Page 33 of A Widow for the Beastly Duke (The Athena Society #1)
CHAPTER 33
“Y ou came back,” she said, the simple words emerging unbidden from the tumult of her thoughts.
Emma remained motionless against the wall of the summerhouse, her chest heaving, her dress wrinkled, her mind struggling to process the abrupt reversal of her circumstances.
Victor turned toward her then, the fierce protectiveness that had dominated his demeanor softening into something infinitely more vulnerable.
“Yes. Forgive me,” he said, the words emerging rough with emotion. “For leaving. For not being here when you needed me.”
The distance between them seemed suddenly unbearable. Emma moved forward, propriety and caution alike forgotten as she closed the space that separated them. She did not even realize when she’d moved, only that she’d needed to.
And Victor’s arms enfolded her with careful reverence, as though she were something precious and fragile to be sheltered rather than possessed.
“Tristan,” she murmured against his chest, the memory of the danger her son was in cutting through the momentary safety of his embrace. “He’s alone?—”
“He is safe,” Victor assured her, one hand smoothing her disheveled hair with a tenderness that threatened to undo her hard-won composure. “I encountered him in the gardens. He has gone to secure assistance—Knightley should be arriving shortly.”
Relief weakened Emma’s knees, and she sagged against his solid strength.
“Thank God,” she whispered, the enormity of what might have transpired had he not arrived crashing over her in a wave of delayed terror. “Sidney… he would have?—”
“But he did not,” Victor interrupted firmly. “And he never shall. I swear it.”
A sound in the gardens beyond the summerhouse drew their attention—a feminine voice calling for Tristan with increasing desperation. Emma recognized Martha’s distinctive tone immediately.
“Here,” she called back, her voice still raw from Sidney’s assault. “We’re here, Martha.”
Victor supported her as they emerged from the summerhouse into the moonlit garden, Argus padding silently at their heels. Martha hurried toward them, her face pale with fear that morphed into relief as she recognized Victor’s tall figure beside her mistress.
“Your Grace,” she gasped, bobbing a hasty curtsy before turning anxious eyes to Emma. “My Lady, forgive me, I have yet to find him?—”
“He is safe,” Victor assured her, his steady voice calming her. “I sent him to find my friend, the Marquess of Knightley. They should be approaching from the direction of the stables.”
As if summoned by his words, Tristan’s voice carried across the gardens, accompanied by the deeper timbre of Nathaniel Godric.
They materialized moments later, the boy rushing forward to throw himself into his mother’s arms with a force that nearly unbalanced her.
“Mama!” he cried, his small arms encircling her waist with desperate strength. “I found the Marquess, just as His Grace instructed. And—” He halted, suddenly registering Victor’s presence with an expression of wonder that pierced Emma’s heart. “You stayed,” he said earnestly. “You didn’t leave again.”
Victor lowered himself until he was level with Tristan’s anxious gaze. “No, Tristan,” he replied, his customary reserve softening into something achingly tender. “I did not leave. Nor shall I, if you and your mother will permit me to stay.”
The boy’s response was a swift, fierce embrace that caught him off guard. Emma could see the shock in his expression as her son hugged him so tightly, though he recovered quickly, one hand coming to rest protectively on Tristan’s curls.
From beyond this intimate tableau, the Marquess of Knightley cleared his throat with delicate emphasis.
“While this reunion warms the cockles of my bleeding heart,” he observed, though his tone belied the flippancy of his words, “I suggest we remove ourselves from here with haste. I passed several guests as I arrived. It seems the absence of our host has been noted, and speculation is already rampant.”
Emma felt a fresh surge of dismay at the prospect of facing the guests with her gown torn and her throat bearing the evidence of Sidney’s attack.
Victor placed a steadying hand on the small of her back. “We shall leave through the garden path,” he decided, already guiding her toward the less frequented route that would lead directly to the carriages without necessitating a detour through the ballroom. “Nathaniel, perhaps you would be so good as to convey Lady Cuthbert’s regrets to any who inquire?”
