“I’m just providing context.”
Rhys’s lips twitched despite the gravity of the moment. Then his attention returned to Mel, and the almost-smile faded into something more serious.
“Give me one reason,” Mel said. “One reason I should stay after everything that’s happened. After London, after what I heard you say, after all of it.”
Rhys looked at her with care. Then he looked at his daughters, at the three small figures in their nightgowns who had fought so fiercely to keep her from leaving.
“I have three,” he said quietly.
“Three reasons who are standing right here, who cherish you as much as I do, who need you in ways I am only beginning to understand.” He paused, his voice dropping lower.
“And I have a fourth reason, which is myself. Which is that I find I am no longer master of my own heart where you are concerned Mel Grace. I cherish your honesty and your steadiness and the way you see through every pretense I’ve ever constructed. I adore that you held my daughter through her nightmares and taught my other daughter to speak and channeled my third daughter’s chaos into scientific inquiry. I treasure and adore that you told me the truth in a moonlit garden when everyone else would have let me keep hiding.”
Mel felt the tears she had been holding back finally escape, tracking down her cheeks in hot, unwelcome streams. She was not a woman who cried. She had not cried when her father abandoned her, nor when her mother had passed away, she hadnot cried through any of the losses and disappointments that had marked her adult life.
But she was crying now, standing in a cold entrance hall with a trunk at her feet and four people watching her with desperate hope in their eyes.
“The scandal,” she said, her voice unsteady.
“Your daughters. Society will…”
“Society can go hang.” Rhys closed the remaining distance between them, stopping just short of touching her.
“My daughters need a mother who cherishes them. I need a wife who sees me clearly. And you need a family, Mel. You’ve been alone for too long, surviving when you should have been living. Let us be your family. Let us hold you with our deepest affection the way you truly deserve to be cherished.”
“Papa’s being romantic,” Thistle observed. “This is very unusual.”
“Shh,” Anna hissed.
“This is an important moment.”
Mel laughed despite herself, the sound wet and broken but genuine. She looked at the children, at their expectant faces and their barely contained excitement. She looked at Rhys, at the hope and fear warring in his expression, at the man who had finally stopped hiding behind his worst self.
She looked at the trunk, packed and ready, waiting to carry her away from everything she had found here.
And she let go of the handle.
“The shell,” she said suddenly.
“I left it on the windowsill. Viola’s shell.”
“I’ll get it!” Thistle was already running for the stairs, Brutus bouncing against her chest.
“I’ll help!” Anna followed, clearly unwilling to miss any part of the continuing drama.
Viola stayed where she was, her quiet eyes moving between Mel and her father. Then, slowly, deliberately, she crossed the entrance hall and wrapped her arms around Mel’s waist.
“I knew you’d stay,” she whispered. “I knew you wouldn’t really leave.”
Mel held her, feeling the small body pressed against hers, feeling the trust that radiated from every point of contact. This child, who had been so afraid of abandonment that she spoke only in whispers, who had watched governess after governess come and go, had believed in her.
“I’m sorry,” Mel said, the words coming out rough.
“I should not have tried to leave without saying goodbye. That was wrong.”
“You were scared.” Viola’s voice was matter-of-fact.
“People do foolish things when they’re scared. Papa taught us that.”
