Page 48 of The Spinster and Her Rakish Duke (The Athena Society #3)

“ Y ou’re awake,” Ewan said softly, relief flooding his voice as he entered Percy’s sickroom to find his nephew propped against the pillows, a wan smile brightening his pallid features.

“So it would seem,” Percy replied, his usual dramatic flair diminished but not entirely absent. “Though I confess, I feel as though I’ve been trampled by a particularly enthusiastic herd of cattle.”

Ewan moved to the bedside, noting with satisfaction that while Percy remained alarmingly pale, the unnatural flush of fever had receded. His eyes were clear, lucid, no longer glazed with the terrifying heat that had consumed him through the night.

“Dr. Middleton says you’ll make a full recovery,” Ewan told him, settling into the chair beside the bed. “Though you’ll need to rest for several days. No poetry recitations or theatrical displays until you’ve regained your strength.”

Percy’s smile widened slightly. “You deprive me of my very essence, Uncle. How shall I survive without expressing my artistic soul?”

“With remarkable fortitude, I’m certain.” Ewan reached out, hesitated, then took his nephew’s hand in a brief, firm clasp. “You gave us quite a fright, Percy.”

Something in his tone caused Percy’s expression to sober. “I’m sorry, Uncle. I never meant to?—”

“No,” Ewan interrupted, surprising them both with the vehemence in his voice. “You have nothing to apologize for. The fault was not yours.”

Percy studied him with unexpected perspicacity. “Lord Comerford said terrible things. About our family. About you.”

“And you defended me,” Ewan acknowledged, a peculiar tightness constricting his throat. “At considerable risk to yourself. It was… remarkably brave.”

“Not brave,” Percy protested weakly. “I simply couldn’t bear to hear him speak of you that way. When he compared you to your father…” He trailed off, clearly uncertain whether he had ventured into forbidden territory.

Ewan squeezed his hand once more before releasing it. “My father was not a good man, Percy. Neither was my brother. But their failures need not define our future. I see that now, perhaps more clearly than I ever have.”

Percy’s expression brightened with fragile hope. “Does this mean…?”

“It means many things,” Ewan replied, rising from his chair. “But for now, it means you must rest. We shall discuss philosophy when you’re stronger.”

He was nearly to the door when Percy’s voice stopped him.

“Uncle? Is Aunt Samantha… is she returning home with us?”

The naked vulnerability in the question struck Ewan to the core. “That,” he said softly, “is what I hope to determine now.”

As he stepped into the hallway, he caught sight of Samantha emerging from her chamber. She had changed from her rumpled gown into a simple day dress of deep blue, her hair hastily arranged in a loose knot at the nape of her neck.

Even exhausted and pale from their night’s vigil, she was the most beautiful sight he had ever beheld.

She stilled at the sight of him, her posture tensing like a creature prepared for flight. “Your Grace. I did not realize you had returned.”

“Samantha.” Her name escaped like breath. And it was true; she was his very breath. “Might I speak with you before you depart?”

A flicker of wariness crossed her features, but she nodded, setting down the valise. “Of course.”

He gestured toward a small sitting room adjacent to Percy’s chamber, a cozy space Lord Norfeld had apparently designated for reading, judging by the bookshelves lining the walls and the comfortable chairs arranged before the hearth.

Once inside, with the door closed behind them, Ewan found himself momentarily at a loss for words. How did one begin to acknowledge such profound error? What words could possibly bridge the chasm he had created between them?

“How is Percy?” Samantha asked, breaking the silence. “When I left him, he was sleeping peacefully.”

“He is much improved,” Ewan replied, grateful for the opening. “Thanks in no small part to your care. He asked after you. Whether you would be returning to Valemont with us.”

A shadow crossed her face. “Did he?”

“He has grown quite attached to you. As have I.” Ewan moved toward her, then stopped, uncertain of his welcome. “Samantha, I…”

“You need not concern yourself,” she said quickly, her gaze fixed on a point just past his shoulder. “I understand that our arrangement has proven… unsatisfactory. I shall not trouble you further with expectations you cannot meet.”

The quiet dignity in her voice nearly undid him. “Is that what you believe? That I find you unsatisfactory?”

Her eyes finally met his, blue as a winter sky and just as cold. “What else am I to believe? You made your position quite clear at the Marchwoods’. Our marriage was a mistake. A pretense. Nothing more than a convenient solution to a scandal.”

“I was wrong.” The words emerged with surprising ease, as if his heart had been waiting to speak them all along. “So terribly, inexcusably wrong.”

Samantha’s composure faltered slightly, uncertainty flickering across her features. “Ewan?—”

“Please,” he said, closing the distance between them with slow, deliberate steps. “Allow me to say what I should have said days ago. What I should have acknowledged from the moment I recognized my feelings for you.”

