Chapter 29 #2
His voice was rough, stripped of every careful modulation he usually employed. This was Tobias laid bare—no charm, no wit, nothing but devastating honesty that cut straight to the bone.
Gasps erupted around them. She heard Lady Pemberton’s scandalised cry, heard the whispers exploding like powder kegs across the ballroom. But none of it mattered. Nothing mattered except the man before her and the words falling from his lips like stones into still water.
“I told myself letting you go was noble. But there’s nothing noble about watching the woman you love marry another man.”
The woman you love.
The words struck like lightning, illuminating every dark corner where doubt had festered. Her lungs forgot how to function. Her knees threatened to give way. The entire world tilted sideways, and only his presence—solid and real and impossibly here—kept her from collapsing entirely.
“If you marry him, Amelia—” His hands clenched into fists at his sides, as though preventing himself from reaching for her required physical effort. “—I’ll will not survive it. It will kill me. Because he’d have what’s mine.”
“Tobias!” Shock warred with something dangerously close to joy. She should be horrified. Should be scandalised by his audacity, by the spectacle he was creating in front of half of London society.
Instead, her treacherous heart soared.
He stepped closer, until propriety ceased to exist, until there was nothing between them but charged air and months of denied longing. His eyes—those grey eyes that had haunted her dreams—burned with possession and desperation and terrible vulnerability.
“You’re mine in every way that matters.” His voice dropped, roughened by emotion that stripped him bare before London’s elite. “And I’m yours—though heaven knows I don’t deserve you.”
Her breath stuttered. Tears burned behind her eyes, blurring his beloved face into watercolour impressions.
“I love you, Amelia.” The confession emerged raw and absolute.
“I’ve loved you from the moment you walked into my life and turned it upside down.
From the first time you looked at me with those blue eyes and saw past every mask I’d constructed.
From the moment Henry called me Papa and I realised I wanted nothing more than to be exactly that—to you, to him, to the family we could build together. ”
The ballroom had gone utterly silent. Even the orchestra had abandoned all pretence of playing. Every eye fixed upon them with avid fascination, witnessing what would undoubtedly become the scandal of the season.
Amelia couldn’t bring herself to care.
“So if you want me to leave,” Tobias continued, his voice breaking slightly, “say it. Tell me to go, and I’ll walk out that door and never return.
I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been if I’d fought harder, if I’d been braver, if I’d chosen love over honour.
But I’ll do it if that’s what you truly want. ”
He paused, chest heaving, every line of his body taut with desperate hope.
“But if you don’t—”
He stopped. Waited.
The question hung between them like something infinitely fragile and utterly precious. Around them, London society held its collective breath. Somewhere to her left, she heard Ashbourne make a sound of protest, but it was distant, meaningless.
Her entire world had narrowed to the man before her.
To grey eyes burning with naked vulnerability.
To the future balanced on a knife’s edge, waiting for her answer.
What do you want, Amelia?
The truth rose swift and certain, bypassing every logical objection her mind attempted to raise. She’d spent two years in a loveless marriage, convincing herself that contentment was enough. Had nearly condemned herself to repeat that mistake out of fear and wounded pride.
But looking at Tobias now—at the man who’d defended her honour, protected her son, challenged her assumptions, who’d just laid himself bare before half of London for the chance at claiming her heart—safety seemed a paltry prize.
He was offering her everything.
And she was done being afraid.
She took one trembling step forward.
Then another.
The tears she’d been fighting spilled free, tracking hot paths down her cheeks. But her lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile—something fiercer, more certain, more real than any expression she’d worn in months.
“You took long enough,” she whispered.
The words were barely audible, yet they seemed to echo through the silent ballroom like cannon fire. She watched them land, watched understanding blaze across his features, watched relief and joy and desperate hunger chase each other across his face in rapid succession.
The crowd erupted into gasps and excited murmurs, but the sound washed over her like distant waves.
Nothing existed except Tobias’s eyes locked on hers, except the way he reached for her with hands that trembled, except the certainty blooming in her chest that this—this—was what she’d been searching for all along.
He didn’t touch her. Not yet. Propriety still held him back, even now, even after his public declaration. But his gaze devoured every detail of her face as though committing it to memory.
“Come with me.” His voice was low and urgent, meant for her ears alone, despite their very public audience. “Please, Amelia. Let me—we need to talk. Away from all of this.”