The Marquess inclined his head with grave understanding. “Consider it done. Though I suspect the host’s hasty departure will overshadow any questions regarding her own.”
As they made their way toward the waiting carriages, Emma found herself surrounded by an improvised family unit—Tristan pressed against her side, Victor’s hand still resting protectively on the small of her back, Martha hovering solicitously nearby, and Argus ranging ahead and behind in a clear pattern of watchfulness.
The Marquess took his leave at the edge of the gardens, promising to call on them the following day once the inevitable gossip had settled into more manageable proportions.
* * *
Upon their arrival at Cuthbert Hall, the staff greeted them with barely concealed relief, the housekeeper taking charge of Tristan with efficiency while the butler discreetly summoned the physician to attend to Emma’s injuries.
“I am perfectly well,” she protested, though the hoarseness of her voice belied her assertion. “Merely tired.”
Victor’s expression suggested that he found this assessment woefully inadequate, but he refrained from contradicting her as they ascended the stairs toward Tristan’s chambers.
The boy had rallied somewhat during the journey home, but his eyelids drooped with the combined effects of fear, worry, and exhaustion as Martha helped him prepare for bed.
“Will you stay?” he asked Victor as Emma tucked the coverlet around his small form. “Until I fall asleep?”
Something in the plaintive request caused Victor’s expression to soften further.
“Of course,” he agreed, settling into the chair beside Tristan’s bed with a naturalness that suggested he had occupied it a hundred times before, even though this happened to be only the second time.
“And tomorrow too?” Tristan persisted, his voice already slurring with encroaching slumber. “You won’t go away again?”
Victor glanced at Emma, a question in his eyes that transcended mere permission to remain for the night. A question about permanence, about belonging, about futures intertwined beyond the exigencies of the present crisis.
“I shall remain for as long as you and your mother wish me to,” he replied, the solemnity of his tone conveying the weight of his promise. “You have my word, Tristan.”
Emma’s heart thudded in her chest even as she struggled with whether to believe him or not.
Satisfied, the boy’s eyes fluttered shut, his breathing deepening into the rhythms of sleep hastened by emotional exhaustion.
Argus, who had followed them upstairs, approached the bed and gently licked Tristan’s hand where it rested atop the coverlet, before settling on the rug.
For several minutes, Emma and Victor kept silent vigil over the sleeping child, who had, against all odds and expectations, brought them together.
Finally, certain that Tristan was securely in the embrace of untroubled dreams, Emma gestured toward the door.
Victor nodded, rising with the fluid grace that had always fascinated her—such a large man with the look of one too impatient and rough yet capable of such controlled delicacy of movement. He bent briefly to murmur a command to Argus, who appeared disinclined to leave his position beside Tristan’s bed.
“He will guard the boy,” he explained as they descended the stairs toward the drawing room. “While I doubt any threat remains, the hound has grown quite attached to your son.”
“As has his master, it would seem,” Emma replied, the words emerging more pointed than she had intended.
Victor pressed his lips together at that.
They reached the drawing room in silence.
The butler appeared briefly to light the lamps and stoke the fire against a chill summer breeze before withdrawing with diplomatic discretion, leaving them in a pool of golden light that seemed to isolate them from the world beyond.
And Emma did not know what to do.
She wanted to ask him why he’d come back, why he was here at all, but the words stayed stuck in her throat, unable to come out.
“You should depart as well,” she said abruptly, the words a direct result of the turmoil churning within her. “The hour is late, and propriety?—”
“Propriety be damned,” Victor interrupted, his customary reserve fracturing to reveal the raw emotion beneath. “I have spent four weeks in self-imposed exile, Emma, tormented by the conviction that my presence in your life represented a danger rather than protection. Tonight has proven the catastrophic error of that judgment.”
Emma turned away, unable to bear the naked vulnerability in his expression.
“You left,” she said, the pain of those weeks evident in her voice despite her attempt at composure. “Tristan asked for you every day. He believed?—”
“I thought only of protecting you both,” he said, his voice rough with self-deprecation. “After the incident at the charity event, when I saw the fear in your eyes?—”
“As I told you then, it was not fear of you,” Emma corrected fiercely, turning to face him fully.
