Page 46

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

“ I do not think I have ever been this far into the woods,” Eleanor said, looking around the maple grove.

Behind her, Spencer was a solid wall that she always leaned into. She did so now, relishing in his embrace as they sipped wine around the picnic they had set up.

He glanced down at her, smirking as he pressed a kiss to her cheek before he drank deeply.

“Me neither,” Theodore said from opposite them. “It was actually Charlotte who found it and showed me.”

“When?” Spencer asked suddenly.

“Brother,” Charlotte chided, scowling at his tone. “One would think that after months of Theodore and I being wed, you would have come to accept it.”

“I am merely doing my duty by ensuring that it was indeed after your wedding that you were alone with him.”

“Well, if we are discussing that , perhaps we may speak about yours and Eleanor’s fornicating before your wedding,” Theodore muttered, grinning at him as he bit into a meat pie.

Charlotte was busying herself with a bowl of fruit, while Eleanor took out the pastries she had baked earlier that day.

“Oh, Goodness, I do not think such revelations are for my ears,” Katherine muttered.

“There was no fornicating,” Spencer scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, but I bet you wish there had been,” Theodore teased.

Eleanor laughed, peering up at her husband, realizing he was blushing because he had wished it.

In truth, perhaps she had too. Not that she would admit it. She recalled how delirious she had been the night he rescued her, and while physical intimacy had not been on her mind, she knew she had felt some form of comfort from him.

“Not to mention how you banished me from the house for your honeymoon,” Charlotte piped up.

Spencer sighed as if they exhausted him. “You two are the most lethal couple, and I do not know why I endorsed it.”

“After keeping us waiting for a wickedly long time,” Theodore pointed out. “But we more than made up for lost time during our honeymoon.”

He turned to Charlotte, drawing her in for a chaste kiss. Still, his hand lingered on her waist, a suggestive moment of intimacy, and the love Eleanor saw on their faces was enough to make her heart swell.

“Your honeymoon must have been beautiful,” she sighed wistfully. “Avington Village is stunning, so Spencer was saying.”

“It is absolutely gorgeous,” Charlotte gushed. A butterfly fluttered around her hair while Theodore toyed with one of her curls. “It has an open Grecian-style theater, and Theodore took me there on the first day of our honeymoon.”

“I did,” he confirmed, flashing her a grin. “I could not marry a lady who loves the theater and not take her to see such a spectacle. Romeo and Juliet was positively romantic, although tragic, nonetheless.”

“It was a Midsummer Night’s Dream ,” Charlotte delicately corrected.

Theodore frowned. “No, I am certain it was Romeo and Juliet . And then I took you to the jeweler’s further down the road and bought you a new bracelet to adorn that slender, pretty wrist of yours.”

He kissed her wrist now, smiling lovingly.

Spencer glared at him as if it was outrageous to make such a show in front of him. Perhaps it was, but Eleanor did not mind at all.

“It was most definitely A Midsummer Night’s Dream ,” Charlotte insisted. “I recall them discussing Pyrrhus and Thisbe. It made me think of Eleanor and Spencer.” She nodded toward them. “Walls and all. Was it not you who suggested they were similar?”

“Ah.” Theodore’s eyes flashed with recollection. “I do recall now, for I boasted that I paired the two well.”

At that, they all laughed, and Theodore finished his wine.

“You must catch me up,” Katherine interjected, looking around at them.

“I am perfectly content in my little cottage, but I do miss you both.” She regarded Charlotte and Spencer, then Eleanor and Theodore.

She had come to welcome them all. “Whatever happened after the commotion several months ago? I returned home quickly after to recover there, so I was not a bother.”

“Oh, Aunt Katherine, you could never be a bother!” Charlotte protested with a frown.

“Dear, you have endured my company for many years. In fact, it gives me so much joy to trade your company for the knowledge that you are married and settled. Spencer, too.”

Eleanor’s thoughts drifted to the disaster seven months ago, the groaning and creaking of the ship, the fighting, the ropes burning her wrists.

It had long been dealt with, but her subconscious had not quite forgotten how it had felt to be back in that cell, back beneath Lord Belgrave’s thumb even for a brief moment, the fear of losing Charlotte and Spencer.

“Belgrave was captured by the constables,” Spencer told them.

