Page 53

ARTHUR WAS waiting underneath my balcony when I finally made my way downstairs, Ida having quickly subdued my unruly curls and ensuring that I no longer looked like I had just rolled out of bed.

Without saying a word, he began to walk deeper into the garden and I followed, a little afraid that he had realized this morning that he was no longer going to put up with anything he didn’t want to, whether that be Lady Wright or my continued presence at Ashford Hall.

Still, there was something about the way he was holding himself that didn’t speak to him being sick of me or that he was even still angry.

The silence between us was not strained in the way I thought it would be, and as I walked alongside him I was struck by the urge to reach out, to take his hand, to walk with him as we had all those summers ago.

I kept myself in check, however, sating my desire through stolen looks at him.

Even if he wasn’t in his nicest coat, Arthur looked terribly handsome.

He was beginning to truly come into his own in terms of maturity, and at this distance I could see the fine wrinkles around his eyes, the gray just barely beginning to creep into his hair.

The aquiline slant of his nose, the slight pout of his full lips, the stubble that dotted his jaw as Lady Wright’s appearance had undoubtedly disrupted his morning routine.

I hadn’t been in this close proximity since I’d returned, at least not for this length of time, and to have the chance to truly drink in the sight of him… .

“We should be far enough that they can’t see us now,” he said, coming to a stop in a small alcove of the garden, shielded from the main house by a hedgerow.

There was a stone bench there and I was reminded of the first night after we had confessed our feelings for each other, a brief burst of heat flushing to my face as I recalled the depths of debauchery we had indulged in. “Come sit down.”

I settled on the bench as he sat beside me and the silence persisted.

I knew why I was being quiet—I was afraid that I was about to be told that he had realized he would never love me the way he once had—but I couldn’t think of a reason why he would be afraid to speak.

I couldn’t shake the feeling I had gotten earlier however, that he had been about to smile at me, a softness in his face that had been absent since I’d come back.

There had been affection there, and I didn’t think I had lost my ability to read him; I could still see what he was feeling underneath the stoicism he liked to present to the world.

“Thomas,” he said, leaning against the back of the bench, his arms crossed over his chest. “You heard what I said to my aunt?”

“Yes,” I said, looking over at him. “And I heard what she said about me. I suppose the extent of her role in the blackmail is clear now.” I paused, frowning at my hands. “It seems James was leaving an insurance policy in his mother’s hands. Do you think she’ll say anything?”

“If she does, I’ll release what we have on James,” Arthur said.

“I don’t think she’ll say anything. I made it abundantly clear to her that I have no interest in marrying Hattie and that she does not have a place in this house.

My mother would not want myself or my brother to allow someone who clearly dislikes us both so much in our home even if it is her sister. ”

“I appreciate you sticking up for me,” I said, unsure what else I was supposed to say.

Truthfully, I wanted to grab him by the collar of his coat and beg him to tell me what was on his mind already, the idea of sitting in this silent agony for much longer driving me absolutely mad.

Why had he called me out here if not to put an end to my torment?

“Arthur.” I looked at him, my brow furrowed.

“If you’re going to say it, please just say it. ”

“What do you think it is that I’m going to say?” Arthur asked.

“That you have no desire to have me here anymore, that I’ve overstayed my welcome, that whatever change I was hoping to enact is not a change that is coming,” I said, and he looked at me in return, his jaw set in a hard line.

“I would rather you just tell me right to my face than let me live in this agony any longer. I am out of ideas to get you to talk to me, Arthur. I have tried everything I know how to do.”

“And you think that your attempts have been in vain?”

“Yes,” I said before the oddity of the question struck me. I looked at him, confused. “Have they not been in vain?”

“At first I was annoyed by your persistence,” he said, and that crushing hope reignited in me, a swell of optimism that I simply couldn’t tamp down.

“I was impossibly angry when you first reappeared because I couldn’t understand what you were doing here.

Even your explanation meant little to me, because at the time all I could see was what you had said that night, the cruelty you had visited upon me.

I didn’t think you had returned in good faith. ”

All I could do was listen to him, my hands folded in my lap, as he continued.

“You made up with Charles quickly, but I still couldn’t fathom forgiving you.

” He sighed softly, looking out at the garden, which was beginning to fade as fall began to settle over us.

“A week or two after you arrived, Charles came to talk to me in the library. He told me the entire story from his side, but I was going to dismiss him as well until I realized that what you had said to me that night…. You weren’t protecting yourself when you fled the estate.

I was convinced that you had been acting in your own best interests when you left us, that you weren’t thinking of me in the slightest. But you were, weren’t you? ”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “All I was doing was thinking of you. I didn’t want James to hurt you, Arthur, but I also didn’t want you to lose Charles if you had to lose me.”

“And when Charles came to talk to me, I realized it for the first time. I believe that’s when my feelings began to… well, change.” He looked at me, his eyes soft. “And then your foolish letters, smuggled into every last nook and cranny…. Did you have the entire staff on your side?”

“Yes,” I said again, embarrassed but well aware that the hope I had kindled was not in vain. “You wouldn’t let me talk to you.”

There was a long pause, Arthur looking down at his hands. “When you returned, I was sure that you were here to break my heart again. I didn’t want to believe that… that I had a second chance, I suppose.”

A second chance. While I had been agonizing over Arthur, he’d been agonizing over me in a different way, had been attempting to justify allowing me back in.

