Chapter 22
The morning after felt like waking from a fever — the world still recognizable but subtly altered, as though someone had shifted every piece of furniture an inch to the left while she slept.
Susanna sat in the window seat of her bedchamber, her knees drawn up, watching the light move across the gardens below.
The house was quiet. Her mother had not come to see her.
Maude’s door, at the far end of the corridor, had been closed when Susanna passed it on her way down to breakfast, and it had still been closed when she returned.
The maid said Lady Maude had taken a tray in her room.
It should have felt like victory. They had uncovered the truth, confronted the conspirators, and Lancashire’s love had been proven beyond any remaining doubt.
But victory, Susanna was learning, did not always feel the way she had imagined it would.
Instead, there was a hollow space behind her ribs where certainty should have been — the kind of emptiness that comes after a storm has passed but the debris has not yet been cleared.
She thought of Maude’s face in the parlor.
Not the screaming, not the stamped foot, not the scarlet fury — those she could have borne.
It was the moment before the fury, the half-second when Susanna had seen something else flash through her sister’s eyes: fear.
Raw, animal fear, the kind that comes from feeling the ground give way beneath you.
In that instant, Maude had not looked like a schemer exposed.
She had looked like a child whose only means of survival had just been taken from her.
I am to gain the happiness first!
The words echoed. Susanna pressed her forehead against the cool glass and let them repeat, turning them over, trying to understand.
Not I deserve happiness — Maude had not said that.
She had said first. As though happiness were a competition, a race, a resource that would run out once Susanna took her share.
As though love were finite, and every smile directed at Susanna was a smile stolen from Maude.
It was the saddest thing Susanna had ever heard, and she was only now beginning to understand why.
“Miss?” The maid appeared in the doorway. “Lord Lancashire has called. He is waiting for you in the morning room. Your mother said you may have a few minutes to speak with him.”
Susanna rose, smoothed her skirts, and took one steadying breath. Then she went down to him.
He was standing beside the hearth, his arm resting against the mantel, and his expression when he saw her — the way his whole face opened, the relief flooding through it — told her everything she needed to know about his night.
“Susanna.” Coming towards her, he reached out to take her hands, and she, with a soft smile, went to him. “I received your note and came here just as quickly as I could.”
“I thank you.” She sighed and looked up at him. “My mother said she would give us a few minutes to speak alone. As you can imagine, this has all been quite a shock.”
He searched her eyes. “You have been deeply hurt by Maude’s actions.”
There was no hesitancy in her answer. “Yes, I have been, but I feel relieved too. Relieved that it is all at an end and I have my answers now.” One side of her mouth curved upwards for just a moment. “And I have my Marquess.”
The sweetness of her words made his heart sing, and he gazed into her eyes, wondering at her gentle beauty.
There was a softness about her now that had not been present for some time, the strain of the battle to find the truth now wiped from her face.
Finally, the truth was theirs – though not without its trouble.
At the very least, the web of deceit that had kept them apart was untangled, and there was nothing more for them to fight against. “You most certainly do,” he said, watching her.
“Did the conversation with your father yesterday go as well as it could have done?”
Lady Susanna closed her eyes. “It was difficult for Maude kept interrupting and stating she had done nothing wrong. My father eventually demanded that she stay silent, and then, I was able to express all. He – he was horrified, I think.” Opening her eyes, she looked back at him.
“He could not speak for some minutes. Maude tried to give her explanation, but he would hear none of it.”
“And now?” He frowned. “Are you to remain in London?”
Much to his relief, she nodded. “I am. Maude is now to make her choice and to make it by the end of the week. My father spoke to her privately once he understood the situation, and I have not seen her since that time. I believe she will be under much stricter supervision from my mother and my father.” A long silence followed, and Jonathan did not speak into it, sensing that there was healing taking place as she spoke of what had happened.
After some time, her lips curved into another wry smile.
“It is somewhat strange, is it not?” she said.
“To know that it is all at an end, that it is uncovered and brought to a close… There is something about that which feels unusual.”
He smiled faintly. “I would agree.” Smoothing his thumb over the back of her hand and praying that her mother would continue to give them time alone together, he held her gaze. “It is also a great relief, as you have said.”
“Mmm.” Murmuring her agreement, Lady Susanna drew in a breath and then released it slowly before taking another tiny step closer to him.
Jonathan’s heart slammed hard against his ribs, and he closed his eyes, aware of the knot of tension forming in his stomach.
The urge to speak to her now of the future, of what he wanted, grew steadily, and he licked his lips.
He had practiced these words in his mind that very morning, but now, standing before her, they were gone from him completely.
Trying to summon them, he frowned hard and then shook his head.
“Is there something the matter?”
Opening his eyes, he looked back at her steadily, drawing in a long breath.
“No, not at all.” Taking another moment’s pause, he licked his lips and then began.
“When I first realized that all I had believed and trusted in might be wrong, I was quite sure I would never earn your forgiveness, much less your trust. I have been proven wrong yet again, but this time, in the most wonderful of ways.”
Her eyes glowed gently as she moved a step closer to him, only a few inches between them now.
“I do not think that I deserve either forgiveness or trust, Susanna, but you gave me both. With all that I did and all the pain I caused you, I have no right to it, and even less to the happiness it has brought me. Quite simply, Susanna, you are far more generous, far more wonderful, and far more forbearing than I deserve.”
With a small shake of her head, she sighed up at him. “Oh, Lancashire, there is no need for such deep thoughts.”
