Chapter Twenty-One
“You stayed.”
Helena’s voice was soft, sleep-roughened, and utterly content.
She was curled against his side, her long blonde hair spread across the pillow like spilled ink, her face relaxed in a way Edmund had never seen during waking hours.
The morning light filtered through the curtains, casting everything in shades of gold and amber.
Edmund pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “Where else would I be?”
“I don’t know.” She shifted closer, her arm tightening around his waist. “I suppose I half expected to wake and find this had all been a dream.”
“It was not a dream.” He traced patterns on her shoulder with his fingertips, marvelling at the simple fact of her presence.
That she had come. That she had chosen to remain.
The connecting door, which had weighed so heavily upon his mind for months, now stood open and forgotten.
“Though I confess I have had the same thought several times since last night.”
Helena tilted her face up to look at him. Her eyes were soft, unguarded, that particular expression he had seen only glimpses of before, now offered freely. The sight of it made his chest ache in the best possible way.
“What time is it?” she asked.
Edmund glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Half past seven.”
“We have missed breakfast.”
“We have missed nothing.” He caught her hand and brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss to her palm. “Breakfast can wait. The world can wait. For this morning, at least, I intend to be entirely selfish with my time.”
Helena laughed, that full, unreserved sound he had treasured since that first evening in the library, when she had reawakened his spirit.
For months he had hoarded every rare instance of her mirth like a miser with his gold, yet this was entirely different.
It bore no trace of the careful calculation he had come to recognise, arising from nothing less than pure joy.
“I have fostered a creature of indolence,” she said, her tone light.
“A Duke so self-indulgent he disregards his own schedule.”
“You have fostered nothing; you have merely revealed what was always present.” Edmund shifted to regard her fully, resting his head upon one hand.
“I was ever selfish, Helena, yet I masked it beneath duty. It proved far simpler than harboring desires I deemed beyond my reach.” Her expression softened. “And now?”
“Now I have discovered that I can have the thing I want most.” He reached out, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “And I find I am not inclined to let it go.”
Helena caught his hand, holding it against her cheek. Her eyes searched his face, and he saw the question there, the lingering uncertainty that even last night had not entirely erased.
“Edmund.” Her voice was quiet. “This is real, isn’t it? Not just the relief of victory. Not just the aftermath of crisis. This is actually happening.”
He understood what she was asking. She had spent so long protecting herself, so long interpreting every kindness through the lens of doubt, that even now, even after the letters, after the kiss, after the night they had shared, she could not quite believe it.
He could not blame her. He had spent months feeling the same way about her.
“It is real,” he said. “More real than anything I have ever known.” He shifted closer, pressing his forehead to hers.
“I have held an attachment for you for months, Helena. Through every society event and every breakfast and every evening in the library. Through every moment you raised an eyebrow at me, every time you made me laugh, every instance you showed me who you truly were beneath the armour.” He paused.
“That is not going to change because Reginald has been defeated. It is not going to change because the challenge has been dismissed. It is simply going to continue, day after day, for as long as you will let me.”
Helena’s breath caught. He felt her tremble against him, not from cold, but from the weight of feeling she was finally allowing herself to acknowledge.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered. “I have spent my entire life being strong. Being capable. Managing everything so that no one else had to.” “We will learn together.”
Edmund pulled back slightly, holding her gaze.
“I am not an expert either, Helena. Before you, I had resigned myself to a life of duty and loneliness. I had accepted that affection was something that happened to other people, who knew how to navigate society, how to be charming, how to say the right thing at the right time.” He smiled ruefully.
“You have taught me that affection does not require any of those things. It only requires attention, honesty, and the willingness to be seen.”
Helena was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, she smiled.
“You are quite eloquent for a man who claims not to know how to say the right thing.”
“I have been practising.” He kissed her forehead. “In letters I never sent. In conversations I imagined having. In all the moments I wished I had the courage to speak and could not find the words.”
“You found them eventually.”
