CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
“It is, though. Because the question isn’t whether I need you to be good. The question is whether I’m willing to be good even when it’s hard. Whether I’m willing to face my failures and try again instead of hiding behind the duke.” He reached out, his hand stopping just short of touching her.
“You asked me once what I was willing to fight for. The answer is this. This life. These children. You. I’m willing to fight for all of it, not because you’re my anchor, but because you showed me that fighting was possible.”
Mel looked at his outstretched hand, at the fingers hovering just above her arm, waiting for permission that she had not yet given.
“And if you fail again?”
“Then I get up and try again. And I keep getting up, keep trying, for as long as it takes. That’s what you’ve been teaching me, isn’t it? That’s what you teach the children. Failure isn’t permanent unless you let it be.”
She thought about Viola, who had been too afraid to speak above a whisper and now read aloud in complete sentences.
She thought about Anna, who had channeled her need for control into organisational systems rather than small coups against household authority.
She thought about Thistle, who had learned to document her chaos scientifically rather than simply unleashing it on an unsuspecting world.
They had all changed. They had all grown, not because she had forced them to be different, but because she had given them the tools to become who they were capable of becoming.
Could she do the same for Rhys? Could she trust him to use those tools, even when she wasn’t there to watch?
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said quietly.
“I don’t know if I can open myself to the possibility of being hurt again. I’ve spent my whole life learning not to expect anything, not to want anything, not to let myself hope for things that might not come.”
“I know.”
“My father walked out when I was sixteen. He left my mother and me with nothing, not even an explanation. He simply vanished, and we never saw him again.” The words came out slowly, dragged from somewhere deep inside her.
“My mother passed on two years later. She had been sick for months, but our circumstances were of such a cruel nature that the attendance of a physician was a luxury beyond our reach, and the restorative draughts that might have helped her were quite unattainable. I held her hand when she went, and then I buried her in a pauper’s grave, and then I was alone. ”
“Mel…”
“I’m not telling you this for sympathy. I’m telling you this because you need to understand what you’re asking me to risk.” She met his eyes, her own dry and clear despite the weight of the memories.
“I survived all of that. I survived losing everyone I cherished, everything I had, every expectation I had ever held for my future. I rebuilt myself from nothing. I found positions and worked my way up and learned to be so competent, so indispensable, that no one would ever throw me away again.”
“You are indispensable. To the children. To me.”
“But I made myself that way through walls. Through refusing to hope for anything I wasn’t prepared to lose. Through keeping everyone at enough distance that their departure couldn’t destroy me.” She took a breath.
“And now you’re asking me to tear down those walls. To hope for something. To allow myself to dream about a future that could be taken away.”
“Yes,” Rhys said simply.
“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
“And what if you leave again? What if you go back to London and find another Mrs. Hartington waiting for you? What if the scandal becomes too much, or society’s censure becomes too heavy, or you simply decide that the comfortable life of the rake is easier than the difficult work of being a husband and father? ”
“Then I will have failed. And the failure will be mine, not yours.” He closed the remaining distance between them, his hand finally making contact with her arm, his touch light and questioning.
“But I don’t intend to fail. I don’t intend to give you any reason to pack that trunk again.”
“Intentions are not guarantees.”
“No, they’re not. Nothing is guaranteed.
But you already know that, don’t you? You’ve known it since you were sixteen and your father walked out the door.
” His voice softened. “I cannot promise you that I will never disappoint you. I cannot promise that I will always be the man you deserve. I can only promise that I will try. Every day. For the rest of my life.”
Mel stood very still, feeling his hand on her arm, feeling the warmth of his presence, feeling all the possibilities that opened up before her like a road she had never dared to walk.
“You’re asking me to trust you.”
“I’m asking you to give me the chance to earn your trust. There’s a distinction.”
“Is there?”
“I think so. Trust that’s given freely is a gift. Trust that’s earned through consistency, through presence, through doing the right thing even when it’s hard, that’s something more. That’s something worth building.”
She thought about Viola’s shell, still sitting on the entrance hall table where she had placed it that morning.
The child had given her that shell as a gift, freely, without expectation of return.
And she had taken it, had treasured it and had let it become a symbol of everything she had found in this house.
Could she do the same with this? Could she accept what Rhys was offering, knowing that it might be lost, knowing that hope was dangerous and love was a weapon that could be turned against her?
“Don’t decide what I can bear,” she said slowly.
“You’ve been doing that since the garden. Deciding that I couldn’t handle the scandal, couldn’t handle society’s censure and couldn’t handle the weight of your reputation. Deciding for me what was too much, what was impossible, what I should be protected from.”
“I was trying…”
“I know what you were trying to do. You were trying to spare me the consequences of choices that were yours to make. But those are my consequences too. If we do this, if we build this life together, I will face everything you face. The whispers. The judgment. The scandal sheets writing whatever they please about the duke who married his governess.”
“I know.”
“So don’t decide what I can bear.” She reached up and placed her hand over his, the one that was still resting on her arm.
“Decide what you’re willing to fight for. Decide whether this life, these children, this future we might have together, is worth the battle. And then trust me to fight alongside you.”
The words settled between them, heavy with everything they implied. Rhys looked at her with an expression she could not quite read, something between wonder and gratitude and a desperate, aching hope.