She watched as he struggled with her words.
“I was afraid,” he admitted finally. “Not of scandal or consequence, but of feeling. Of caring for you both so deeply that your loss would destroy me, as surely as Caroline and John’s deaths nearly did.”
The confession hung in the air between them, its naked honesty dissolving Emma’s remaining defenses.
She moved toward him, closing the physical distance that had become a poor proxy for the emotional chasm they had allowed to form.
“And now?” she asked softly, her hand rising to rest against his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart beneath layers of fine linen and wool. “What are you afraid of now, Victor?”
His larger hand covered hers, warm and calloused and achingly familiar. “Only of failing you,” he replied, sincerity resonating in every syllable. “Of being less than what you and Tristan deserve. Of proving unworthy of the trust you have placed in me.”
“I do not require perfection,” Emma said, the words emerging with the clarity of absolute conviction. “I have witnessed that in abundance from men who presented flawless exteriors while harboring rotten souls. What I require—what Tristan and I both need—is honesty. Constancy. The courage to remain present even when circumstances grow difficult.”
Victor’s free hand rose to cup her cheek with an infinite tenderness that positively broke her.
“Then allow me to be honest now,” he said, holding her gaze with unwavering intensity. “I love you, Emma. Not as a delicate creature to be protected, but as a formidable woman who has faced every adversity with unflinching courage. Who has raised a son of exceptional character despite unconscionable obstacles. Who has awakened feelings I believed long buried beneath grief and duty.”
The declaration, so plainly stated yet so profound in its implications, momentarily robbed Emma of speech. She had imagined this moment in the solitude of her chambers, during the long nights of his absence—had constructed elaborate scenarios in which they might reconcile, might acknowledge the depth of feeling that had developed between them.
Yet reality, as it so often did, transcended imagination in both simplicity and power. Because as his words fell between them, Emma felt as though she were floating in the air, as though she’d somehow fallen into a fever dream from which she did not want to wake up.
“And I… I also…” She cleared her throat once, her eyes never wavering from his face. “I love you as well,” she admitted, the words emerging with the inevitability of a tide responding to the moon’s pull. “Despite every rational objection, every hard-won caution, every lesson in distrust that life has taught me. Perhaps even because of them—for you have shown me that strength and gentleness need not be mutually exclusive, that power need not corrupt, that love need not diminish.”
Victor’s arms encircled her at once, drawing her against the solid warmth of his chest with reverent urgency.
For several heartbeats, they remained thus, two souls who had navigated separate paths of loss and resilience, now converging in a moment of perfect understanding.
“Marry me,” Victor said simply, drawing back enough to meet her gaze. “Not out of obligation, or protection, or any consideration save this: I cannot envision a future worth living if it does not include you and Tristan.”
Emma’s heart seemed to suspend its rhythm, the question she had both longed for and feared now hanging between them with all its attendant possibilities.
“Are… are you certain?” she asked, unable to stop herself. “I do not think I can bear a separation in the future when the urge strikes you?—”
“No, Emma,” Victor cut in, his tone earnest. “I will never do something so foolish and torturous again. To you or myself. I swear it. Marry me, Emma, my love, the one who owns my heart.”
Marriage, the institution that had once represented her prison, now offered the gateway to liberation. The irony might have amused her under different circumstances. Now, his words made her heart pound in her chest as all her defenses were stripped away.
“Yes,” she replied, the simplicity of her answer belying the complexity of emotions that accompanied it. “Yes, I will marry you, Victor.”
His kiss, when it came, conveyed both the desperate passion of their earlier encounters and the hesitant restraint of a first exploration. Because it was the beginning of a new promise of a shared future—a future that was going to be full of the love that had blossomed between them despite every obstacle.
In the soft light of Cuthbert Hall’s drawing room, with her son sleeping peacefully above and the man she loved standing steadfast beside her, Emma allowed herself to believe in the possibility of happiness.
Not as a temporary respite from adversity but as a permanent state, hard-won, and therefore all the more precious.