“Still Unmarried?” Her Ex Laughed—He Didn’t Know She’d Married The Most Powerful Duke In England

Chapter 10

On Christmas Eve, they sat in the library, the fire burning high, the snow falling steadily outside the windows. The staff had been given the evening off. The house was quiet. The only sound was the crackling of the fire and the soft whisper of snow against the glass.

Nathaniel poured two glasses of brandy and handed her one.

“To our arrangement,” he said.

Eleanor raised her glass. “To our arrangement.”

They drank. The fire crackled. The snow continued to fall.

“Six months ago,” Eleanor said, “I was standing in the Hargrove parlor, watching Jonathan Mercer announce his engagement to another woman. I was holding a glass of lemonade I had not touched. I was pretending I was fine.”

She looked at the fire.

“I was not fine. I was surviving. There is a difference.”

“And now?” Nathaniel asked.

She turned to look at him.

“Now I am not surviving. Now I am —” She searched for the word. “Building.”

Nathaniel set down his glass. He crossed the room and sat beside her on the settee. Close enough that she could feel the warmth of him.

“Eleanor.” His voice was quiet. “I told you, when I proposed, that I would not lie to you. I have kept that promise. I intend to keep it for the rest of my life.”

He paused.

“I am going to tell you something now. And I want you to hear it without performing a response. Without guarding yourself. I want you to simply hear it.”

She nodded.

“I love you.”

The words hung in the air between them.

“I did not plan it. I did not want it. I spent years making sure I would never feel this way about anyone again. And then I walked into a room full of people who had dismissed you, and I saw you standing alone near a window, holding a glass you had not touched, and I could not look away.”

He held her gaze.

“I have not been able to look away since.”

Eleanor was very still. The fire crackled. The snow fell.

“I love you,” she said.

The words came out before she could stop them. Before she could examine them. Before she could protect herself from them.

She did not want to stop them.

“I did not plan it either,” she said. “I did not want it. I told myself I was done with love. I told myself I had learned my lesson. I told myself that what we had was enough, that I did not need more, that I was grateful for what I had been given.”

She reached for his hand.

“I was lying to myself. I have been lying to myself for months. I love you. I have loved you since the moment you walked across that room. I have loved you every day since.”

Nathaniel raised her hand to his lips. Pressed his forehead to her knuckles. Held them there.

“Six months ago,” he said, his voice rough, “you asked me if this arrangement was enough for me. I told you to ask me again in six months.”

He looked up at her.

“I am asking you now. Is this enough?”

Eleanor looked at him. At the man who had seen her clearly when everyone else had looked away. At the man who had offered her honesty when she had been drowning in lies. At the man who had waited for her, without pressure, without performance, without anything except the quiet, radical truth of himself.

“No,” she said.

His face did not change. He waited.

“It is not enough,” she said. “Because I want more. I want everything. I want the kind of marriage that does not require contracts. I want the kind of love that does not need to be named because it is simply there, in every room we occupy, in every silence between us.”

She squeezed his hand.

“I want you. Not as a partner in an arrangement. As my husband. In every way that word means.”

Nathaniel looked at her for a long moment. Then he reached up and cupped her face in his hand. His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone.

“Eleanor Whitfield,” he said. “You have been my wife in name for six months. I would like to spend the rest of my life earning the right to call you that in truth.”

She leaned into his touch.

“You already have,” she said.

They were married again on New Year’s Day.

Not in a church this time. In the library of the Graves estate, with the snow falling outside and the fire burning high. Mrs. Harding stood as witness. The minister from the village came out through the storm to say the words.

Eleanor did not wear gray. She wore deep green, the color of winter pines, the color of something growing.

Nathaniel wore the same dark coat he had worn at their first wedding. But his eyes were different. They held something that had not been there in July.

Eleanor said her vows again. But this time, she meant them differently. This time, she was not agreeing to terms. She was promising herself.

And Nathaniel, when he said his vows, did not speak the way a man speaks when he means exactly what he says and sees no reason to ornament it.

He spoke the way a man speaks when he is giving everything he has.

Afterward, Mrs. Harding embraced her — a surprising, solid warmth that Eleanor had not expected but found she needed. The minister shook Nathaniel’s hand. The fire crackled. The snow continued to fall.

And Eleanor stood in the library of the house that had become her home, beside the man who had become her home, and felt something she had not felt in three years.

Peace.