Chapter 24
Estella woke with a crick in her neck and Charlotte's foot in her ribs.
They'd both fallen asleep in the armchair. Charlotte was wedged against Estella's side at an angle, her nightgown twisted around her knees and her hair a disaster of tangled curls.
Estella blinked up at the ceiling. Morning light filtered through the threadbare curtains, pale and gray. The drawing room was freezing. And for three blissful seconds, she didn't remember.
But then she did. And the weight of it settled over her like a boulder.
She extricated herself from her sister's limbs and Charlotte burrowed deeper into the chair cushion.
Estella stood. Her gown was hopelessly creased.
The borrowed pearls had left an imprint on her collarbone.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the tarnished mirror above the mantel and winced.
Her hair had come half undone, her eyes were swollen, and there was a crease on her cheek from the chair's upholstery.
She looked, in short, like a woman who had cried herself to sleep in an armchair.
Right. She drew a breath and squared her shoulders. She was going to wash her face, change her dress, and begin the business of putting herself back together.
She'd done it before. She would do it again.
Estella was halfway up the stairs when she heard a sharp knock at the front door. She froze.
The maid, Annie, scurried in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She opened the door, and Estella heard a voice that made her grip the banister so hard her knuckles went white.
"I need to speak with Miss Hale."
Sebastian. He was here. She looked around wildly as if something in her vicinity might give her a clue as to his intentions. All she ascertained was that it was still early—far too early for a call.
What did he want?
Annie's voice was uncertain. "I'm not sure Miss Hale is—"
"Who’s there, Annie?" Charlotte’s sleepy voice came from the other room.
Estella closed her eyes.
"Charlotte—" Sebastian's voice wasn’t quite as gruff, though no one would go so far as to say he was polite. "I need to see your sister."
"Why?" Charlotte demanded.
"Because I need to speak with her." Sebastian’s tone made it clear his patience was running thin.
Charlotte either didn’t notice or didn’t care. "About what?"
A pause. Estella pressed her back against the wall and listened. She should go down. She should intervene before Charlotte said something mortifying. But her feet refused to move, and a small, treacherous part of her wanted to hear what he'd say.
"About something important," Sebastian said carefully.
"Is it about how you're engaged to someone else?"
The silence that followed was spectacular.
"I'm not engaged," Sebastian said.
Estella frowned. She started to step away from the wall but stopped. Sebastian was not a liar. But perhaps he meant it wasn’t official yet.
Even as she thought it, that dratted hope flickered to life inside her. She squeezed her eyes shut to ward against it.
Sebastian’s voice was rough when he finally continued. "I was never engaged. There was a misunderstanding, and I—"
"A misunderstanding!" Charlotte's tone was so indignant, Estella clapped a hand over her mouth. "Estella cried last night. She never cries. She didn't even cry when Papa lost the harvest money, or when the roof leaked on her bed, or when—"
"Charlotte." His voice cracked on the name. "Please. I know. I know I hurt her, and I've come to—"
"To what? Make her cry again?"
Estella’s eyes went wide, and she pressed the hand to her mouth even tighter. She wasn’t sure if she ought to scold her sister…or laugh. But she should go down there. She absolutely should put an end to this.
And yet she didn’t move. She was far too eager to hear what he’d say next.
"No. I have no intention of making her cry—"
"Then what do you mean to say to her?"
Estella didn't need to peek to know exactly what Charlotte looked like right now. She was all too familiar with her sister's stubborn expression.
There was a silence, finally broken by a sigh when Sebastian apparently came to the realization that he’d have to get past Charlotte if he meant to speak to Estella.
His voice was quiet and raw, but she heard every word when he said, "I mean to tell her that I love her. And that I'm sorry. And that I've been the biggest fool in England."
Estella stood on the stairs with her hand over her mouth and her heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat.
"You love her," Charlotte said slowly.
"Yes."
"You actually love her," Charlotte said again. "Not just as an obligation. Not like a…a governess."
A sound escaped him. It might have been a laugh. "Not like a governess, no."
"And you're definitely not marrying that other lady?"
"I am not marrying anyone. Unless—" He stopped.
"Unless what?"
Another pause. When he spoke again, his voice was so low Estella had to strain to hear it. "Unless your sister will have me."
Charlotte was quiet for what felt like an eternity but was probably four seconds.
"Wait here," she said.
Estella heard small, rapid footsteps. She straightened and tried to look as though she hadn't been eavesdropping on the stairs. But then Charlotte appeared on the staircase, looked up, and—Estella was caught.
"He's here," Charlotte said, completely unnecessarily.
"I heard."
"He says he loves you."
Estella nodded, swallowing the absurd urge to burst into tears. "I—yes, I heard that too."
Charlotte planted her hands on her hips. "Well? Are you going to go down there or are you going to make him stand on the doorstep all morning?"
Estella looked down at the crushed gown, remembered the tangled hair. She looked like a disaster. "I'm going."
Charlotte gave a single satisfied nod and stepped aside.
Estella’s bare feet were silent on the worn wood. She crossed the narrow entrance hall and stopped in the open doorway.
Sebastian stood on the front step. His appearance made her feel markedly better about her own.
He was wearing yesterday's coat, creased and wrinkled, his cravat was gone entirely, and his hair looked as though he'd been dragging his hands through it for hours.
The morning light caught the scar along his face and the shadows beneath his eyes.
He looked terrible.
And also like the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
His eyes found hers, and everything he'd been holding back was right there on the surface.
"You're not engaged." Her voice came out steadier than she'd expected but tears stupidly sprang to her eyes.
She quickly blinked them away as he took a step forward.
"I'm not engaged. I was never engaged. My mother moved forward with the arrangement without my leave.
Though I bear the blame of staying silent on the matter.
