Chapter Ten
A hush fell over Cloverdale House after the Hofst?tters left, their curses trailing like smoke behind them. Servants closed the doors, Prince Stan murmured something about “fortifying the gates,” and still the corridor trembled in the wake of the near disaster.
John stood at the center, fist bloodied, chest rising and falling as if he had fought a war. Perhaps he had.
Theresa hovered a step away, face pale but chin lifted high. The very act of standing seemed to cost her, but she did not falter. She had faced her father. Her brother. Her past. And she had not broken.
Maisie slid an arm around her waist, sure as bedrock. “You’re safe here,” she whispered, fierce as a promise.
Theresa’s throat ached. Safe. She had almost forgotten what that meant. She wiped a tear from her cheek. “I don’t deserve your kindness. I’m so sorry.”
Maisie’s voice broke the hush, soft but sure.
“I thought him too young.” Her hand rested lightly on John’s arm.
“Too young to bind his life so soon. But John has always been ahead of his age. Precocious as a boy, foresightful as a man.” She turned her gaze to Theresa, eyes bright.
“And I could not be prouder of the woman who will now be my daughter.”
But John—John hadn’t spoken since he struck her brother down. His silence hung heavier than any word, and she feared it more than her father’s rage.
She turned to him, desperate, hand pressed low against her belly as if to secure two lives at once. “John, I’m sorry. I should have told you. Not just for me, but for”—her voice broke—“for our child.”
Maisie’s gasp caught the air. Felix raked a hand through his hair. Alfie muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “should’ve talked the talk.”
John’s eyes widened, then narrowed, and for a terrible beat, Theresa thought he might recoil.
He crossed the space between them in two strides and caught her trembling hands in his. “Our child,” he echoed, the words reverent. He searched her face, every line of it, every tear she tried to hold back. “You’re carrying? Are you sure?”
“I am,” she whispered. “And I was so afraid you would hate me for the risk—”
“The risk was a promise.”
“So you hate me for the name I was born with? For being a Hofst?tter?”
He shook his head, rough, adamant. “You are not your father’s crimes.
You are not your brother’s cruelty. You are not even the name they gave you.
You are—” He cupped her face in his scarred hands.
“You are the woman I love. The woman I will fight for until my last breath. The woman I want beside me—always.”
Maisie exhaled like only a boy’s mother could, whose son had grown into a man and found a wife.
Theresa’s knees nearly gave way this time. “But your family, your title—”
“My family”—John glanced at Maisie, at Felix, at Alfie—“is built from choice. From love. Not from blood alone. And as for my title—what is a marquess without the woman who makes him whole?” He lowered his forehead to hers.
“Theresa, you never have to be a Hofst?tter again. If you’ll have me, you’ll be my marchioness. Theresa Spencer. My love. My heart.”
Her lips parted, breath catching on a sob that was half joy, half disbelief. “I want nothing more than to be your family.”
A smile cracked through his exhaustion, brilliant and unshakable. “Then hear me.” He kissed her once, deep, sure, sealing it. “Family is another name for love.”
The corridor exhaled with them. Maisie pressed her hands to her eyes, Felix swallowed hard, and Alfie let out a shaky laugh. Prince Stan muttered something in Romanian that sounded suspiciously like “finally.”
But Theresa heard none of it. She felt only John’s arms pulling her close, his heartbeat thunder against her ear, and the certainty that for the first time in her life, she was exactly where she belonged.
Forever.