Chapter 28 - Stephen #2
She took a half-step toward him before catching herself, hand reaching out and then jerking back as if she’d burned herself on the almost-contact. He could see the struggle playing across her features, the desire to close the distance warring with the need to protect what was left of her heart.
“I thought you saw me.” The confession came out quiet, vulnerable. “Not Charlotte Fairmont who needs to make an advantageous match, not the girl whose family is drowning in debt, just… me.”
“I did see you.” Unable to stop himself anymore, he crossed the remaining space between them, hands coming up to frame her face.
“I saw exactly who you were, and it terrified me. Because I knew, from that very first night, that I’d never stop wanting more of you, even when I had no right to want anything at all. ”
She stood very still in his grip, lips parted on a breath she seemed to have forgotten to release.
“Every word, every touch, every moment we shared was built on a lie.” Her words came out quiet, unsteady. “How am I supposed to believe anything was real when the foundation was false?”
“Because the lie was only about my name and status, not who I actually am.” His voice came out hoarse, wrecked, every word feeling like it was being dragged from somewhere deep inside him.
“I’m a servant, Charlotte. What was I supposed to do?
Approach you at a ball while carrying a tray?
Ask you to meet me in the library while I was there to dust the shelves?
” His hands shook slightly against her face.
“The moment you knew what I was, it would have ended before it began, and I—“
He stopped, swallowing hard. The next words felt too revealing, too honest, but she was looking at him with such intensity that he couldn’t hold them back.
“I couldn’t let it end. Not before I’d had a chance to know you, to talk to you, to find out if you were as fascinating as you looked lost in that book.” His thumb brushed across her cheekbone, catching a tear. “And you were. You are.”
She flinched as if he’d struck her, pain and fury flashing in her eyes before she jerked away.
“You shouldn’t have approached me at all.
” The words came out flat, final, and he felt each one strike deeper than the last. “You should have kept your distance and left me alone. Because now I have to marry some man I don’t love, knowing you exist. Knowing you made me feel things I can’t afford to feel.
Made me realize what I’d be giving up.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.
“And I’ll spend the rest of my life remembering what it was like, knowing I can never have it again. ”
The statement shattered something vital within him, and he turned away, raking both hands through his hair as he struggled to breathe through the pain.
“I know.” The words came out rough. “I know I shouldn’t have. I know it was selfish and wrong and that I had no right to deceive you or to take up space in your life when I had nothing to offer but more complications.”
He spun back to face her, and though his voice didn’t rise, in the quiet of the garden the words might as well have been shouted.
“But don’t stand there and tell me I should have left you alone like it was that simple, like I could have just seen you and walked away.” A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I planned to fall in—“
The confession nearly escaped before he caught it, cutting himself off too late.
“To fall in what?” She moved closer, voice insistent. “Finish what you were going to say.”
His throat worked, his whole body going taut as he stared at the ground. He couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t bear to see her face.
“What’s the point?” The words came out sharp, almost harsh. “You’re engaged to him. Nothing I say changes that.”
“Look at me.” He stood like carved stone, not moving. Her voice softened dangerously. “Stephen. Look at me.
His name on her lips reverberated through his entire being, and in that moment he would have done anything she asked—anything at all—just to hear her say it again.
He lifted his gaze to meet hers, finding her standing mere steps away. “Charlotte.” Her name escaped him like a desperate prayer.
They stood too close now, the space between them charged with everything unsaid. He could see the pulse flutter beneath the delicate skin at her throat, count each quick breath that made her chest rise and fall.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, and he could feel her breath against his skin. “Tell me it wasn’t a lie. That what I felt between us…”
“It wasn’t.” He ran a hand through his hair.
“I’d been reading alone for so long, living through other people’s stories, and had long given up on having one of my own.
And then I met you, and for the first time in years I wanted—“ He stopped. “I wanted my own story again. With you in it.” The words kept coming, faster now, like he’d been holding them back for so long that now he couldn’t stop them.
“You’re etched into my very soul, Charlotte.
Every book I read, every poem I hear, every thought I have is now colored by your existence.
You are everything I’ve ever dreamed of, everything I can never—“
She kissed him, swallowing whatever words came next. Her hands slid up to cup his face, and he kissed her back like a drowning man given air, his own hands finding her waist, pulling her into him.