After all that had transpired, he still wanted me enough to try and sort things out on his end.

I knew that Arthur was a man who took everything into consideration, who would not make a decision until he was certain it was the best course of action, and that he was here today telling me what he was telling me… it pointed to the choice he had made.

“Why did you choose today to tell me this?” I asked. “Was it your aunt?”

“I was planning on telling you soon, but Lady Wright’s visit sped it up,” he admitted.

“The thought that I had lost three years of my life to hating you because of them… the idea that she still thought she could scare me into marrying Hattie. I simply couldn’t live like that anymore.

The truth is, Thomas, I think I never stopped loving you.

The anger and betrayal I felt were the mirror image of the love and trust I had in you that summer.

If I hadn’t cared for you that much, if you had truly meant as little to me as I tried to convince myself, then I wouldn’t have been so miserable without you. ”

My chest was tight with emotion I could not understand or properly put into words, hope and trepidation and love all intermingling in a way that would have sent me crying if I hadn’t been there with Arthur.

I looked at him and found that he was already looking at me, his cheeks flushed pink with more emotion than what I was accustomed to seeing from him.

It was incredible to imagine that three months had affected us both for so long, and yet I knew that he was feeling everything I felt, that we were overcome with the same level of adoration.

“Arthur,” I said quietly. “I cannot apologize any more than I already have for what I did to you, what I put you through, and all I can say at this point is that I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you if I have to. Because I love you, I really do, and I have spent the last three years in abject misery without you at my side. I have never felt this way about anyone before and I don’t think I’ll feel this way about anyone else. I love you.”

“I thought when I ended things with Rudolph that I would never again have an opportunity to be loved,” he said, a quiet fervor in his voice that spoke to how difficult it was for him to keep his emotions in check.

I hadn’t seen him like this, and it was taking everything I had not to reach out and grab him by the hand, to profess my feelings for him all over again.

I had never had a true first love, not really; my relationships had always been flighty and fleeting, dalliances that weren’t meant to last long.

Arthur was the first man I had truly looked at and loved, and three years hadn’t changed that.

“I had opened myself up to you, but I was still afraid. Three years ago, I think you and I were still too far apart. I know you’ve talked to Ida about this.

She told me that I was too untrusting, and you were still struggling to prove yourself.

But I don’t think that’s true anymore. Now that everything has come to light… I trust you, Tom.”

“I can work with that,” I said, turning my entire body to face him, our knees pressed together on the bench.

“Arthur, I don’t care if you don’t love me right this moment.

I don’t care if it takes a hundred years for you to love me as much as I love you.

But I can work with trust, even if it’s just a seed.

I know I can take that, and I know that I can turn it into love. ”

He reached out, taking one of my hands in both of his and squeezing it tightly.

“I do love you,” he said, and I wondered how long he had been thinking about telling me that, the confession unexpected, but not unwelcome.

“I know you read the letters I wrote when you were in London the last time, and those feelings have not diminished nor have they changed. The only difference is the man I am today and the man that you are, and I know that I can trust you. I know that I want you here and that the thought of having you return to London makes me sick, and if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

” He pressed my hand to his chest, his heart beating so fast that I could hardly bear to keep myself from kissing him, and looked at me with such obvious adoration that it was difficult to believe that this was the same man I had once thought so terribly stoic.

“That’s my case, as best I can argue it.

I’m no lawyer, but I hope I’ve expressed myself eloquently enough. ”

“You’ve more than made your case,” I said, and I could no longer hold myself back, leaning forward on the bench and kissing him with three years’ worth of hunger.

It was everything I had been dreaming of during our time apart, and I lifted my free hand to grip the side of his head, his lips parting to allow me to kiss him more deeply.

He kissed back with matched fervor, letting go of my hand in favor of taking hold of my collar, and the emotion that exploded through me as I recognized that he reciprocated my love was nothing I had ever experienced before.

Love, hope, optimism… it was as though the last three years had been erased, and Arthur and I were finally free to face each other as equals.

I had worked my entire life to reach a point where I was seen for who I was, and not how I had been raised, and I had found in Arthur a man who had been looking for someone who saw him at his heart too.

I pulled back after what felt like a frozen eternity in that moment, resting my forehead against his and wondering if my own eyes were as unyieldingly adoring as his own.

“Arthur,” I murmured softly, not wanting to pull away entirely.

“I don’t know what the future holds for us, but I know I want to face it with you. ”

“That’s all I could ask,” Arthur said. “I want the chance to have a future with you.”

I kissed him once more, running my thumbs over the apples of his cheeks and grinning at him, a giddiness I was unfamiliar with beginning to creep in.

“Should we return to the others before they think that you’ve killed me?

” I asked, Arthur’s eyebrows raising briefly in amusement before he got to his feet, gripping my hand tightly in his own.

We walked hand in hand back towards the estate, Ida the first to spot us from where she was hanging over the balcony.

“You made up?” she asked, and before either myself or Arthur could respond she was flanked on either side by her brother and Charles, the pair of them clearly wanting to see it with their own eyes. “Oh, I’m so pleased.”

“Now we’re brothers,” Charles said, and I laughed despite myself, happier than I thought was humanly possible. Arthur’s hand was a solid warmth in my own, and I knew that I was surrounded by people who loved me.

For the first time in my life, I had no question of whether I belonged.