Page 45

Chapter Twenty-Eight

E verdawn House was a flurry of activity as physicians rushed to and fro, checking on the injured servants while the others cleaned up the glass and blood.

Eleanor had still not stopped trembling by the time Spencer ushered her into the townhouse, safe but shaken up badly. As soon as they entered, Lady Montagu was there, her face pale but struck with relief.

“You are all right,” she sighed, pulling Spencer into a hug.

He stiffened as if she had never embraced him before, but he only hesitated for a moment before he embraced her back.

Then, Lady Montagu hugged Eleanor, her tears spilling over. “Heavens, I feared terribly for you. Everything—it was all so scary.”

“There is no more reason for fear,” Spencer told her firmly. “Lord Belgrave and Lord Follet will not be a problem again. Furthermore, Charlotte is officially released from her engagement.”

Eleanor gave him a slow smile, thinking of the embrace she had interrupted hours ago. “Perhaps we ought to tell her the news.”

“She arrived shortly before you did,” Lady Montagu said. “I sent her to the guest chamber, for she was worried about Lord Avington. He is resting up there.”

Spencer paused, frowning, but then led the way upstairs.

Eleanor sped past him and entered the room, right as he pushed open the door.

Charlotte was bent over Theodore, perched on a stool at his bedside, her eyes closed as she kissed him.

At the sound of the door banging open, she reeled backward and scurried away from the bed.

“It—it was nothing!” she shouted. “I was merely… merely…” she trailed off, eyeing her brother warily.

Eleanor watched as Theodore’s expression turned from contentment to horror as he spotted Spencer.

“What are you doing to my sister?” Spencer growled, his fingers gripping the door so hard that she feared he would break it.

“Spencer,” she warned, her eyes tracing his tense jaw, the hard set of his shoulders. “You have already gotten into too many fights today, do not add more.”

For she had already taken note of his injuries, shoving her heartbreak aside to try and see what more he’d sustained on their ride back from the dock.

“Let us be grateful that all is well! Your friend is alive and recovering.”

“He will be recovering from even more injuries in a moment,” Spencer snarled.

Eleanor slipped in front of him, trying to hold him back. He merely growled above her, an untamable beast. Her beast. But then Charlotte was there, and she threw her arms around Eleanor. Her sobs were soft, her murmurings muffled against Eleanor’s shoulders.

“I am all right,” Eleanor soothed, holding her friend.

“We are both all right.” She pulled back, meeting Charlotte’s gaze knowingly.

“You are free, Charlotte. Spencer apprehended Lord Belgrave on the ship he had taken me to. Lord Follet is a distant associate, not directly involved. But the constables have him, and they also stormed St. Euphemia’s. The threat is no longer there.”

Her voice cracked with relief, but she was quickly distracted by her husband still scowling from the doorway, his glare fixed on Theodore.

“Th-The physician says I might have a broken rib, but it will heal.” Theodore laughed nervously, knowing he could go nowhere.

“Is that so?” Spencer growled. “You might have another broken rib in a moment, Theodore Jacobs.”

“Oh, come now,” Theodore scoffed. “We are good friends. I think we ought to focus on the matter at hand.”

“The matter at hand is that I caught you embracing my sister,” Spencer hissed.

“And should that not be a celebration?”

“I know you.”

“And I know you! It makes the match even more perfect, no? We get to skip… skip the pleasantries.”

Eleanor let out a quiet laugh when she realized nothing was working to lighten the mood, and she pushed against Spencer’s chest.

“Come,” she said. “Everybody ought to rest.”

Spencer took a deep breath before looking down at her and then at Charlotte.

“I will escort you to your room. And you ,” he growled, “if you attempt to approach my sister before I have an explanation for what I walked in on, you will find yourself removed from my house and you will never, ever see her again. Am I clear?”

“Crystal,” Theodore muttered.

Eleanor finally pulled Spencer out of the room. Together, they took Charlotte to her chamber and then finally retreated to his chambers.

There was so much to discuss, yet a suffocating weight had settled on her shoulders. In her heart, her mind, her whole body. She ached, but she ached more without Spencer near her.

