Chapter Twenty-Two
The garden was beautiful in the afternoon light.
The storm damage had been cleared away, the broken branches removed, and the scattered debris swept clean.
The flower beds blazed with colour—roses and dahlias and late-blooming clematis climbing the stone walls.
The air smelled of green growing things and the faint sweetness of honeysuckle, and somewhere in the distance, a bird was singing.
Serena and Nathaniel walked the familiar paths, their steps unhurried, their conversation flowing easily between comfortable silences.
“Tell me about your mother,” Serena said, as they paused beside the oak tree that had caused such controversy during her first weeks at Greystone Hall.
Nathaniel was quiet for a moment, his gaze distant. “She died when I was twenty-two. A fever that came on suddenly and gave us no time to prepare. One day, she was hosting a dinner party, charming everyone with her wit and warmth. The next week, she was gone.”
“I am sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. But I still miss her.” He reached out and touched the trunk of the oak tree, his fingers tracing the rough bark.
“She would have liked you, I think. She valued intelligence and integrity above all else. She used to say that breeding and fortune meant nothing without character, and that she would rather dine with an honest beggar than a dishonest duke.”
“She sounds remarkable.”
“She was. My father adored her—absolutely, completely adored her. When she died, a part of him died too. He managed another five years, but he was never the same.” Nathaniel’s voice was soft with memory.
“Edward and I used to worry about him. We would find him sitting in her favourite chair, holding one of her handkerchiefs, just... sitting. Remembering.”
Serena tightened her grip on his arm. “That is a beautiful kind of love. Painful, but beautiful.”
“It is. And it is what I want for us.” Nathaniel turned to face her, his grey eyes intense.
“I want to love you so completely that your absence would be unbearable. I want to build a life so intertwined with yours that neither of us can tell where one ends and the other begins. I want—” He stopped, laughing slightly at himself.
“I want everything, Serena. I have spent so long wanting nothing that now I cannot seem to stop.”
“You do not need to stop.” Serena reached up and touched his face, a gesture that was becoming second nature. “Want everything. Demand everything. I will do my best to give it to you.”
“You have already given me more than I deserve.”
“Nonsense. You deserve far more than you allow yourself to believe.” She smiled, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw. “That is one of your more infuriating qualities, you know. This insistence that you are somehow unworthy of happiness.”
“I was unworthy. For two years, I was—”
“For two years, you were grieving. You were struggling. You were doing the best you could with an impossible situation.” Serena’s voice was firm. “That does not make you unworthy, Nathaniel. That makes you human.”
He caught her hand and held it against his cheek, his eyes closing briefly. “How do you do that? How do you make everything seem so clear? So simple? When I am drowning in doubt and self-recrimination, you speak a few words, and suddenly I can breathe again.”
“It is a gift,” Serena said solemnly. “Also, I am exceptionally wise.”
“Modest, too.”
“False modesty is tedious. I prefer honest acknowledgement of my considerable virtues.”
Nathaniel laughed—a real laugh, full and unguarded—and Serena felt her heart swell at the sound. She had heard him laugh before, but never quite like this. Never with such freedom, such joy, such complete abandonment of the careful control he usually maintained.
“I love you,” he said, the words coming easily now, as though he had been saying them all his life. “Have I mentioned that recently?”
“Not in the past several minutes. I daresay I was beginning to feel neglected.”
“We cannot have that.” He pulled her closer, his arms wrapping around her waist. “I love you, Serena Collard. I love your wisdom and your wit and your refusal to let me wallow in self-pity. I love the way you look in this dress, and the way you smell like lavender, and the way your eyes light up when you are about to say something devastatingly clever.”
“My eyes do not light up.”
“They absolutely do. It is one of your more alarming tells. I have learned to brace myself whenever I see it.”
Serena laughed, leaning into his embrace. “You make me sound terrifying.”
“You are terrifying. Magnificently, wonderfully terrifying.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead; a gesture so tender it made her chest ache.
“I cannot imagine my life without you anymore. I cannot imagine this house without you, or the children without you, or myself without you. You have become so thoroughly woven into the fabric of my existence that removing you would unravel everything.”
