Her Family Sold Her to Pay Their Debts — Until the Ruthless Duke Whispered, “You’re My Destiny.”

Chapter 10

He took her hand, his fingers intertwining with hers. “I did not know then that I would come to love you. I only knew that I could not bear the thought of another man — especially a man like Whitmore — having you.”

“And now?”

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Now I cannot imagine a world without you. You have changed everything, Eleanor. You have changed me.”

She moved closer, resting her head against his chest. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat was the most reassuring sound she had ever heard.

“You were never a debt, Alexander,” she whispered. “You were always my destiny.”

He held her, and the fire crackled softly in the hearth. Outside, the wind had picked up, rattling the windows and sweeping across the darkened grounds. But inside, wrapped in each other’s arms, they were warm.

“Tell me something,” Eleanor said after a long silence. “That first night. When you stayed away. Were you truly trying to give me time?”

He was quiet for a moment. “I was trying to be noble. But I was also afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid that if I came to you, I would not be able to stop at duty. That I would want more. That I would fall in love with you and lose myself in the process.” He paused. “I was right.”

She lifted her head to look at him. “And now?”

“Now I have lost myself.” He smiled, a soft, tender smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “And I have never been more grateful for a loss.”

She kissed him, slow and deep, and the firelight painted them both in gold.

Outside the vast estate lay quiet beneath the stars. Inside, the Duke of Blackwood held the woman he had once purchased with twenty thousand pounds. But the truth neither of them could deny was simple.

He had not bought a wife. He had found the love that changed the course of his life.

And Eleanor, the girl once sold to pay a gambler’s debts, had discovered something far greater than rescue. She had discovered a man who saw her not as a transaction, not as a solution, but as the one person he would choose again and again for the rest of his life.

The fire crackled. The night deepened. And in the morning, the children would wake them with laughter and the house would fill with light again.

But for now, there was this moment. This perfect, quiet moment.

She lifted her head and kissed him softly. “I love you, Alexander Thorne.”

He smiled against her lips. “And I love you, Eleanor. My Duchess. My heart. My everything.”

The fire burned on, warm and steady, as the night wrapped around them like a promise.

THE END