Once in her chamber, she sat down on the bed, and Spencer followed suit. A maid entered moments later, leaving dry clothes on the vanity before she ducked out.

Silence filled the room, and Eleanor did not know how to broach what they needed to discuss, but she was startled by the brush of Spencer’s fingers on her cheek.

His eyes held hers as he pushed a lock of her hair—damp from the storm—from her face. In turn, she studied him.

His jaw was clenched, littered with faint bruises. Another bruise was forming beneath his eye, and his coat was torn from his fight with Lord Belgrave.

Her heart ached terribly.

She didn’t know when she decided to knock down the last of her walls. All she knew was that reaching for him felt too natural to deny. Her hand slipped into his.

“You came for me,” she murmured, still unable to believe it. Not after how they had left things.

“Of course I did,” he answered, his voice tight.

He said it like it was inevitable, something as easy as breathing.

His eyes searched her face. “I meant what I said, Eleanor. I will always come for you. I was a fool to ever think I could keep a distance between us. I was selfish, and I was fearful.

“I have lived my life in so much fear and avoidance, only to find you and be brought into the light. You have always been patient with me, Eleanor. You have pressed when you wanted to, but you knew when to step back, even if not at first.” He gave a smile, small and strained.

“I have watched you transform not only my life but Charlotte’s.

You have filled Everdawn with your light, and I truly thought it was gone from these halls.

You are fearless, more so than you think, and I could never turn you away.

You are a distraction, indeed—a most beautiful, stunning one—and I cannot bear to be without you for even a moment.

“When I was gone today, all I could think about was how I needed to be at your side, to save you, and the thought of not being able to do that was unbearable.

I could not stand it. Eleanor, you have opened up chambers in my heart I did not know were there.

You have transformed me from a man who outran everything into a man who finally learned to stop, to look at the things that hurt, to know that they can be thought of without rage or unbearable sadness.

“As soon as I saw you that day in my library, bearing the most ridiculous of names, I think I knew it was not the last I would see of you. You came into my life with a demand. All I wish is that you keep demanding anything of me for the rest of our lives.”

His hands held hers tightly, protectively.

“I have never said these words because I do not think I knew their true meaning until now,” he continued.

“But I love you, Eleanor. I love you so much that there is no wall thick enough that can keep me from you. I have torn down my walls, and I do not deserve for you to reach through that space to meet me halfway, but I beg it of you. In fact…”

He rose from the bed suddenly, groaning as his body likely ached from the fighting.

“Spencer, what are you?—”

He kneeled before her, pressing his lips to one knee and then the other.

“I will kneel before you a thousand times, beg you for a thousand nights, and hope that what I say is enough. I love you, Eleanor. My beautiful Duchess, who cares more for her garden of rebirth than her image. My beautiful Duchess, who has saved my life over and over.”

He pressed another kiss to her knee, daring to move higher.

Eleanor pulled his face up so she could look at him, unable to keep the smile off her face.

“These walls of yours,” she asked slowly, “how lowered are they?”

“Utterly grounded. Razed to oblivion.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise,” he swore.

“Then why have you not kissed me yet?” she whispered.

She laughed softly as he pulled her into a kiss, reaching up as he settled between her thighs.

They kissed, and kissed, and she did not care that water dripped from his hair onto her face, nor that her dress clung to her. He would rid her of it in moments anyway.

Her body had missed his— she had missed him—and she pulled back long enough to cradle his face.

“I love you, Spencer,” she whispered. “I love you, and I will keep on loving you for eternity. And then I will find you in every other lifetime we have, and I will continue loving you through them too. Perhaps as jasmines next to one another.”

Spencer chuckled as he took her lips in another kiss. Before long, she felt the cold brush of fingers beneath her dress.

“It is terrible how revealing this dress has become,” he muttered. “The rain has blessed me.”

“And here I thought you did not want me,” she joked, letting him feel some guilt if only to rile him up further.

Spencer growled, already pushing her onto her back on the bed. “The day I stop wanting you is the day I die, Eleanor.”

He crawled over her, already unfastening her dress, and soon she was beneath him, and he simply entered her.

Finally, the two of them were perfectly joined.