Epilogue #2
“Then let your voice tremble. Let your hands shake.” Benjamin held her gaze steadily. “None of that lessens what you are doing. You are facing something that has frightened you since childhood, and you are choosing to remain. That is courage.”
“You walked into fire,” she said softly. “You faced an inferno to save strangers.”
“And you are sitting still while a creature you have feared all your life purrs at your side.” His tone was gentle, but unyielding. “We all have our infernos, Eleanor. Magnitude is irrelevant. What matters is that we do not turn away.”
They remained thus for some time—the three of them. Eleanor upright in her chair, Benjamin beside her, the cat a quiet, rumbling presence upon the settee.
At length, the cat stretched, yawned, and leapt lightly to the floor. It vanished through the doorway without ceremony. Eleanor watched it go, relief and something perilously close to longing mingling in her expression.
“It will return,” Benjamin said quietly. “Once trust is extended, it rarely retreats without cause.”
“Will it?” Her uncertainty lingered. “Perhaps it was mere curiosity. Perhaps it will reconsider and keep its distance.”
“That is not the way of trust. Not for animals—and not for people.” He rose and settled into the chair beside hers, taking her hand. “When it first decided I was safe, the change was subtle. But after that, there was no reversal. The bond only strengthened.”
She considered this. “Was there such a moment for us?” she asked. “A point at which you decided I was safe?”
He reflected before answering. “Not a single moment. Many. Each one small. Each one building upon the last. The first time you did not flinch from my scars. The night you held my hand through the nightmares. The day you came to the study and confronted me instead of continuing to hide.”
“Those all sound like moments when I was deciding that you were safe. Not the reverse.”
“Perhaps trust is mutual by necessity,” he said, squeezing her fingers. “Perhaps it grows only when both are willing to risk it.”
She thought of the weeks of observation—the cat at the threshold, Benjamin beyond her carefully maintained reserve. Three wary hearts, each testing the air.
“I love you,” she said.
The words still carried weight, but they no longer felt fragile.
“And I love you,” he replied, as he always did—without hesitation. “And I shall never tire of hearing it or saying it.”
“Then that is fortunate.” She leaned over and kissed him—lightly, warmly. “Because I have no intention of ceasing.”
***
The cat’s acceptance of Eleanor marked a turning point.
Not just in her relationship with the animal—though that continued to deepen, the cat appearing in her space with increasing frequency, eventually allowing her to stroke its fur with fingers that only trembled slightly—but in something larger.
Something that felt like the final piece of a puzzle clicking into place.
She had been healed, Eleanor realised. Not completely—she suspected complete healing was not possible, not after a lifetime of wounds.
But enough. Enough to sit in a room with a cat without fleeing.
Enough to believe her husband when he told her he loved her.
Enough to wake each morning without the familiar weight of dread pressing down on her chest.
The old wounds were still there. But they had softened. They no longer governed her.
Benjamin bore his own scars. She saw them in the fleeting tension when unexpected news arrived, in the rare nightmare that still claimed him. But the fear no longer defined him either.
They carried their scars together now.
One evening, some weeks later, Eleanor found him in the hidden courtyard.
He sat upon the stone bench, the cat draped across his lap, watching the sky deepen toward dusk.
“You missed dinner,” she said, settling onto the bench beside him.
“I know. I apologise.” He did not look away from the sunset. “I needed... I am not certain what I needed. Quiet, perhaps. Space to think.”
“About what?”
He was silent for a long moment. The cat shifted in his lap, resettling itself more comfortably, and he stroked its fur absently.
“About how much has changed,” he said finally. “A year ago, I sat here convinced I would always be alone. This cat was the sole proof I had that I was capable of care.”
Eleanor reached over and took his free hand.
“And now?” she prompted gently.
“Now I have you.” He turned to look at her, and the expression on his face made her breath catch. “Now I have a wife who holds my hand through nightmares and argues with me about accounting methods and makes me believe, against all evidence, that I am worthy of being loved.”
“You are worthy of being loved. You always were.”
“I did not believe that. Not until you showed me.” He raised her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her palm.