“You are extraordinary,” he said quietly.
“I have known many women, charmed many women and pursued many women. None of them were like you. None of them saw me clearly enough to say what you just said.”
“I’m not trying to be extraordinary. I’m trying to be honest.”
“Which is what makes you extraordinary.” He turned his hand beneath hers, so that their palms were pressed together, their fingers interlacing.
“I am willing to fight. For all of it. For the children, for this house, for the future we might build together. I am willing to face scandal and censure and whatever else society decides to throw at us.”
“And if the battle becomes too hard?”
“Then we fight harder. Or we fight differently. Or we find allies and strategies and ways around the obstacles.” His grip tightened slightly.
“But we don’t stop fighting. And we don’t make decisions for each other about what we can bear.”
Mel felt something shift inside her, some final resistance giving way. She had spent so long protecting herself, building walls, refusing to hope. And here was this man, this complicated, frustrating, beautiful man, offering to help her tear those walls down.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted. “I’ve never had a family, not the kind you’re describing.”
“Neither have I. Not until a few months ago, when a governess arrived at Hartfell and taught me what it meant to be present.” He smiled slightly, the expression soft and genuine. “We’ll learn together. We’ll make mistakes together as we go.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“It is terrifying. But the alternative is worse.” He raised their joined hands, pressing his lips briefly to her knuckles.
“The alternative is going back to the lives we were living before. Yours of survival and solitude. Mine of scandal and avoidance. Neither of us deserves that. Neither of us should settle for it.”
She thought about the entrance hall that morning, about the three children in their nightgowns refusing to let her leave. They had fought for her and they had used every tool she had given them, every lesson she had taught them, to keep her from walking out the door.
They had taught her something, in that moment, something about what it meant to be worth fighting for.
“I want this,” she said, and the admission felt like stepping off a cliff.
“I want the life you’re describing, the family, the future. I want all of it.”
“Then we’ll build it together.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“Nothing worth having is easy.”
“The children will drive us mad.”
“They already drive us mad. We might as well be driven mad together.”
She laughed despite herself, the sound escaping before she could stop it. It was the same laugh she had given him weeks ago, the one he had called beautiful, the one that had cost her so much to release.
But it was easier now. Everything was easier now, standing here with her hand in his, with the future opening up before them like a door that had finally swung open.
“We should tell the children in the morning,” she said. “Properly. With whatever ceremony Anna deems appropriate.”
“Anna will want to organise the announcement. She’ll have diagrams.”
“I expect nothing less.”
“Thistle will want to know if Brutus can be part of the wedding party.”
“Brutus will almost certainly escape during the ceremony regardless of our wishes. We might as well plan for it.”
“And Viola?”
Mel thought about the quiet child who had been the first to discover her leaving, the one who had stood at the bottom of the stairs and refused to let her go.
“Viola will be satisfied,” she said. “She predicted this weeks ago. She’s been waiting for us to catch up.”
“She sees everything.”
“She learned it from you.”
“She learned it from both of us.” Rhys lifted his other hand, brushing a strand of hair back from her face with a gentleness that made her breath catch.
“We are singularly well-matched in this undertaking.”
“Indeed we are, against all reasonable expectation.”
“Reasonable expectations are overrated.”
“Says the man who spent fifteen years being unreasonable.”
“And look where it got me.” He gestured around the study, at the fire and the books and the life they were building.
“Everything I never knew I wanted was right here before me, with you.”
Mel looked at him, at the man who had been London’s most notorious rake and was learning, slowly and imperfectly, to be something else. She thought about all the conversations they had shared in this room, all the truths they had exchanged, all the walls they had dismantled together.
“We should go to bed,” she said. “Separately to our chambers. The children will have questions in the morning, and we should be rested enough to answer them.”
“That is very practical advice.”
“I’m a very practical person.”
“You are. It’s one of the things I cherish about you.” He released her hand slowly, reluctantly, as though letting go of something precious.
“Good night, Mel.”
“Good night, Rhys.”
She moved toward the door, toward the corridor that would take her to her room, to the trunk she would need to unpack, to the life she was choosing to build.
At the doorway, she paused and looked back.
He was standing where she had left him, watching her with an expression of such open tenderness that it made her chest ache. The firelight caught his features, illuminating the hope and the uncertainty and the affection that he was no longer trying to hide.
“Should my thoughts be of any comfort to you, know that I deem you quite matchless in your capacity for affection. You will be a husband to be envied and a father most beloved.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because you’re willing to try. Because you’re willing to fail and get up and try again. Because you adore those children enough to face your own demons for their sake.” She paused. “And because you chose me. A woman who will never let you settle for less than your best.”
He smiled, the expression genuine and unguarded.
“I chose well, then.”
“You did.” She returned the smile, feeling the rightness of it settle into her bones.
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all I ask.”
She left him standing in the study, the fire dying in the grate, the night wrapping around the house like a blanket.
Tomorrow there would be conversations and announcements and the complicated work of building a future together.
Tomorrow there would be children to reassure and plans to make and a hundred practical details to address.
But tonight, there was this, a promise made and accepted, a future chosen, a family beginning to take shape.
It was, she thought as she climbed the stairs to her room, worth every risk.