“She does not. She blames me for it, actually. She told me there was no possibility that you would have left her otherwise. She adores you.”
“Then it is just as well that I am returning.”
He almost did not believe what he was hearing at first. It felt like he was imagining it so that he could find comfort, but it was real. One look at her was all that he needed to know that for certain.
“You will still want control,” she continued. “And I will still question what I am given, for the first while at least.”
“I expect you should,” he said. “And I will learn to accept that I cannot always have complete control.”
Eleanor allowed a faint smile at that, not amused, but something close to it, something that carried a quiet warmth she had not allowed herself before.
“And I am prepared for it. I am ready to face all of it if it means making our family happier. Everything that we do now, it must be for one another, as well as Lily. I want to be a proper family, Julian, not an arrangement.”
“And I should have seen things that way long ago. It would have saved such heartache, but now we can only look to the future and do what we can to make it the best life we can.”
The certainty in his voice was evident, because he believed every word. There was nothing he wanted more than to build something real with Eleanor, something based in love rather than mere obligation. He wanted to show her just how much heloved her, and in that respect he was more than happy for it to take time for her to believe in it.
Eleanor looked down briefly, then back to him, her voice softer.
“I do not know what this will become,” she admitted. “I cannot promise that I will always understand it, or that I will not falter in it.”
“You do not need to promise that,” Julian said. “Only that you will not leave it.”
Eleanor considered that, then nodded once.
“I can do that.”
“Then we will begin there.”
Julian lifted her hand slightly, not to pull her closer this time, but simply to hold it. The simplicity of it did not lessen its meaning. They stood together a moment longer, the quiet around them no longer filled with uncertainty. Eleanor drew a slow breath, and Julian noticed that his thoughts were no longer scattered, no longer caught between what had been and what might be. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he did not feel as though she was standing on uncertain ground.
And beside him, there stood the lady he would move mountains for.
EPILOGUE
The house had not yet filled with guests when Julian found Eleanor in the smaller sitting room adjoining the main hall.
The preparations for the evening were already well underway, servants moving beyond the doorway, and the distant sounds of carriages beginning to arrive at the far end of the drive. Everything had been arranged with care, nothing left uncertain, and yet there remained one conversation that had not yet taken place.
Eleanor stood near the window, her hand resting lightly against the back of a chair, as though she had paused in the middle of something and had not yet decided how to continue. When Julian entered, she turned toward him, and for a moment neither of them spoke.
There was something different in the silence. Not tension, not distance, but a shared awareness of what was about to be said, and the weight of it. Everything was to change that night, andthough it would be lovely then, there was something they had to do first.
“She is in the garden,” Eleanor said quietly. “She has been there most of the afternoon.”
Julian nodded once.
“Then we should not delay it further.”
Eleanor hesitated, only slightly.
“Are you certain that she will be pleased about it?”
“No,” he said, and the honesty of it settled between them without discomfort. “But I do not believe waiting will make it easier.”
Eleanor let out a slow breath, the faintest trace of nerves passing through her.
“She will have questions.”