“I oversaw the trial myself in London. Along with him, Sister Martha—who was, in fact, the Renshaws’ biggest shame many years ago, and she was originally sent to the convent in the hopes that she would turn to God—and the rest of the sisters in that horrid place are imprisoned for life.

They will not be released under any conditions. ”

Eleanor’s chest tightened. “I did hate Sister Martha, but when you first told me how she had ended up there, I felt a hint of sympathy for her.”

“Do not,” he said sharply. “She, more than anybody, would have known your terror and fear, and she exploited it. She tried to indoctrinate you, even though she herself was indoctrinated. She could have chosen to help. At her trial, she was offered rehabilitation, a return to society if she apologized and abandoned her extreme ways. She claimed God is her only judge.”

Eleanor nodded, still trying to let go of that guilt.

Sister Martha had made her own choices, and she had abused Eleanor, even though she herself had been abused. She had almost ruined Eleanor’s life, knowing how much the convent had ruined her own.

It haunted Eleanor, but not so much that she dwelled on it the way she once had.

“And Lord Follet?” Katherine asked delicately.

Charlotte stiffened at the mention of her former fiancé.

Spencer’s smile was slow and vicious. “The bastard managed to flee England, but when he was found, he resisted arrest. He was shot dead. It’s the only ending he deserved, although I would have liked to see him pay for a very, very long time for what he had done, and would have further done.”

For a brief moment, his eyes flicked to Charlotte, and they all knew what bullets she and Eleanor had dodged.

“And Frances returned,” Eleanor chimed in happily.

“She was found locked up in Belgrave’s residence.

From there, the constables traveled to the Caribbean to rescue the women sold through the operation.

Some… some did not make it. But most have been reunited with their families, their stories finally brought to light.

I believe Frances is helping others find employment and has started some sort of organization to counter operations like Belgrave’s. ”

“I did hear something about that!” Katherine exclaimed, beaming.

“I read about it a while ago. They turned St. Euphemia’s into a school for women, did they not?

Hartswood House, they have called it—after the town, of course.

I have heard of poor, ruined girls attending it.

Even courtesans and widows. It’s a safe haven of sorts. ”

Eleanor shivered as she nodded, overwhelmed by emotion for a moment. “It is.”

“I wonder who has funded it,” Charlotte mused aloud. “I heard they had a very large, anonymous donation to open up, and have received continuous funding.”

Spencer’s hand slid up and down Eleanor’s spine, a discreet smile on his lips.

“Have you heard from your parents, Eleanor?” Katherine asked, her brow pinched in sympathy.

But Eleanor did not need it.

She shook her head. Her parents had been a wound she had long closed.

“The last I heard, their shame over sending me to St. Euphemia’s and disgracing me publicly drove them to the colonies,” she muttered. “I begged them to listen and believe me, and they never did. Regardless, I will never reach out to them again. I do not need them.”

And she truly believed that.

She had her husband, her friend, and Theodore, who never hesitated to interrupt a moment between her and Spencer, only to find his moments with Charlotte interrupted in return. Always by Spencer, of course.

“Everybody got what they desired,” Charlotte murmured thoughtfully.

“They did,” Spencer agreed quietly. “It has been too long coming.”

They shared a look.

The siblings had worked through the argument they had had that terrible night. They had begun to discuss Anna rather than keep her memory buried, and slowly, Spencer had told Charlotte the truth about their father and mother and had held her through it all.

Eleanor had watched them briefly that day, her heart full of pride.

She leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder, pressing closer to him. She turned her face into him discreetly, closing her eyes she breathed in the scent of bonfires and cinnamon.

“You smell like home,” she whispered, and received a kiss.

Home. A thing they had both lost for different reasons years ago, only to find it in one another.

Home . Something neither of them would ever lose again.

“You are my home,” Spencer murmured, and they ignored the calls of their family as he kissed her again.

Later that night, Eleanor leaned back against Spencer’s bare chest, her eyes fluttering shut as the bathwater lapped at her.

“How you can look so relaxed in such a cramped space, I do not understand.” He laughed, his mouth pressed to her shoulder.

He hummed as she intertwined their fingers. The steam from their bath rose around her, dampening her hair.

Spencer was already half aroused beneath her, but she had yet to part her legs and let him slip inside, simply enjoying the moment, the languid relaxation.

