Chapter 17 #2
Eleanor looked at him. The certainty she had held so tightly began to weaken, not because the years between them could suddenly be forgotten but because, for the first time, she understood that the love she had mourned alone had never truly been hers alone to lose.
Gabriel lifted his hand slowly and brushed a loose strand of hair away from her face.
The touch was gentle, familiar, and devastating.
Eleanor could feel the pull between them, the same feeling she had tried to bury for years.
It was not simply a memory of the young man she had once loved.
It was Gabriel as he stood before her, older, and carrying wounds that matched her own.
They stood close, neither willing to move away and neither brave enough to cross the final distance between them. The truth they had both wanted for years was finally before them, but it came with the weight of everything they had lost.
For one moment, Eleanor believed she might finally understand what it felt like to be chosen.
She could feel the warmth of his fingers, and the memory of how easily she had once trusted him made her heart ache.
For years she had tried to remember him without allowing herself to remember what it felt like to stand close to him, to feel the affection he had once shown her without hesitation.
Yet this was not only a memory of the man she had loved before.
The man standing before her had been changed by everything they had endured.
He carried the weight of Ravenscourt, the responsibility of his family, and the hurt of believing he had been forgotten.
But when Eleanor looked into his eyes, she saw the same tenderness she had known all those years before.
It was not the careful kindness of a gentleman fulfilling a duty, nor the sympathy of a man who felt obligated to protect a woman from her past. It was the same affection that had once made her believe she could have a future with him.
She looked at him, trying to reconcile the man before her with the one she had convinced herself existed only in her memory.
“I thought your kindness came from responsibility,” she admitted. “After everything that I had done, what else could I think?”
His thumb moved gently against her cheek.
“That I loved you.”
The words were spoken so softly that Eleanor’s breath caught.
“I spent years telling myself that I had lost you because you had moved on,” she said. “When I saw you again, and you were kind to me, I decided that whatever remained between us was only because you remembered who I had once been.”
“I never stopped remembering. I do not know how many times I imagined seeing you again. I imagined you would tell me why you left, and that I would be angry. I expected to have a hundred things to say to you, but when you were standing there in the garden with Sophie, all I could think was that you were here.”
Her fingers tightened slightly against his coat.
“I was so certain that your heart belonged to someone else, and that Cassandra was the person you had always loved, even though you knew you could never have her.”
Gabriel exhaled quietly.
“Cassandra is my friend. She has stood beside my family through difficult years, and I will always be grateful for that, but she has never been the woman I wanted beside me.”
The certainty of it made her chest tighten. The distance between them had always been created by what they had failed to say, and now that the truth was finally before them, Eleanor found herself afraid of how much she wanted to believe it.
“I do not know how to forget what happened,” she whispered. “I do not know how to become the woman who stays.”
“I do not need you to become anyone else. I only need you to know that I would have chosen you then, just as I did when you came back.”
Eleanor looked at him, and for the first time she understood that the love she had mourned had never belonged to her alone. Gabriel had carried the same loss, and to her surprise, the same longing. His hand remained against her face as he lowered his head slightly.
She did not move away.
“Gabriel…” she whispered. “I have missed you. I missed you every day.”
The confession left them with nowhere else to hide.
He leaned closer, slowly enough that she could have stepped away.
Eleanor knew that she should have considered the years between them, and the danger of allowing herself to hope again, but she also knew that she was not standing before a man she had lost. She was standing before the man who had been waiting for her.
Her hand lifted to his shoulder, and Gabriel’s breath caught at the touch. Their faces were close enough that Eleanor could feel his breath, close enough that the smallest movement would erase the distance that had remained between them.
Then a sharp knock sounded against the door.
They both turned as the servant entered, visibly unsettled.
“My lord, forgive the interruption, but there is urgent news. There have been reports of unfamiliar men seen near the edge of the grounds.”
Eleanor felt the warmth of the moment disappear in an instant.
“The grounds?” Gabriel asked.
“Near the area where Miss Sophie was playing earlier.”
Her heart stopped. Gabriel was already moving toward the door.
“Find out who they are.”
The servant bowed and hurried away. Eleanor remained beside the desk, staring at the unfinished letter to Beatrice, before running off too. She had thought that there was going to be a resolution, but of course that could not happen. Not when there was a far more pressing matter at hand.
Sophie could have been in danger, and they had to stop it.