Lord Morland nodded. “As you wish. Joanna stays.”
Joanna descended the stairs. At the bottom, she stopped in front of Elinor, her chin trembling.
“I am sorry,” she said. “For not standing up for you. For telling them about the night I saw you leave. For all the times I should have spoken and did not.”
Elinor took her hands. “You were surviving the same house I was. There is nothing to forgive.”
Joanna’s tears fell. Elinor pulled her into an embrace, and Joanna held on the way she had held on in the dark corridor the night she kept Elinor’s secret.
“She is extraordinary,” Lord Morland said.
He and Lucien stood in the study while Elinor and Joanna talked in the parlor. The older man lowered himself into a chair with the careful movements of a man whose body had not yet forgiven the overnight journey.
“She is,” Lucien said.
“You broke her heart, you know. Before you mended it.”
Lucien held his gaze. “I know. And I will spend the rest of my life making certain it does not happen again.”
Lord Morland studied him for a long moment. “She told me about the orphanage. The children. The name above the door.” He paused. “Lyra.”
“After the constellation she taught them.”
“I know what it is after.” The Marquess’ eyes glistened. “I taught her that constellation when she was seven years old. We stood in the garden at Morland Hall, and I pointed out the five stars, and she asked me why people saw a harp when it looked more like a kite, and I laughed so hard I woke the servants.”
Lucien smiled. It was the first smile that had felt real in days.
“Take care of her,” Lord Morland said. “Not because she cannot take care of herself. She can. She has proven that. But take care of her because she deserves someone who chooses to, and I believe you are that man.”
“I am,” Lucien said. “Or I will be. She makes me want to be.”
Lord Morland nodded. “That is enough.”
“We need to talk about what this is,” Elinor said it in the garden behind Morland House, the same place she had once slipped out to meet his carriage in the dark.
The afternoon was warm with the light turning gold. Lucien sat beside her on the stone bench, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.
“Yes,” he said. “We do.”
“The ruse broke us,” she said. “We let something real grow inside something false, and when the false ended, we did not know how to keep the rest alive.” She met his gaze. “I need this to be different. Not another arrangement. Not a performance. I need it to be real, Lucien. All of it.”
He straightened and turned to her. The charm was gone. What remained was the man from the schoolroom, the apartment, the one who had stood at Lyra House at dawn because it was the closest he could come to her.
“I wasn’t honest with you,” he said. “About the engagement, about my intentions, about how much you meant to me. I told myself I was protecting you, but I was protecting myself. I was afraid that if I let you in, you would see what Vivian saw, and you would leave, too.”
“I am not Vivian.”
“I know. I think I knew from the night you corrected me about a staircase railing.” His mouth curved faintly. “But knowing and believing are not the same. It took me too long to close that distance. I am sorry. For the ending, for the distance, for every moment I made you doubt what you were to me.”
Elinor’s hand found his. Their fingers laced, simple and steady.
“I lied, too,” she said. “I pretended I did not love you because loving you meant risking everything I had built to protect myself. My walls were different, but they were just as high.”
“Then we take them down together.” He tightened his grip. “Slowly. And when we are afraid, we say so instead of running.”
“No more running.”
“No more running.”