"You were eavesdropping on a private conversation?" Evangeline's voice rose with indignation that temporarily overwhelmed her curiosity about what information he might have gained through such dishonorable means.
"Not intentionally," he said quickly, though his expression suggested he found no comfort in such a defense. "I was returning from the morning room when I heard voices in thecorridor. Your voice, specifically. And when I realised you were discussing our marriage..."
"You lingered to listen rather than announcing your presence like a gentleman," she finished with ice that would have done credit to a duchess of far greater experience in social warfare.
"Yes," he admitted with the sort of stark honesty that stripped away all pretense of noble motivation. "I lingered, and I heard Lady Worthington speak of your burden in being bound to a man so altered by his experiences. I heard her express sympathy for your circumstances, pity for the life you had been forced to accept."
Evangeline stared at him with growing comprehension of the magnitude of his misunderstanding, remembering that particular conversation and the context he had clearly missed entirely. "And from her expressions of sympathy, you concluded what, precisely?"
"That you shared her assessment of our marriage as a burden to be endured rather than a blessing to be cherished," he replied bitterly. "That your loyalty stemmed from duty rather than affection, your defence of our union from obligation rather than genuine desire to preserve what we had built together."
"You heard Lady Worthington pity me for being married to you, and you assumed that I agreed with her assessment?" Evangeline's voice had dropped to a dangerous whisper that somehow seemed more threatening than shouting would have been.
"I heard enough to understand that you viewed our marriage as a prison rather than a partnership," he said with the sort of weary resignation that suggested he had replayed the conversation countless times in his memory. "And I realised that asking you to sacrifice your happiness for the sake of a union you had never wanted was both selfish and cruel."
"Did you hear the part where I defended you?" she demanded with growing fury at his selective interpretation of information that should have reassured rather than devastated him. "Did you hear me tell her that your sense of honour was remarkable, that your intelligence was considerable, that under different circumstances..."
"Under different circumstances," he repeated with bitter emphasis. "Meaning circumstances where you were not trapped by necessity into accepting a damaged husband whose presence brought you nothing but social complications and personal sacrifice."
"Under different circumstances meaning if you were not so determined to punish yourself for surviving when better men died!" she snapped with such force that he actually stepped backward. "If you were not so convinced of your own unworthiness that you could not recognise genuine affection when it was offered freely rather than extracted through duty!"
Her passionate declaration seemed to strike him with unexpected force, his scarred features registering shock at her interpretation of words he had apparently misunderstood so completely. For a moment, hope flickered in his dark eyes before being ruthlessly suppressed by years of accumulated self-doubt.
"Evangeline," he said quietly, "you need not pretend feelings you do not possess for the sake of salvaging our arrangement. This morning's events have vindicated my competence and destroyed Edmund's schemes—you are free to seek the sort of happiness that association with me makes impossible."
"Free?" she repeated with dangerous quiet. "You believe this morning's triumph has somehow liberated me from our marriage?"
"I believe it has eliminated the external pressures that forced you to defend a union you never truly wanted," he replied with the sort of calm rationality that made her long to strikehim. "You may now choose your own path without fear that abandoning me will result in scandal or destitution."
"And what if the path I choose leads directly back to you?" she challenged with growing desperation at his continued inability to comprehend the truth that should have been obvious to a man of his intelligence. "What if the life I want is the one we have been building together, when we are not busy destroying it through stubborn pride and willful misunderstanding?"
"Then you would be making a choice based on incomplete information," he said with the sort of gentle finality that suggested he had already resigned himself to losing her. "You deserve a husband who can offer you beauty rather than scars, social triumph rather than constant speculation about his mental fitness, children who will not inherit their father's damaged..."
"Stop." The single word emerged with such authority that it silenced his litany of self-incrimination immediately. "You will not stand there and tell me what I deserve or what I want. You will listen while I explain exactly what I have discovered about my own feelings during these terrible days when you have been systematically destroying the most precious thing either of us has ever possessed."
She moved closer to him with the sort of determined grace that had marked her finest moments as duchess, her dark eyes blazing with emotions too powerful to be contained by mere social convention. "I fell in love with you during our library conversations, when you shared your thoughts on poetry and philosophy with such intelligence and passion that I forgot entirely about your scars. I fell in love with you when you rescued Wellington and claimed the credit belonged to others. I fell in love with you when you defended me before your cousin's accusations with such magnificent courage that even society's opinion could not withstand the evidence of your character."
"Evangeline—"
"I am not finished," she interrupted with the sort of regal authority that reduced him to respectful silence. "I fell in love with the man who manages his estates with such care for his tenants' welfare, who reads Wordsworth by firelight, who faces mortal combat to defend his wife's honour despite believing she wishes to escape their marriage. I fell in love with you, Lucian Hollowbridge, not with some idealized version of what you might have been before the war marked you."
Her passionate declaration filled the library with the sort of electric tension that seemed to charge the very air between them, while Lucian stood frozen with shock at hearing sentiments, he had convinced himself could never exist.
"Your scars do not diminish you in my eyes," she continued with growing conviction. "They mark you as a man who sacrificed comfort and safety in service to principles greater than himself. Your withdrawal from society speaks not of mental deficiency but of sensitivity that values genuine connection over superficial entertainment. Your very determination to free me from our marriage demonstrates the nobility of character that made me fall in love with you in the first place."
"You cannot mean that," he whispered with the sort of desperate hope that suggested her words were penetrating defenses he had constructed so carefully against exactly such possibilities.
"I mean every word," she replied with simple sincerity that carried more conviction than elaborate protestations could have achieved. "Though I confess myself furious that your noble intentions nearly destroyed the happiness of both our lives. Did you truly believe that sacrificing yourself would somehow benefit me? Did you imagine I would thank you for eliminating the man I love from my existence?"
"I thought I was being honourable," he said with growingrecognition of how completely he had misjudged their situation. "I thought you deserved freedom to choose happiness over duty."
"And what if my happiness is inextricably linked to our marriage?" she challenged with growing intensity. "What if duty and inclination have become so thoroughly entwined that I cannot distinguish between them? What if the choice you thought to offer me is no choice at all, because my heart has already made its selection?"
The silence that followed her declaration stretched long enough for both of them to absorb the full implications of what had been said and what it might mean for their future. Lucian's expression had transformed from resignation to something approaching wonder, as though he were seeing her clearly for the first time since their marriage began.
"I have been such a fool," he said finally, his voice rough with emotions too complex for simple classification. "Such a blind, stubborn fool."
"Yes," she agreed with the sort of loving exasperation that marked intimate partnerships, "though I suspect I bear some responsibility for failing to make my feelings sufficiently clear before misunderstanding could take root between us."
