Her brow furrowed, as confusion flickered beneath her anger. “You told me enough.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I never did. I could not. I thought that if I said it aloud, I would be him again.”
Matilda’s heartbeat quickened. “What are you saying?”
He met her gaze fully now, no longer hiding behind composure. “He was not just cruel, Matilda. He was a monster. Every dayof my childhood was a performance to please him. And when I failed, he reminded me, with words, with fists, with the weight of his silence, that I was nothing. That I existed only to carry on his name.”
The sisters gasped softly, glancing between them, but Jasper continued.
“When he died,” he went on, baring himself, “I swore that I would end his legacy. That I would never marry, never sire a son, never let another bear the Everleigh name. It was the only way I knew to punish him.”
Matilda stared at him, her anger slipping into stunned quiet.
He gave a bitter smile. “For years, that vow was my pride. My defiance. But after I met you, it became my prison. Every moment with you made that promise feel like a wound I kept opening myself.”
She whispered, “Jasper…” but her voice faltered.
He stepped closer, the distance between them shrinking. “I thought I was protecting you from me, from my father’s blood, from his temper and his shadow. But it wasyouwho made me realize how foolish I’ve been, how childish. My vow doesn’t punish him. It only punishes me.”
He took another breath, steadier this time. “And I have never wanted anything in my life as I want you.”
Matilda shook her head faintly, tears glinting though she fought them. “You cannot mean?—”
“I do,” he said fiercely. “If you will still have me, Matilda, if you can forgive me, I would ask for your hand in marriage. Not from duty, nor guilt, nor fear. But because I love you. Because you are the only peace I have ever known.”
Silence fell again, thick and trembling. The nuns stood transfixed, with scandal and awe mingling on their faces. Matilda’s whole body trembled as she looked at him, at this wild, flawed, beautiful man who had laid his soul bare before her and half of heaven. He looked at her as if she were the only soul in existence, as though the rest of the world, even heaven itself, had vanished.
But then the abbess’s voice cut through the silence, with the authority of decades behind it. “This house is for vows to God, not to one another,” she said, her tone softened only by the faintest glimmer of amusement. “If such declarations are to be made, let them be made outside, under God’s sky.”
A murmur swept through the nuns, half scandal, half delight.
Matilda turned toward the abbess, ready to apologize, but before she could form a single word, Jasper moved. He strode forward, the weight of decision in every step, and before she could protest, he swept her into his arms.
“Jasper!” she gasped, startled. “You cannot?—”
“I can,” he said, his voice fierce and joyful. “And I will.”
The sisters gasped again. Some were appalled, others were smiling behind their hands as he carried her down the chapel aisle. Outside, the sunlight broke through a bank of clouds, washing the cloister courtyard in gold. The air was cool and clean, and the distant sound of the bell gave way to birdsong.
He stopped in the center of the courtyard and gently set her down. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Jasper dropped to one knee before her, his eyes never leaving hers.
Matilda’s breath caught. The world seemed to narrow to just the two of them: the sunlight, the faint hum of wind and his voice.
“Matilda,” he said, his tone trembling with emotion, “I came here to stop you from giving up on the world. But now I find I cannot imagine one without you in it. You have seen every part of me worth despising and still, I hope, something worth forgiving.”
Her throat tightened, and she could feel tears stinging her eyes.
He took her hand gently and reverently. “You said once that love nearly ruined you. Let me prove that it can also save us both. Will you marry me, Matilda Sterlington, and make a fool like me the happiest man alive?”
She could no longer hold back the tears. They fell freely now, though her smile broke through them like sunlight through rain.
“You are impossible,” she whispered.
He grinned faintly. “So I have been told.”
She laughed softly, helplessly, and shook her head. “Yes,” she said finally, her voice trembling with disbelief and joy. “Yes, Jasper. I will marry you.”
For a heartbeat, he simply stared at her, as though afraid to trust what he’d heard. Then, with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a breathless prayer, he rose and pulled her into his arms.
