Chapter 30
“Come now, son, what ails you?” Constantine asked, his deep voice weary as he rocked a crying William in his arms. Through the windows, the cheery light of the middle of the afternoon streaked in through the curtains. On a usual day, it was when William would be napping.
Instead, the boy cried harder, his sobs shooting into the air and settling like barbs in Constantine’s heart. He had been like this for six days. Since Elara left.
He misses her. You miss her.
Constantine shook his head, trying to dispel the thoughts, and rang for Betsy and the wet nurse. It barely took them a moment to come to him, their faces both distraught. Mrs. York came in only a few seconds later, wearing a similar expression.
“You rang, Your Grace?” Betsy asked.
“Something is wrong,” he stated straightaway, still pacing with William in his arms. “I believe the fever may be coming back.”
Constantine looked up just in time to see the three women glance tiredly at one another, and then Betsy walked toward him, arms outstretched.
“May I see, Your Grace?” she asked calmly.
For a moment, Constantine hesitated. He had not put the child down much ever since Elara left. The child needed a caregiver, but in turn, he had become Constantine’s. With William in his arms, he could not reach for a woman who was no longer there.
Reluctantly, Constantine handed William over to her, and he watched intently as Betsy took him. She placed her hand over the baby’s forehead. His cheeks and then his stomach. Then she picked up his little limbs one by one, giving them gentle squeezes.
“There is no fever, Your Grace,” Betsy replied sullenly when she finished. “Nor any sign of sickness that I can detect.”
Constantine’s brows furrowed as he frowned.
“Give him back to me,” he commanded, and at once, Betsy gently laid the boy back in his arms. “Something is wrong,” he insisted, his tone sharp as he went back to his pacing. “Something is wrong with my boy.”
Betsy and the wet nurse flinched at his outburst, but Mrs. York stayed as still as a somber statue.
“My dears, I believe you may be dismissed,” she said, using the stiff tone she usually took on when commanding the staff. “Sally, please do return in an hour. We need to keep our little Lord on his feeding schedule as much as possible.”
Both women curtsied; first to Constantine, then to Mrs. York, and without a word, left the room.
“Something is wrong, Mrs. York,” Constantine insisted. “I can feel it. The boy does not stop crying. He barely eats. Barely sleeps.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Mrs. York agreed, lifting her chin. “He sounds much like you.”
Constantine stopped pacing to glare at his housekeeper. She only looked back with a challenging brow raised, as if daring him to say she was wrong.
“This is no coincidence, Your Grace,” Mrs. York insisted, taking a step toward him.
“So much has happened. You will not talk to me, so I only know what I have read in the papers. What happened with Master Augustus is nasty, nasty business. And the same night you discover his evilness, you lose Her Grace. That cannot have been easy for you.”
“Is that supposed to help?” he asked with a quickness, his tone laced with annoyance. “Because I assure you that your repetition of such facts is doing anything but that, Mrs. York!”
William’s cries lifted into a scream as Constantine raised his voice, and immediately Constantine flinched and held the baby closer.
“I am sorry, lad,” he whispered, gently rocking the boy. “I am sorry. It is all right.”
“Her Grace, and you, I might add, each told me at different times that your marriage was different. That you two had an arrangement,” Mrs. York went on in a matter-of-fact way.
Constantine did not shout this time, but the warning glare he gave her would have stopped anyone else in an instant.
“You may not want to admit it, Your Grace, but it is clear that your arrangement has changed,” Mrs. York continued, clearly unfazed. “This temper of yours is not going to fade until you bring your wife back home.”
Pain’s sharp claws dug deep into the tender flesh of Constantine’s heart, nearly sending him to his knees.
“Mrs. York. Please.” There was no shouting this time. No rage. Just a plea. “She does not wish to be here. If she did, she would have stayed. I made her a promise. If Evander were alive, I would free her from this marriage. I am not going to break it for my own selfishness.”
Mrs. York tsked her tongue, and he did not have to look up to know the matronly housekeeper had crossed her arms and was rolling her eyes.
“You men are so very strong,” she sighed. “But you can also be so blastedly dimwitted as well. She loves you! Can’t you see it?”
Constantine shook his head, not daring to hope.
“I told her I loved her,” he confessed. “She did not say it back.”
“Did you tell her as you were rescuing her brother? When you were in the thick of danger?”
Constantine went still and glanced up at Mrs. York.
“Yes?”
“Oh!” Mrs. York groaned, throwing her arms up in the air. “Of course, she did not say it back! She thought you only said that to comfort her! You need to go to her. To talk with her and let her know that you truly mean it!”
“And what if she does not feel the same?” he testily shot back.
Mrs. York snorted. Actually snorted.
“Please, Your Grace. Your quarters are not soundproof. No woman of Her Grace’s caliber would give herself to you like that if she did not love you.”
Constantine’s jaw dropped. Mrs. York was a bold woman. Always had been. However, she had never been this bold. Yet as he reached for his anger and will to scold her for such words, he could not grasp them. What she had said might have been grossly inappropriate… but it was also true.
There had been a physical attraction between them from the moment he had met Elara, dressed in that beautiful crimson she wore at that fated masquerade he had hosted, but what they had shared those last days? What they had discovered about one another? It was more than just lust.
He knew lust. Reveled in it for a long time, and understood what it looked like on women—nobles and servants alike. The way he and Elara started to look at each other during those last days? It was not lust. It was something much deeper than that.
“Shall I get the carriage prepared?” Mrs. York asked, clasping her hands together before her. “Have James lay you out a clean shirt and cravat?”
Constantine nodded, still in awe over the rather blunt realization Mrs. York had thrust upon him.
“Yes, Mrs. York. Thank you,” he murmured.
