“Oh, Eammon, I am so grateful you are here.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. He kissed the left one, then the right.
“How is Ambrose?” she asked.
He smiled. “Still the same sweet-hearted creature. He sounded the alarm, of sorts. Came home without you, and the stable master knew immediately something was wrong. I rode to the field, where you had been brushing him, and found the carrots, your shoe...”
“I tried to leave a trail,” she said.
“I thought you might have. I’m glad you did. It confirmed you hadn’t simply wandered off. And it led me to you. The whole family is searching. My uncles are scouring the countryside, and the ladies are tearing apart the house looking for that blasted book.”
“The book,” she said quickly. “It’s beneath my mattress. I know it’s not the cleverest hiding place, but I had no time. I don’t want to keep it. I want to burn it.”
“I think that’s wise,” he said. “Although, perhaps we might keep the passages concerning Lord Markham. They could be useful—for leverage, if nothing else.”
She nodded. “Let us go through it together. We’ll keep only what is absolutely necessary. The rest, we burn.”
“We will.” He paused, his expression softer now. “Charity, when you say ‘we’... do you mean that you forgive me? For the lies, the secrecy?”
She blinked and wiped at her tears with her uninjured hand. “Yes. I forgive you. I had time to think last night, and again this morning when I took Ambrose. And again here, while chained in this place. I cannot say I’d have acted differently, had the circumstances been reversed. We didn’t know each other. We didn’t know whether we could trust one another. But now we do. And I want us to always be honest. I want us to be...”
“Friends?” he said, a little deflated.
But she placed both hands on his cheeks and turned his face to hers.
“Friendsandlovers. The best relationships are those where lovers are also friends. I want that with you. All of it.”
Relief flooded him. He pressed his forehead to hers.
“Good. That’s what I want as well. I want us to be happy.”
“I shall call the authorities,” Thomas said then. Eammon had nearly forgotten he was there.
He nodded. “Yes, see to it.”
“I think my father would have liked this,” Charity whispered. “Us. Together.”
“As would mine,” Eammon replied. “I wish we had grown up together. Known one another sooner.”
“Perhaps our fathers thought it best to keep us apart. To protect us from their actions.”
“Perhaps,” Eammon said. “Perhaps.”
She leaned against him. “Mrs. Jenkins—our housekeeper up north—told me my father was very fond of you, though he didn’t know you well. He mentioned you in his letters. I’ll show them to you. He implied he had a gentleman in mind for me, and I think he meant you.”
“I think he may have,” Eammon said. “Maybe, somewhere, our fathers are watching us now. With sherry or brandy in hand. Smiling.”
“I hope so,” she said. “I wish they were still with us.”
“They’ve passed,” he said. “But we are here. That must be enough.”
She paused. “In the book, there was a birth certificate. The one listing your true parents. What happened to them?”
He drew her into his embrace again. “It was an accident. For so long, I suspected more. I lived under lies, and I believed there must be more to the story. But in the end, it was only an accident. Still, the suspicion shaped me. It made me wary, mistrustful. But now I know the truth.”
She sighed. “If they hadn’t died...you wouldn’t have come here. We never would have met.”
He shook his head. “I think we would have. Some things are meant to be. Even if I’d grown up the son of a mirror merchant and you, the daughter of an earl, we’d have found our way.”