“You gave me reason to.” He traced the curve of her cheek with his thumb. “You gave me reason for everything, Helena. Reason to hope. Reason to try. Reason to believe that perhaps I was not as unnecessary as I had always thought.”
Her eyes filled. He saw her blink rapidly, fighting the tears she still struggled to let fall freely.
“You were never unnecessary,” she said fiercely.
“Not to me. Not from the moment you sat in my sitting room in Somerset and told me I was remarkable. I did not believe you then. I thought you were saying what you needed to say to secure a bride.” She paused.
“But I wanted to believe you. So desperately. And I have spent months fighting that need because I was afraid of what would happen if I let myself have it.”
“And now?”
“Now I am tired of fighting.” She reached up, cupping his face in her hands. “Now I want to discover what happens when I stop.”
She kissed him.
It was different from the night before, less tentative, and more certain. A declaration rather than a question. Edmund felt it in his bones, felt the rightness of it settle into every corner of his being. It was the culmination of all his months of quiet devotion and careful restraint.
Here, at last, began the rest of their lives.
***
They eventually emerged from the bedroom.It was nearly ten o’clock by the time they made their way downstairs, and the household staff had clearly been given strict instructions not to disturb them.
The breakfast room had been prepared with fresh food, the tea kept warm, everything had been arranged with the discreet efficiency of servants who understood when not to ask questions.
Edmund found himself watching Helena as she moved through the familiar motions of breakfast, pouring tea, selecting a roll, spreading marmalade with precise, economical movements.
He had watched her do this a hundred times over the past months, had catalogued every detail of her morning routine. But somehow, today, it felt different.
Today, he was not watching from a distance. He was not observing from behind walls of careful restraint. He was simply here, present, part of the same moment she was inhabiting.
“You are staring,” Helena said, not looking up from her toast.
“I am admiring.”
“You have seen me eat breakfast before.”
“Not like this.” Edmund reached across the table, catching her free hand. “Not with the knowledge that I can reach across and touch you. Not with the certainty that you will let me.”
Helena’s cheeks flushed, actually flushed, the pink spreading across her cheekbones in a way that made her look almost girlish.
Edmund felt something expand in his chest at the sight.
She was magnificent when she was composed and cutting and utterly in control.
But she was equally magnificent like this, soft, vulnerable, allowing herself to be affected.
“You are going to make me spill my tea,” she said.
“A worthwhile sacrifice.”
She laughed again. That was two laughs that morning, Edmund noted automatically, and then caught himself, realising that he no longer needed to count. He no longer needed to hoard each laugh like a precious commodity, uncertain when the next might come.
She was his. She had chosen to be his. And her laughter would come freely now, offered without reservation, for as long as they both lived.
The thought was staggering in its simplicity. And in its wonder.
“I want to show you something,” he said.
Helena looked up, curious. “What?”
“Something I have been keeping. Since our wedding.” He hesitated, suddenly uncertain. The letters she had already seen, had found by accident, had read in his study while tears streamed down her face. But this was different. This was more personal, somehow. More revealing.
“Another secret?” Helena’s voice was gently teasing. “How many do you have?”
“Only one more.” Edmund squeezed her hand. “And after this, you will know everything. There will be nothing left to discover.”
Helena’s expression softened. “Show me.”
He led her to the library.
The desk in the corner had always been his, a place for correspondence and estate business, tucked away from the comfortable reading areas they both preferred.
Helena had never examined it closely, respecting the boundary between shared space and private territory.
But now Edmund crossed to it and opened the bottom drawer, retrieving a leather-bound journal that had lived there since their first week of matrimony.
“What is that?” Helena asked, settling into the chair beside the desk.
Edmund did not answer immediately. Instead, he opened the journal to the first page and handed it to her.
The page was dated, the day after their wedding, when they had arrived at Westmere Park together for the first time. Helena’s eyes moved across his handwriting, and he watched her expression shift as she absorbed what she was reading.