushed softly against her skin, his hand remaining impossibly gentle where it cupped her face as he deepened the kiss, giving her every opportunity to pull away.

Eliza never did. She ran her hands through his hair and with a breathless whisper she said: “Prove it”.

She did not know what had come over her.

She wanted him. Not simply the Duke of Buckingham, nor the guarded man who had spent months convincing himself he was undeserving of happiness, but Arthur. The man who had searched every room of Winworth to discover where she had wandered, who had crossed a continent to save a friend, who had carried burdens far heavier than anyone should ever have borne alone and who, despite every mistake he had made, had finally chosen truth over fear.