“That is rather a lot of pressure.”
“Is it? I thought it was romantic.”
“It can be both.” Serena tilted her head back to look at him, her expression softening.
“I feel the same way, you know. About you, about this house, about all of it. A month ago, I was a governess with no family and no prospects and no expectation of ever belonging anywhere. Now I am engaged to a marquess, preparing to stand in a mother’s place to three children I adore, and more terrified than I have ever been in my life. ”
Nathaniel’s brow furrowed. “Terrified? Of what?”
“Of everything. Of not being enough. Of failing you, or the children, or myself. Of waking up one day and discovering that this was all a dream, that I am still alone, that none of this was ever real.”
“It is real.” Nathaniel’s voice was fierce. “I am real. This—” He gestured at the garden around them, at the house in the distance. “All of this is real. And I will spend every day of our lives proving it to you, if that is what it takes.”
“Every day seems excessive.”
“Every day,” he repeated firmly. “Every single day. Until you believe it so completely that you forget you ever doubted.”
Serena felt tears prick at her eyes—she had cried more in the past twenty-four hours than in the previous year combined—but she blinked them back. “You are very stubborn.”
“I am. It is one of my more endearing qualities.”
“I was going to say infuriating.”
“Endearing and infuriating. They are often the same thing.” He smiled, and there was something in his expression—a warmth, a certainty, a peace—that made Serena’s heart turn over in her chest. “May I kiss you?”
The question caught her off guard. They had confessed their love, announced their engagement, exchanged promises and a hundred tender words. But they had not yet kissed—not the way Serena had dreamed of during all those restless nights when she had lain awake thinking of him.
“I thought you would never ask,” she said.
Nathaniel’s smile widened. Then he lowered his head and captured her lips with his own.
The kiss was everything Serena had imagined and nothing like she had expected.
It was gentle at first, tentative, as though he were asking a question with his lips rather than his words.
But when she responded—when she rose on her toes and wound her arms around his neck and pulled him closer—the gentleness gave way to something deeper.
Something hungry and urgent and overwhelmingly sweet.
She had been kissed before. Once, at a village dance when she was seventeen, by a farmer’s son who tasted of cider and awkward inexperience.
And once, at her first position, by the master’s eldest son, who had mistaken a governess for fair sport.
Neither experience had prepared her for this—for the way Nathaniel held her as though she were something to be treasured, for the reverence in the slow movement of his mouth against hers, for the astonishing certainty with which he made her feel not merely desired, but cherished.
When they finally broke apart, both of them were breathing hard.
“That was—” Serena began.
“Yes.”
“I mean, I had expected—”
“Yes.”
“Will you stop interrupting me?”
“No.” Nathaniel’s eyes were dark with emotion, his voice rough.
“I cannot think of anything to say that would not be hopelessly inadequate, so I have resolved to agree with whatever you were about to utter. It was remarkable. It was astonishing. It was—quite without competition—the finest kiss in the entire history of the practice.”
Serena laughed, the sound bright and wholly unrestrained. “The entire history of the practice? That is a very bold claim, my lord.”
“I stand by my assessment.” He brushed a strand of hair from her face, his touch impossibly gentle. “I have wasted too many weeks not kissing you, Serena. Weeks of restraint and propriety and careful distance. I intend to make up for lost time.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It is a promise.” He kissed her again—a brief, sweet press of lips that left her wanting more.
“I am going to kiss you every day. Multiple times a day. Whenever I see you, wherever we are, whatever we are doing. You will become so accustomed to being kissed that you will forget what it was like to live without it.”
“I already have.”
The admission slipped out before Serena could stop it, but she found she did not regret it.
It was true. She had spent her entire life without this—without someone who looked at her the way Nathaniel was looking at her now, without the warmth of being held and cherished and wanted.
And now that she had tasted it, she could not imagine going back to that cold, lonely existence.
“Good,” Nathaniel said, his voice rough with emotion. “Because I have no intention of letting you go. Ever.”
“Ever is a very long time.”
“Not long enough.” He pulled her close again, resting his chin on top of her head. “I am greedy, Serena. Now that I have you, I want forever.”