Chapter 8
Eight
Elena had never feared an altar. There was a time she had envisioned what her wedding would be like.
Many young girls did. A marriage was something to be expected.
She would grow up and find a man to marry, and hopefully that man would be one she wanted to have for a husband.
But she had feared what would happen after that wedding.
There were no guarantees in life, and there was no certainty that the man she married would treat her properly.
Marriage did not always mean security. Some men treated women terribly once they believed the vows they had spoken had turned the woman into property that had no rights.
This was not something little girls were told when they dreamed about happily-ever-after.
This was a hard lesson many women learned far too late, but one that Elena had a first hand experience with.
Not as a wife, but as a daughter. Still she had hoped to find freedom in love, and in the right man.
That man was and never would be her father.
The servants of Rosebery Park woke before the sun, the estate hummed with the frantic energy of an event that had been planned with no certainty it would actually happen.
Servants hurried along corridors and many doors were opened and shut with purpose.
Somewhere below, a string quartet tested their instruments, the notes thin and tentative in the early hour.
Elena stood in the bedchamber that had been assigned to her—assigned, as though she were already the countess of the grand estate, and stared at her reflection.
She was dressed and perfectly at that. Her gown was a soft pink like dawn made into silk—romantic and airy.
The pink is barely-there—more a blush tone that appeared almost ivory in candlelight.
It would warm to a shade closer to a pink rose in sunlight.
Her hair had been smoothed and arranged with care.
Her locks were drawn back and gathered into a low, classical chignon at the back of her head sculpted into a series of looped twists pinned so they resembled the gentle folds of a ribbon.
A few fine strands were coaxed into soft tendrils at the temples, brushing her cheekbones in a way that looked effortless, though it clearly was not.
Nestled at the crown sat a delicate diadem, arcing like a quiet coronet.
Beneath the gathered twists, the remaining blonde tendrils flowed down her back in long, polished waves.
Threaded through the chignon and along the back where the twists met the loose waves were diamond-and-pearl encrusted hair pins.
At the final turn of the chignon, one pin sat slightly lower than the rest, so the pearls formed a subtle cascade into the loose lengths, giving the impression her hair had been woven with constellations.
Her hands trembled. She was the perfect bride from her gown to her hair, to her slippers. But she did not feel like a woman who was ready to say her vows. While she had dressed for the wedding, she still had not made her decision.
Rowan stood behind her, arms crossed, expression fierce enough to frighten the entire chapel into crumbling. “If ye refuse tae marry him,” Rowan said quietly, “I will walk ye out myself.”
Elena managed a small, tight smile. “You would enjoy that.”
“I would enjoy the expression on every face,” Rowan corrected. She smirked. “Especially, his.”
Elena’s gaze lowered to her hands. She could hear her own heartbeat, loud as thunder, as if her body were trying to warn her away from a precipice.
The door opened without ceremony. Elena turned sharply, half expecting Lady Peregrine or some flurried maid, but it was Damian’s housekeeper, pale with nerves.
“My lady,” the woman said carefully, “the guests are gathering.”
Elena’s throat tightened. “I am aware.”
The housekeeper hesitated. “Shall I tell them you be arriving soon?”
Elena clenched her hands into tight fists. She hated all this expectation. “No,” Elena said at once. Then, because she heard the brittle edge in her voice and hated it, she forced herself to breathe. “No. Not yet.”
The housekeeper withdrew, closing the door softly behind her. Silence returned, heavy and suffocating. Rowan stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Do ye want tae marry him?”
There it was again—Do you want to?—as if desire were the only question that mattered.
Elena stared at her reflection. Though she supposed it did.
What did she want? She remembered the library.
The heat of his mouth, the shock of it, the awful, terrifying rightness.
She remembered the way he had asked what she needed, not what he demanded.
She remembered his apology in the west wing—rare as a comet, rough with sincerity and still, something in her resisted.