She remained silent, watching him with guarded eyes that held the merest glimmer of something that might have been hope.

“I have spent my entire life in fear,” he continued, his voice steady despite the trembling of his heart. “Fear of becoming my father. Fear of passing on the darkness I believed ran in my blood. Fear of loving, of being loved, of all the vulnerability such emotions entail.”

He stood before her now, close enough to touch, though he kept his hands at his sides through sheer force of will.

“That fear led me to push away the greatest blessing I have ever known,” he said softly.

“You, Samantha. Your kindness, your strength, your unwavering courage in the face of my cowardice. I convinced myself I was protecting you—protecting any children we might have—by maintaining distance. But in truth, I was protecting only myself, from the risk of loving something so precious it might destroy me to lose it.”

Samantha’s breath caught audibly, her eyes widening as she absorbed his words.

“Last night,” Ewan continued, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper, “when Percy’s fever raged and I feared we might lose him, I realized something I should have understood long ago.

We cannot protect ourselves from loss by refusing to love.

We can only deny ourselves the joy that makes life worth living. ”

He reached for her hands then, half-expecting her to pull away. When her fingers curled around his instead, he felt a surge of hope so powerful it nearly staggered him.

“I love you, Samantha,” he said, the words feverish with his urgency.

He needed her to know this… needed her to believe him.

“I think perhaps I have loved you since that first dance, seven years ago. I certainly loved you when you stood in our garden planning roses. When you tended to village children with such genuine care. When you defended Percy’s poetry despite its obvious shortcomings. ”

A ghost of a smile touched her lips at that, though tears now gleamed in her eyes.

“And if you can find it in your heart to forgive my blind stubbornness,” he continued, “I would spend every day of our remaining years showing you the depth of that love. Not in a marriage of convenience, but in a true partnership. With a family of our own, if you still desire it. Not because duty demands it, but because there is nothing I want more than to create new life with you, to raise children who will know what it means to be truly loved and cherished.”

A single tear spilled onto Samantha’s cheek, a glistening trail that Ewan longed to brush away. But he remained still, waiting, giving her the space to respond however she chose.

“You hurt me, Ewan.” She said finally, her voice steady despite the emotion evident in her eyes. “When you dismissed what had grown between us as a mistake. When you suggested we return to our ‘arrangement,’ as if the feelings we had shared meant nothing.”

“I know,” he acknowledged with a groan, genuine remorse etching lines around his eyes. “And I shall regret causing you that pain for the rest of my days.”

“I felt… discarded,” she continued, each word clearly costing her. “As if I had been foolish once again, believing in love when it was merely… convenience.”

“Never that,” Ewan assured her fiercely. “What I feel for you has never been merely convenient. In fact, it has been the most inconvenient, disruptive, magnificent force I have ever encountered.”

Samantha studied his face, as if searching for some sign of insincerity or doubt. Finding none, her expression softened infinitesimally. “You truly want children? A family with me?”

“More than I have ever wanted anything,” he vowed. “The thought terrifies me still, if I am honest. But I would rather face that fear with you at my side than spend another day denying the future we might build together.”

Her hands tightened around his, a tremulous smile breaking through the last of her reserve. “You are a maddening man, Ewan Wildingham. Stubborn and proud and utterly infuriating at times.”

“All true,” he agreed, hope rising with each word.

“And yet,” she continued, her voice softening to a whisper, “I love you with a depth that frightens me. Despite your flaws—perhaps even because of them. Because you are trying. Because beneath all your carefully constructed walls, there beats a heart capable of extraordinary tenderness.”

Ewan felt something tight and painful in his chest begin to unravel, a knot of fear and loneliness loosening for the first time in decades. “Samantha…”

“I see you,” she said simply. “All of you. Not just the duke, not just the guardian, not just the man who carries wounds from his past. I see Ewan, the man who loves with a fierceness he tries to hide, who protects with a devotion that borders on ferocity, who strives every day to be better than those who came before him.”

She released his hands then, but only to raise her own to his face, her palms cradling his jaw with exquisite tenderness. “And I love you, just as you are.”

With a sound that was half-groan, half-prayer, Ewan pulled her to him, his mouth finding hers in a kiss that expressed everything words could not contain. His arms encircled her waist, drawing her against him as if he could somehow fuse their souls together through the sheer force of his longing.

Samantha melted into him, her lips parting beneath his, her fingers sliding into his hair to hold him close. The kiss deepened, heated, years of restraint giving way to the pure, consuming flame that had always burned between them.

When they finally broke apart, both breathless, Ewan rested his forehead against hers, unwilling to relinquish their closeness even for a moment.

“Come home,” he whispered. “Come home to Valemont. To Percy. To me.”

Her smile was radiant, transforming her entire countenance with a joy that left him humbled. “Yes,” she replied simply. “Yes, I will.”