A sound escaped her—barely audible, caught between grief and relief—and he could taste the salt from her tears.
When they finally broke apart, foreheads still pressed together, he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
His fingers lingered at the curve of her jaw, memorizing the feel of her skin this last time he could.
“I’m yours,” he whispered. “Completely, hopelessly yours, even if I can never truly be.”
His grip on her waist tightened, anchoring them both. “And if they cast me out tomorrow, if those moments cost me everything—“ He swallowed. “It was worth it. You were worth it.”
The corner of her mouth lifted, barely perceptible, as she reached up to thread her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. She played with it almost shyly, color creeping across her cheeks as she looked away.
“You know,” she said softly, and there was the faintest hint of teasing in her voice, “for all your confessions tonight, you’ve never told me what that Spanish sentence meant.”
“You remember that?” The surprise in his voice was genuine.
“Every word you’ve ever said to me.” She looked up at him. “Even the ones I couldn’t understand.”
“Todas las noches me torturo pensando en ti,” he said quietly. Then, softer: “I torture myself every night thinking about you.”
Her gaze dropped to somewhere around his collar, and the sight made him smile—this woman who spoke her mind so freely suddenly unable to meet his eyes.
She drew in a breath, the teasing fading.
“My mother told me to wait for this,” she said, her voice low but steady.
“For someone who makes me feel seen, who challenges my mind while cherishing my heart.” Her fingers curled tighter against his neck.
“My parents showed me what true connection looked like, but I’d stopped believing it could exist for me. Until you.”
Her words twisted in his chest. The documents he’d given her would free her from Penrose, but they’d also destroy the foundation she stood on.
Those letters would make her question everything her mother had taught her about love and he couldn’t shield her from it, couldn’t take that pain for her the way he desperately wanted to.
Her voice softened. “You’ve become part of me, Stephen. A part I don’t know how to let go of.”
The words hit him somewhere he hadn’t known could still be reached. All the language he’d spent his life collecting felt suddenly worthless, inadequate for what he needed to say. So instead he lifted her chin with two gentle fingers, tilting her face up until he could see her properly.
Her lips parted, and for a moment he just looked at her, drinking in every detail, before closing the distance between them one last time.
When they broke apart, he drew in a slow breath, filling his lungs with the scent of her before forcing himself to release her. Slowly, reluctantly, he stepped away, though everything in him protested the distance.
“I should go,” he said quietly. “Before someone sees us.”
Her head moved in a barely perceptible nod, arms wrapping around herself.
At the edge of the garden, pale blooms caught the dim light—wild roses, the same ones she’d brought to the graveyard that night when she’d told him about her mother.
Without thinking, he moved toward them, fingers closing around a single stem.
He snapped it free, ignoring the thorns biting into his palm, then quickly stripped them away from the stem so they wouldn’t hurt her.
“Stephen?” Her voice was soft, confused.
A few steps brought him back to her, the rose held out between them. “Your mother was right,” he said softly. “Love should be like these roses. Beautiful without artifice, impossible to tame or control.” His voice broke. “And I love you, Charlotte.”
She took the rose, fingers brushing his. “I…”
“Keep it,” he whispered. “So you remember that someone saw you exactly as you are, and loved every wild, honest part of you.”
He took a step back. Then another, his attention never leaving her, and for a moment the only sound was the rain and the quiet scrape of his shoes against the gravel.
“Wait.” Her voice stopped him mid-step. “Will I see you again?”
Pausing, he took a deep breath. “I don’t know. After tomorrow…”
The sentence hung unfinished between them. After tomorrow, he would likely be dismissed without a reference, forced to leave London to find work elsewhere. After tomorrow, there would be no coming back.
He looked at her one last time, memorizing what he could in the moonlight. The way it caught the auburn in her hair. The precise shade of her eyes. The exact curve of her lips. Everything he would need to carry with him when this moment ended and the world resumed.
Then he turned his back on her. Each step that followed felt like tearing out a piece of himself, but he forced his feet to keep moving—across wet grass, through the garden gate, back into London’s dark streets—because if he stopped, even for a second, he would never leave at all.