“I thought I was cursed. Thought I would destroy anyone foolish enough to come close to me. Thought the kindest thing I could do for the world was to retreat into solitude and let the line die with me.”
“And now?”
“Now I think I was wrong.” The words came out slowly, as though he were testing them. “Now I think the curse was never real—just a story I told myself to make sense of tragedies that had no sense to make.”
Eleanor’s throat tightened. “That is... that is a significant shift.”
“It is.” He turned more fully toward her; the cat protested at the disturbance, then settled again across their laps.
“And I owe it to you. You gave me evidence, Eleanor. Every day you remained. Every morning you woke beside me—alive, whole, still choosing to stay. You proved, simply by existing here, that loving me was not a sentence to ruin.”
“I never believed it was.”
“I know. That was part of the proof.” Emotion roughened his voice. “You looked at my scars, my guilt, my conviction that I was dangerous—and you saw something else. You saw a man worth loving. And, by persistence alone, you taught me to see him too.”
The cat purred between them, a warm and steady weight. The last light of day thinned into violet and ash.
“I once came here to escape,” Benjamin said quietly. “Now I come to remember. To remember who I was before you, so that I never take for granted who I have become.”
“And who is that?” she asked.
He considered. “Alive,” he said at last. “For years, I merely endured. Then you arrived, and I remembered what it was to want—to hope—to imagine a future not defined by solitude.”
Eleanor rested her head against his shoulder. “I know that feeling. Before you, I mistook usefulness for purpose.”
“But that changed.”
“It did.” She smiled faintly. “You showed me I was more than what I could offer. That I could be loved for myself.”
“We taught each other, then.”
“We did.” She lifted her gaze to his. “Two wounded people who had resigned themselves to loneliness—and yet, somehow, we found each other.”
“And healed.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Healed.”
The cat rose, stretched, and leapt lightly to the stones. It paused, casting them a contemplative glance, then slipped into the deepening dusk.
“It will return,” Benjamin murmured.
“I know.” She smiled. “It always does.”
They lingered in the fading light, watching the first stars kindle in the darkening sky. The air was cool but gentle, scented faintly with roses beyond the wall.
They remained there until the sky was thick with starlight, wrapped in one another’s arms, listening to the small, living sounds of the garden. At last, the evening chill persuaded them indoors. They walked slowly through the gap in the crumbling wall and along the familiar paths, arm in arm.
The house shone ahead of them, its windows warm against the night. Within, there was movement—lamplight crossing corridors, the quiet industry of servants concluding the day. The steady pulse of a household at peace.
“I am happy,” Eleanor said, and the simplicity of the words startled her. “I do not think I have ever said that without qualification. But I am. Entirely.”
“So am I.” His arm drew her closer. “I had forgotten the shape of it. I believed it belonged to some earlier version of myself. And now—”
“Now?” she prompted softly.
“Now it greets me each morning.” He stopped and turned her gently toward him. “In the sight of you beside me. In the sound of your voice at breakfast. In the knowledge that I am not alone—and that I am chosen. Repeatedly. By a woman I admire more than I can adequately express.”
Her eyes shone. “You will make me cry.”
“Then I shall consider that an honour.” His thumb brushed the tear from her cheek. “It means you are no longer guarding yourself from feeling.”
“I have shed more tears in recent months than in years past.”
“Then perhaps they were long overdue.” His tone was light, but his gaze was earnest. “I would rather see you moved than hiding.”
She caught his hand before he could withdraw it. “And you? Will you permit yourself the same grace?”
“I am learning,” he said. “Slowly. I may falter. But I will not retreat from you.”
“That is all I require.” She pressed a kiss to his palm. “We are both unlearning solitude.”
“And relearning joy.”
“Yes.”
They resumed their walk, steps unconsciously aligned, fingers intertwined.
Behind them, in the quiet of the courtyard, a small grey cat emerged from the shadows and began to follow.
It had found its belonging, at last—and meant to keep to it.
The End
I hope you loved diving into “Bound to the Scarred Duke of Thornwood”!
Enjoy reading!