Not him he had been…well, perfect. It was the very idea of marriage that made her stay in place and not go to the chapel.
She feared that once she walked into the chapel, the world would decide she belonged to Damian, and what she wanted would become ornamental.
Elena’s mouth tightened as she turned away from the mirror.
“I cannot walk in there,” she whispered.
Rowan’s expression softened, only slightly. “Then donna go inside if that is what ye wish.”
Elena’s hands clenched. “I can’t walk in there like a prize,” she said, voice shaking now with anger and something perilously close to grief. “Like a debt paid or as if I am an ornament being put in it’s proper place.”
Rowan nodded once, fierce approval. “Then doona go. Leave and do as ye please.”
Elena took a breath that felt like swallowing fire. Outside the windows, the world looked unchanged. The lawns were green and the sky was pale. The chapel stood in the distance, patient as stone. As if it had always known she would arrive and marry the earl. Elena turned toward the door.
Rowan’s eyes widened. “Elena..?”
“I’m not going to run,” Elena said. She had something else in mind. Something she had to do before she could make her decision at last.
Rowan’s mouth tightened, admiration and worry warring in her gaze. “Then what are ye going tae do?”
Elena’s voice steadied. “I am going to make certain everyone understands,” she said, “that if I marry the earl, it will be because I chose him.”
She opened the door and stepped into the corridor.
The hall smelled faintly of beeswax and flowers.
Servants paused as she passed, faces carefully blank.
Elena lifted her chin and walked, slowly and deliberately, toward the stairs, toward the gathered guests, toward the chapel waiting like a question.
She did not go to the chapel. It was not time for that yet.
She went instead to the entry hall, where the murmur of voices grew louder—where the ton’s eyes would be sharpest.
Where Damian would be.
The drawing room doors were open, and Elena could see them.
All the ladies in their finest gowns and the gentlemen with composed smiles.
The whispers were already forming like mist. Lady Peregrine stood near the window her hands clasped and her face too calm for a woman who had built this domino line.
Damian stood at the center of the room in dark formal attire, immaculate and controlled.
He looked like a man prepared to stand at an altar and say those vows.
Then his gaze found Elena. Something flickered in his eyes—heat, relief, wariness.
She couldn’t be certain, but she knew knew with a sudden certainty, that he had been braced for her disappearance, her refusal and the humiliation that would follow.
Elena stopped on the threshold as a hush moved through the room, rippling outward as whispers died and attention sharpened.
She could feel every gaze on her. Damian did not move toward her.
He did not reach for her. He simply watched and waited with an uncharacteristic stillness that made Elena’s stomach twist.
Rowan appeared at Elena’s shoulder, silent but unmistakably present.
Elena took a step forward. Then another.
The room was so quiet she could hear the faint crackle of a fire somewhere and the distant, hopeful notes of the musicians in the ballroom.
Elena’s pulse thundered. Damian’s face remained calm, but there was a tension in his jaw, a careful restraint—as though he had, at last, arrived at a moment he could not command.
Elena stopped before him, close enough that only he could hear her if she spoke softly and she almost did just that.
She almost let this be a private moment just for the two of them.
But that would not give her what she needed.
Elena lifted her chin, turned slightly so the room could see her face, and drew a steadying breath.
If she was going to do this, she would do it on her terms, and she would not walk to the altar like a girl being that had not taken what she wanted from the world.
She was not his to claim, but she would be his if he gave her what she needed most.
Damian had faced battlefields with steadier nerves than he faced the drawing room at Rosebery Park that morning.
He had done his duty in the war but had been relieved when he needed to return home to claim the title.
War was not and never should be a comfortable place, and deaths should not be so often that one became numb to it.
This had been a war of sorts, and he feared that at the end of it he would be far more scarred than any battle had ever left him.
He prayed she would not leave him. Not because he feared scandal.
He had been born into high society and he could handle anything that may tarnish his name or reputation.
He had learned early how to endure whispers and survive the sharp smiles of society.