Chapter 31
“This is it,” Alexander said.
The cottage sat at the end of a lane lined with hawthorn, its stone walls the color of weathered bone. Modest and tidy. A front garden that someone had cared for with more enthusiasm than skill.
Frances leaned forward in the carriage to see past him. “It is charming.”
“It is small.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive qualities.”
He stepped down and offered his hand. She took it, and they stood together on the path while the coachman began unloading trunks.
The front door opened before they reached it. A stout woman in a plain gray dress and white cap appeared, wiping her hands on her apron.
“You must be the Duke and Duchess,” she said. Not a question. “Miss Moonwell’s been watching the lane since breakfast. Come in, come in.”
They stepped into a small front hall—flagstone floor, whitewashed walls, a coat stand bearing a single pelisse and a bonnet with blue ribbons. The ceiling was low enough that Alexander could have touched it without fully extending his arm.
Then they heard footsteps—fast, the sound of someone taking stairs two at a time—and Eleanor burst around the corner with her hair half-pinned, her face alight and her arms already reaching.
She went to Frances first.
“You came!” Eleanor threw her arms around Frances with the force of a woman who had been holding herself very still for weeks and had finally found someone safe enough to collapse against. “Oh, Frances, you came, you came—”
“Of course I came.” Frances held her tight. “Did you think I would not?”
“I hoped. I was not certain.”
Then Eleanor turned. She looked at Alexander. Her eyes were bright and wet. Her chin trembled once before she pressed her lips together and lifted it, and at that moment, she looked so much like their mother that something stirred in his chest he was not prepared for.
“Alexander,” she said.
She crossed the remaining distance between them and put her arms around him. Her head barely reached his shoulder. She pressed her face against his coat, and her hands gripped the fabric at his back, and she held on as though she were twelve years old again and afraid of a storm.
He gently wrapped his arms around her, his jaw clenched and his throat tight—all of him feeling strained.
“You are well,” he said. It came out rougher than he intended.
“I am.” She pulled back, looked up at him, and smiled—watery, brilliant, and entirely Eleanor. “I am very well.”
She is safe. She is whole. She is here.
He released her, stepped back, and clasped his hands behind his back.
“How is Mama?” Eleanor asked, leading them through a narrow doorway into a parlor. The room was small but well-kept—a fire burning in the grate, a tea tray already set out on a round table, two armchairs and a settle arranged around a faded carpet.
“Her health has been stable,” Alexander said. “She asks after you constantly.”
“I wrote to her. Three times. Did she receive—”
“She did. She read them aloud to me.”
Eleanor’s face crumpled briefly. “I should have written more.”
“You should not have left at all.” The words came out before he could stop them. He closed his mouth.
Frances touched Eleanor’s arm. “Tell us about the cottage. It is lovely.”
Eleanor seized the subject with visible relief. “It belonged to Malcolm’s great aunt. She left it to him when she passed. It was her only property. We plan to live in England of course. Malcolm has the school. But we want to come back here often. It is peaceful.”
“You came all this way to Gretna,” Alexander said. He sat in one of the armchairs. The cushion was worn but clean. “To marry over the anvil like... like people fleeing a scandal.”
“No.” Eleanor sat across from him, her hands folded in her lap.
Her chin came up again—that particular angle that meant she was about to say something she expected him to argue with.
“We came to Scotland because Malcolm has family here and because we could marry without needing banns read in a parish where people would whisper. But he refused to do it hastily.”
Alexander looked at her.
“He said...” Eleanor glanced at Frances then back. “He said he would not have anyone believe we married in shame. That if we were to do this, we would do it properly. With family present, if family would come.”
“That is why you invited us,” Frances said.
“Yes.” Eleanor’s gaze returned to Alexander. “I wanted you here. Both of you. I wanted a proper wedding with the people I love.”
“And Mr. Frazer,” Alexander said. “Where is he staying?”
“At the inn in the village. He has been there since we arrived. Mrs. Campbell stays with me here. Malcolm comes for meals sometimes, but he does not stay past dark.”
Alexander said nothing.
A man without means, without title, without any of the protections that status provides—and he took separate lodgings to preserve her reputation. Even here. Even in Scotland where no one knew them.
“The church is in the village,” Eleanor was saying.
She had risen and was pulling Frances by the hand toward the narrow staircase.