She should refuse. Should demand explanations here and now, should make him work for forgiveness after the pain of the past week.
Should care about the hundreds of eyes watching their every move, about the scandal already brewing, about Lord Ashbourne’s furious expression visible in her peripheral vision.
But she’d spent enough time doing what she should.
“Yes,” she breathed.
Relief crashed across his features like a wave breaking on shore. He offered his arm with the formal courtesy that seemed almost absurd after his passionate declaration. She placed her hand on his sleeve, feeling the tension thrumming through him even through layers of fabric.
Together, they turned toward the terrace doors.
The crowd parted before them like the Red Sea before Moses, whispers following in their wake like a rising tide.
Amelia caught a glimpse of Clara’s face in the crowd—her cousin’s expression a mixture of satisfaction and delight, as though she’d orchestrated this entire scene herself.
Lady Pemberton looked ready to swoon. Lord Ashbourne’s face had gone white with fury and humiliation.
Amelia felt a pang of guilt for that. She would apologise properly later, explain as best she could. But right now, with Tobias’s warmth beside her and freedom beckoning beyond those terrace doors, she couldn’t muster proper remorse.
The cool night air struck her overheated skin like a benediction as they stepped outside. The terrace stretched before them, shadowed and blessedly private after the ballroom’s oppressive brightness. Beyond it, the gardens sprawled dark and inviting, offering shelter from prying eyes.
The moment they crossed the threshold, Tobias released her arm and turned to face her fully.
For a heartbeat, they simply stared at each other—drinking in details that had been denied during their week apart.
The candlelight from the ballroom spilled through the open doors, casting golden light across his features and illuminating the raw emotion written there.
“Amelia.” Her name emerged rough, reverent. “I—”
But she was done with words. Done with waiting, with hesitation, with all the careful restraint that had kept them apart for far too long.
She closed the distance between them in two quick steps and kissed him.
The contact sent a surge of electricity through her veins.
His sharp intake of breath ghosted across her lips for one frozen moment before he responded with a hunger that stole what remained of her senses.
His arms came around her waist, crushing her against him with desperate urgency, whilst her hands fisted in his coat for balance.
This was nothing like their first kiss in the library—tentative and restrained and flavoured with guilt. This was desperation and relief and months of denied longing finally given voice. His mouth moved against hers with bruising intensity, tasting, claiming, speaking promises too deep for words.
She gasped against him, and he took immediate advantage, deepening the kiss until she forgot how to breathe, forgot how to think, forgot everything except the taste of him and the solid strength of his body pressed against hers.
One of his hands tangled in her carefully arranged hair, scattering pins across the terrace stones with soft musical plinks. The elaborate style collapsed entirely, curls tumbling free to cascade over her shoulders in wild disarray.
She didn’t care.
Couldn’t care about anything except this—except him, except the way he kissed her like she was air and he’d been drowning, like she was the answer to every prayer he’d been too afraid to voice.
When they finally broke apart—driven by the basic human need for oxygen—they were both trembling.
His forehead rested against hers, their harsh breathing mingling in the scant space between them.
His hands framed her face with trembling reverence whilst hers remained fisted in his coat, anchoring her to reality.
“I love you,” he whispered against her lips, the words a prayer and a promise. “God help me, Amelia, but I love you beyond reason.”
“Then it’s fortunate,” she managed, her voice shaking with emotion, “that I love you just as unreasonably.”
He kissed her again—softer this time but no less intense. His hands mapped her spine, her waist, the curve of her jaw, as though reassuring himself she was real. That this moment wasn’t some fever dream that would evaporate come morning.
She met him kiss for kiss, touch for touch, pouring everything she couldn’t articulate into the press of her lips against his. All the fear she’d carried. All the longing she’d denied. All the love she’d been too frightened to name—it was his now, freely given, nothing held back.
Behind them, through the open terrace doors, the ballroom buzzed with scandal and speculation. Tomorrow, London would talk of nothing else. Tomorrow, there would be consequences to face, explanations to give, and society’s judgment to weather.
But tonight—tonight they had this.
Had each other.
Had the promise of something neither had dared imagine possible.
And as Tobias pulled her close once more, his lips finding hers in the moonlight whilst the gardens whispered secrets around them, Amelia thought that perhaps—just perhaps—being ruined had never felt so much like being saved.