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 myfather. 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.”