“I think if there is ever a time to consider what mistakes I have made and the past I stepped back from, it is now,” he responded, holding fast to her. “I look at the past because I want to consider the future and all that it might hold for us.”
Her eyes widened, and Jonathan felt the full weight of his words settle on him, bringing with them a comforting reassurance that this was exactly what he wanted. For too long, they had been pushed apart by misunderstanding and deceit, and now, in this very moment, nothing was standing between them.
“When I first read Lord Blackwood’s letter,” he said, “I thought I could forget you. I thought that I would be able to step back from you and push away all that I felt – but I was deceiving myself.” Releasing one of her hands, he brought his up to brush lightly across her cheek.
“I could never forget you, Susanna. I could never stop my heart from loving you, even when I told it repeatedly to set you aside.”
He heard her breath hitch, her hand trembling in his. “Lancashire, I –”
“Pray, let me finish, for there is so much that I want to say,” he said, his voice unsteady now.
“I love you. I have loved you from the moment we met, through everything that kept us apart – including my own foolishness. To return to you, to have your heart given to me anew has only made my own love grow stronger. I do not think I could do a day in this world without your nearness, Susanna. I swore I would not let you go, and I say those words to you again. I mean them with all sincerity, truly.”
Her eyes fluttered closed, and she let out a slow breath. “And I could not think of a life without you, Lancashire,” she answered softly. “You know you have my heart already. You have always had it, for it has never been given to any other and shall never be again.”
He exhaled as she looked up at him again, drawing her nearer so that his breath whispered across her cheek.
Her dark brown tresses begged for him to touch them, to feel the silken strands between his fingers, and he could not resist. “I hardly know how to say what I mean to,” he murmured, his hand going to the curve of her neck.
“I am no poet, Susanna, and I confess I have tried, even this morning, to find the right words to say to you in this.” Seeing the flush in her cheeks, he smiled ruefully.
“Even now, I cannot bring them to mind! I wish only to find the words that would tell you of my heart, that would express to you all that I feel and desire and hope for.”
Her free hand lifted and settled on his chest, searing his skin. “You do not need fancy words, Lord Lancashire. Tell me what is in your heart in any way you please.”
Jonathan smiled then, lowering his head a fraction, keeping his eyes melded to hers. “My heart is crying out for you, Susanna. Marry me. Be my wife. Let me spend the rest of my days proving what my words – and my past actions – have failed to express.”
For a heartbeat, there was silence. Then, her hand going to his shoulder and around his neck, she leaned against him, forcing all the breath out of his body. “Yes, my love. I will marry you.”
Before he could speak or even think to respond – and much to his astonishment – Lady Susanna pushed herself up onto tiptoe and kissed him.
It was a gentle kiss, but it did not lack certainty, filled with the sweetness of all that had been lost and found again.
Jonathan’s heart roared as he wrapped his arms around her, his head tilting as he deepened the kiss as gently as he could.
Lady Susanna responded just as he had hoped and, with their arms wrapped around each other, Jonathan felt the world around him slowly slot itself into place.
This was where he had always meant to be.
The scent of her perfume — honeysuckle, subtle and warm — filled his senses, and the warmth of her body against his was the only truth he needed.
Yes, he had allowed his own foolishness and the deceit of others to push them apart, but with Lady Susanna’s love and forgiveness, that could be forgotten and set aside, left only to the darkness of the past.
For the first time in many a month, there was no uncertainty and doubt, no confusion in his heart, no shadow lurking between them. In their place was joy, contentment, and the promise of happiness, bound together by the steady rhythm of two hearts that had finally found their way back.
“I love you, Susanna,” he whispered against her lips, his heart overflowing with all that he felt. “And I promise you, we shall never be separated again.”
She smiled, her forehead resting against his. “I believe you,” she murmured. “I trust you, Lancashire – and most of all, I love you.”
And then — quite without warning — Susanna laughed.
It was not a quiet, ladylike laugh. It was a sound that burst from somewhere deep inside her, bright and wild and almost startling in its force, the kind of laughter that could not be contained because it came from a place deeper than amusement — from relief so vast it had no other way to express itself.
Her hands flew to her mouth, but the laughter would not stop.
It spilled through her fingers, shaking her shoulders, and Jonathan stared at her for one bewildered heartbeat before it caught him too, spreading across his face like sunrise.
“What —” he managed, but he was already laughing with her, his arms tightening around her as his composure cracked and fell away.
They stood in the middle of the room, holding each other and laughing like children, and it was ridiculous and it was undignified and neither of them cared.
The tears were still on Susanna’s face — tears that had begun in grief and now finished in something she could not name, something bigger than happiness, something that felt like the physical release of a weight she had been carrying for so long that she had forgotten what it felt like not to carry it.
“We did it,” she breathed, when the laughter finally subsided to something softer, to trembling smiles and eyes that shone. “We actually — Lancashire, we are going to be married.”
“Yes,” he said, and his voice cracked on the word, and he did not care about that either. “Yes, we are.”
She pressed her face against his chest and felt his chin rest atop her head, and for a long, sweet moment they simply stood together, breathing, feeling the last tremors of laughter and tears settle into something quieter: certainty.
After every forged letter and stolen seal, every eavesdropped conversation and sleepless night, every moment where she had feared that the truth would come too late or not at all — after all of it, this.
His heartbeat steady beneath her ear, his arms steady around her, and the knowledge, bone-deep and unshakeable, that the worst was behind them.