“Come, I will show you my dress. It is not grand, but it is mine, and I love it. And the flowers... Mrs. Campbell knows a woman who grows the most extraordinary white roses…”
Her voice trailed upward with her footsteps. Frances followed, casting one glance back at Alexander over her shoulder. Her expression was soft. Almost hopeful.
She is happy. Genuinely happy. Not performing it. Not pretending. She is twenty years old, in love, and about to marry a man who took separate lodgings because he respected her enough to do so.
The thought sat with him. He did not push it away.
Eleanor reappeared twenty minutes later, flushed and lively, and proceeded to show him every room in the cottage—all five of them—with the pride one shows when displaying a mansion.
The kitchen with its scrubbed stone floor.
The upstairs bedroom with its sloped ceiling and narrow window overlooking the garden.
The tiny study where Mr. Frazer apparently kept his books, dozens of them, stacked on every surface.
“He reads too much,” Eleanor said with the particular fondness of a woman who found the fault charming.
“Is there such a thing?” Frances asked.
“When one has to eat dinner on one’s lap because every table is covered in volumes? Yes.”
Frances laughed. Alexander almost smiled.
A knock came at the front door an hour later. Mrs. Campbell answered it, and then a voice carried from the hall.
“Eleanor said I might come.”
Malcolm Frazer entered the parlor. He was tall with brown hair and spectacles and the particular bearing of a man who had spent his life earning everything he had and was not ashamed of any of it. His coat was well-made but plain. His boots were clean. His gaze met Alexander’s directly.
“Your Grace.” He inclined his head.
“Mr. Frazer,” Alexander said.
“I am glad you came. Eleanor hoped—”
“I am here for my sister.”
“Of course.” Frazer did not flinch. His hands were steady at his sides. “I would expect nothing less.”
The tension sat between them like a wall. Eleanor appeared at Frazer’s elbow, her hand finding his arm, and Frances moved to Alexander’s side.
“Malcolm,” Frances said with a warmth that surprised Alexander, “it is good to see you again. Eleanor has been telling us about the roses.”
“Mrs. MacLeod’s roses.” Frazer’s expression eased. “She has been growing them for thirty years. She offered the entire bush when she heard about the wedding.”
“The entire bush!” Eleanor laughed. “I told her we only needed a few stems.”
“And she said nonsense, a bride deserves all the flowers in Scotland.”
Eleanor beamed at him. The look she gave Frazer—open, trusting, and incandescent—was not something that could be manufactured.
She loves him.
The evening unfolded. Tea turned into supper—simple food prepared by Mrs. Campbell, served at the small table where they sat four abreast with their elbows nearly touching.
Frazer talked about his school, his plans for the autumn term, and a colleague in Edinburgh who was developing new methods for teaching mathematics to young children.
He was intelligent, and Alexander could not deny it. Articulate and passionate about his work without being tedious, he asked Frances about Emily with genuine interest. He also inquired about the estate drainage—of all things—and how the summer storms were affecting every estate in England.
He is not what I expected.
By the time Mrs. Campbell cleared the plates, the tension had not vanished entirely, but it had thinned. Enough to breathe through.
Frances caught his eye across the table as Eleanor and Frazer debated whether to serve cake or biscuits after the ceremony. She raised one eyebrow a fraction.
Are you well?
He held her gaze. Gave a single nod.
Her mouth curved. Just slightly. Just enough.
And Alexander sat in a small Scottish cottage with his sister, her intended, and his wife, and he found that the evening was not unbearable. It was not what he would have chosen. It was not the future he had planned.
But Eleanor was laughing. And Frances was beside him. And the fire burned low in the grate.
It was enough.
“I, Malcolm James Frazer, take thee, Eleanor Antoinette Moonwell, to be my wedded wife.”
Frances sat very still. The words filled the small stone church. Beside her, Alexander’s hands rested on his knees. His fingers were not clasped. They were simply there, pressed flat against the dark fabric of his breeches, and they did not move.
“To have and to hold from this day forward. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer.”
Frances looked at Alexander.
His jaw was set, not tightly but as if he was restraining his emotions. His gaze was fixed on the altar, on Eleanor’s back, on the dress that was simple and lovely and nothing like what a duke’s sister would have worn in London.
“In sickness and in health.”
His throat moved. A single swallow and nothing else.
“To love and to cherish, till death us do part.”