Mrs. York gave him a stiff, single nod, then held out her hands.
“Give me master William. He will want to look his best for Her Grace as well.”
Still half dazed, Constantine handed William over to her. As he reached the hallway, his broken heart started to beat faster. His steps changed from slow to a run. He was heading to see Elara—and hopefully, he would bring her home.
“Elara,” Constantine whispered.
She stood at the bottom of the stairs, a look of shock on her face, but no less beautiful than ever. Her piercing blue eyes shone with unshed tears, and her plump lips parted in a small O, as if in shock.
“Constantine.” she breathed his name, but in the silence of the foyer, it might as well have been a scream. William had finally quieted his cries as their carriage had pulled up in front of the Mason residence, as if somehow the boy knew where they were.
Suddenly, he let out a loud, beautiful coo that startled both Constantine and Elara, and he began to squirm in Constantine’s arms. A most gorgeous smile spread across Elara’s face then, and a tear slipped down her cheek as her eyes shifted from his gaze to look at the baby in his arms.
Constantine blinked as if he had just been under a spell; then he followed her gaze and saw that his nephew was straining in his arms, reaching for the woman who had captured both their hearts.
“Oh, little lamb, look at you,” Elara sniffled.
She drew a few steps closer, drawing her arms out toward the baby as if she could not help it. Then suddenly, just as her fingertips nearly reached William’s, she paused and looked up at Constantine with a pleading look that nearly broke his heart all over again.
“May I?” she asked.
“Of course,” Constantine rasped, blinking slowly to break out of his reverie. “Of course you can.”
He transferred William into Elara’s arms, and the baby’s lips curled into a toothy grin as he reached for her face; his tiny hands finding a grip on her rosy cheeks.
“Oh, how you have grown, I swear it,” Elara cooed, placing kisses all over the boy’s face, making his cooing sound grow into giggles.
“He missed you,” Constantine said, his heart racing as he took in the sweet view before him.
Elara looked away from William and up at him; her smile turned sad as another tear escaped down her cheek.
“I missed him as well,” she said, barely above a whisper.
For a moment, Constantine’s fear of being rejected nearly overtook him. Then, recalling what was at stake, he pushed it aside and let his heart be vulnerable—possibly for the first time in his life.
“Elara, we both miss you,” Constantine said in a rush, taking a step closer. “We have missed you so very much. Please, come back home. I... we love you.”
A jolt seemed to move through Elara, causing a stiffness to form in her stature as her eyes slowly grew wide.
“You… you love me?” she breathed.
“God, yes,” he confessed on an exhaled breath, giving in to his wants and placing his hands on her shoulders. “I love you, Elara.”
Immediately, lightning surged through his palms—just as it always did when they touched. He was confident Elara felt it too, her rosy cheeks reddening as she let out a sigh.
“I…I…” she stammered, more tears escaping her eyes as she looked from him to William. “Oh, I love you, too. Both of you, so much.”
Her confession made him want to crow with joy, and he let out a breathy laugh as he moved in to kiss her—something he had been wanting to do since he first saw her again.
Pain exploded through that joy, though, as Elara reared back, stepping out of his touch and moving until there was a wide space between them. Constantine shook his head; sorrow took its rightful place.
“I am sorry. I cannot.”
“I do not understand,” he said shakily. “You love me, Elara, and I love you, and yet...”
“So much has happened, Constantine,” Elara said, her heartache clear in her voice as more tears trickled down her cheeks.
“My family is the reason why your brother is in prison. Why he may swing from the gallows! And your family is the reason why my brother is lying upstairs, covered in bruises and littered with broken bones!”
“You think I care about all that?” Constantine hastily replied, braving a step toward her as she looked at him wide-eyed. “Elara, you were right. You were right about everything from the start.”
He could not lose her. Not now that he knew she loved him.
“My brother is responsible for the most wretched of things,” he pushed on. “And yes, it may hurt me that he has done so, but it was his doing, not mine, and I do not wish to spare him from the consequences of his actions any longer!”
“Yes, but—”
“Evander was right to try to take Augustus down,” he continued with great vehemence.
“And I will spend the rest of my life apologizing for not taking his side or heeding his warnings, but I want to fix this, Elara. I want to fix it all… But I do not want to do so without you. You have changed me. You have changed William. We are forever better because of the mistake that brought you to us, and if you refuse to listen to your heart, we will never recover.”
Silence stretched between them, unnerving Constantine even further as Elara looked more confused and pained than ever before.
“How would we do this after so much has happened?” Elara asked.
She still looked distraught, sounded it too, but her question gave him hope.
“We start anew,” Constantine answered, braving another step that brought him within touching distance. Elara did not move away, and his blood sang with joy.
“We start this new marriage with the love we have for each other. We will raise William, and we will do what we can to heal the rift between your family and mine.”
Hope glimmered in Elara’s eyes, and Constantine was sure his heart stopped as he waited for her answer.
Her tears stopped, and she took a small step toward him as she took in the features of his face with an expression he could not read.
“I will not stop nagging you over everything,” she stated.
And Constantine blinked slowly in surprise as a grin took its time spreading across his lips.
“And I will not stop pointing out that your stubbornness to be right is most annoying,” he replied, sliding his hand around the nape of her neck.
“I will argue with you when you are wrong,” she stated, her tone stronger as they drew closer.
“And I will demand proof that you are right,” he countered, pulling her closer to him.
A soft laugh escaped Elara’s lips as a most beautiful grin split across her lips, and she leaned in, careful of William between them, and rested her head on his chest.
“I love you,” she whispered, nuzzling into him.
“God, I love you so much,” Constantine groaned, then forced her head up and gave her a passionate kiss.