“It is not my fault that my beast of a husband is too broad to fit into a tub with me.” She giggled. “Although I do enjoy the way your muscles move when you fit in, even if it’s just about.”

“Are we speaking about me and the tub now?”

His voice was low, his fingers already trailing down her stomach. She was sitting between his parted legs, his body a solid warmth behind her. She rolled her backside against him, unhurried and relaxed.

“No,” she admitted, laughing.

His hand slid between her thighs, seeking her heat, and she inhaled slowly, humming under her breath. Spencer continued kissing her shoulders, his other hand cupping her breast, heavy and slick with the bathwater.

“I adore your freckles,” he purred.

Beneath her, his length was erect, desperate to slide inside her.

“I shall kiss every single one every night, and I will not sleep until I have done so.”

“I have many,” she reminded him teasingly.

“All the better for me.”

Before he could go further, she caught his wrists and turned her head toward him. “Spencer, I-I have news.”

He paused, arching an eyebrow. “Yes?”

His hand moved away from her heat and splayed across her stomach.

“I…” Her breath caught. Heavens, she was nervous. “I had it confirmed several days ago, and I waited for a perfect day to tell you, but I realized there is no perfect day or moment; there is simply telling you. I am with child, Spencer.”

Spencer went still. “You are pregnant?”

“I am.”

His eyes met hers, blazing bright, the brown in them rich and warm. There was nothing angry or distant, and she did not know why her uncertainty had convinced her there would be. That perhaps it was not a thing he had wanted.

“Does that… does that make you happy?”

“Happy?” he echoed, blinking at her. And then his expression cracked, a smile spreading across his face, his breath coming out in a short laugh. “Happy? Heavens, Eleanor, I am overjoyed. We are going to have children?”

“At least one.” She giggled, the tight knot in her chest loosening.

Spencer wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, kissing her deeply. “I did not think it was possible for you to make me even more happy than you already do, my Duchess, and yet you have found another way. Heavens, children. I am going to be a father.”

A hint of uncertainty flashed across his face, but Eleanor wasted no second in kissing it away, distracting him. She twisted in his lap, using the little space she had in the tub, but made it so she straddled him.

Her legs parted over his thighs, and she didn’t hesitate to sink down onto his length. It was not only a distraction—it had been building up all day, their need for one another, and ever since Eleanor had found out she was with child, she had craved him even more than she usually did.

“I will never, ever part from you,” he growled into her mouth, pulling her flush against him so she was fully seated on him.

She was already rocking her hips, her noises swallowed by him.

“Throughout your entire pregnancy, there will not be one day where I will be gone from your side for longer than an hour. Not one day where you will go without being serviced or waited on. I will be here for you.”

His words were laced with so much conviction that Eleanor did not know how to respond other than kissing him fiercely as he pushed into her. She clung to him, desperate and needy, her body already growing taut with pent-up pleasure.

Spencer splayed his hand over her stomach again, and she placed her hand over it as she gyrated her hips, gasping and moaning for more, more—always more . His breath mingled with hers, the water sloshing around them and over the tub’s edge.

He thrust up into her, his hands sliding to her backside and cupping it. He guided her, their pace steady but not unhurried.

“Please,” Eleanor gasped into his mouth. “Please?—”

“Almost,” he panted as he slammed into her. “I am— ah , Eleanor. Eleanor. ”

He moaned her name like a prayer, and it was the only worship she would ever have to hear again.

She buried her face in his neck, biting him as her release flooded her in a tidal wave that wracked her body.

Spencer followed her moments after, groaning into her shoulder.

“Eleanor,” he whispered again, holding her close.

Their chests were pressed together, their pounding hearts mirroring and echoing one another.

Eleanor smiled against his neck, finally lifting her head to peer up at him. “I love you.”

She raked her fingers through his wet hair, curling the strands.

“I love you,” he murmured, pulling her down for a hard, demanding kiss.

“We will be wonderful parents,” she assured him, wondering if he worried about it, about his upbringing, about anything. “And if there are any moments you doubt yourself, you come to me. Yes?”

“Yes.” He kissed the tip of her nose.

Eleanor intertwined their fingers.

Together, they’d continue building this home of theirs. She slid their joined hands down to her stomach again, soon to be rounded with a child, and smiled into another kiss.

The End?