" He barely paused for breath, and Estella was very clear on the fact that he’d been planning to say this for quite a while.
"Lady Clarissa came to the ball last night to ask me to refuse the match because she's in love with someone else.
I told her there was nothing to refuse, because there was never anything to accept. "
Estella gripped the doorframe. "But you said…on the terrace. You said there was an understanding. A practical match."
"I know what I said." He gave his head a sharp shake. "My mother had proposed the match, and I hadn't refused, and I told myself that keeping it as an option was…sensible." The word came out bitter. "Because sensible was easier than admitting the truth."
"Which is?"
He looked at her. The morning light was merciless and unromantic, and it showed every line of exhaustion on his face and every crease in his ruined coat. Behind her, she could hear Charlotte moving about and she had no doubt Annie hovered nearby.
It was not a terrace in the moonlight, nor a garden by a fountain. It was a shabby doorstep on a gray morning, and they were both wrecked, and it…
It was perfect.
"I love you," he said. "I think I may have loved you since a funeral in a country churchyard, when I watched a seventeen-year-old girl hold her whole family together and I thought, Who is taking care of this girl?
" His voice was rough and raw and entirely without artifice.
"And every day since, every single day, the answer has been the same.
Me. I want it to be me. I desperately want to be the one who takes care of you.
To be entrusted with your safety and your happiness…
It would be the privilege of a lifetime. "
Her vision blurred. She blinked hard and the tears spilled, and she didn't care, because he was still talking.
"I told myself it was guilt. I told you it was guilt.
And the guilt is real. Andrew is gone, and I will carry that for the rest of my life.
But Estella—" His voice broke on her name, and that undid her completely.
"Guilt doesn't explain my feelings for you.
It doesn't make a man memorize the exact shade of blue a woman's eyes turn in candlelight.
Or have him carrying a coat everywhere he goes in case she's cold. It certainly doesn’t leave him awake at night thinking about her laugh, or memorizing her smiles—" He made a sound, rough and helpless.
"Guilt has nothing to do with how I feel when you smile at me. "
She was crying properly now. Sobbing, really. She didn't care.
She loved him so much her chest couldn't contain it.
"I should have told you weeks ago," he said. "I should have told you the night you kissed me on that terrace. You were so brave, and I—I was a coward. I pushed you away because I was afraid that wanting you was the most selfish thing I'd ever done. That I didn't deserve—"
"Don't." She stepped onto the doorstep and closed the distance between them. "Don't you dare tell me what you don't deserve."
He looked down at her. She was barefoot and tear-streaked and her hair was a catastrophe and she had never felt more powerful in her life.
It was all so clear now. How he loved her.
How much he'd always loved her. "You've been paying our debts," she said.
"For two years. The milliner. The kitchen funds.
Mr. Phelps and his sudden departure for Cornwall. "
His throat worked. "Estella—"
"It was you. It was always you." Not a question.
"Yes." And the single word was like a key turning in a lock.
She let out a sharp exhale of relief and then she threw herself at him. It was horribly undignified, but he caught her against his chest and held her so tightly it made her weepy all over again.
"You impossible man." Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. His hand slid into her hair as he held her to his heart.
She was laughing and crying at the same time as she tipped her head so she could look up at him. "You told me it wasn't you. You looked me in the eye and—"
"I know." The arm around her waist tightened like he might never let her go. "I was wrong about everything. I was wrong to push you away, wrong to lie, wrong to think I could watch you marry someone else and survive it."
He reached for her hand and pressed it flat over his heart. She could feel it hammering beneath her palm, just as it had at the ball. "I can't live without you. I don't want to. Whatever I owe Andrew—I know now. The best way I can honor him is by making you happy. If you'll let me."
She looked up at him. This difficult, stubborn, deeply good man who had been loving her in secret for two years and fighting it every step of the way.
She rose on her toes.
"Estella." It was a growl that sent shivers through her. "If you kiss me on this doorstep— Your maid is watching, and your sister is watching, and every neighbor on this street—"
She kissed him.
It was not like the terrace. The terrace had been desperate and stolen. This was something else.
This was a beginning.
Both his arms came around her and dipped down slightly, lifting her up off her feet so he could kiss her properly. Her feet dangled as she wrapped her arms around his neck, savoring the kisses as his mouth moved over hers with a tenderness that made her knees dissolve.
He kissed her the way he did everything—thoroughly, completely, and with his whole stubborn heart.
When they finally broke apart, she was breathless and grinning, and he was looking at her with an expression of such stunned, helpless adoration that she wanted to frame it and hang it on the wall of every room she'd ever live in.
"Was that a yes?" he asked, his voice rough.
"That depends." She kept her hand on his chest. She could still feel his heart pounding. "Are you asking?"
He dipped his head until his forehead rested against hers. "Marry me."
It was not a question. More like a declaration.
"Marry me, Estella. I'll spend the rest of my life making you happy, and spoiling Charlotte rotten, and looking after your father, and funding whatever experiments your friend Miss Evermore devises, and I will never, as long as I live, let you skip a meal or mend your own gloves again."
From behind them, a small voice whispered, "Say yes, Estella."
They both turned. Charlotte was standing in the doorway, her nightgown trailing on the floor, her eyes wide and bright with excitement. "Say yes, say yes!"
The laugh that escaped Estella was wet and bright and real. Sebastian's face, when she looked back at him, was transformed. He was smiling. A real, full, devastating smile that she'd never seen before, and— He was so beautiful it hurt.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, I'll marry you."
He kissed her again. Charlotte cheered. Annie burst into tears in the kitchen doorway.
And in a townhouse four streets away, the Duchess of Ashworth was pouring her morning tea, and waiting, and smiling to herself. Because the truth about the fire could wait one more hour.
Some other truths needed to come first.