“I have time.”
“And if you relapse again? If you go back to London and find another Mrs. Hartington waiting for you?”
“Then you have my permission to pack that trunk and leave. But I don’t intend to give you reason to use it.” He paused, his expression serious.
“I should be the most miserable of creatures were I to lose your favour.”
“My affections for you have become quite insurmountable Mel. I should have told you in the garden. I should have told youbefore that. I’ve been a coward about many things in my life, but I have finished being a coward about this.”
Mel felt something shift inside her, some wall that had been standing for years finally beginning to crumble. She had built those walls for good reason, had learned through hard experience that vulnerability was dangerous and hope was foolish and affection was a weapon that could be used against you.
But standing here, in the entrance hall where she had nearly made the biggest mistake of her life, she found herself willing to take the risk.
“My heart has been yours since the very first time I saw you.” she said. “Against my better judgment and all practical sense.”
Rhys’s face transformed, the anxiety and fear giving way to something that looked very much like joy.
“Viola’s going to be insufferable about this,” he said. “She predicted it weeks ago.”
“Viola is an excellent observer.”
“She learned from you.”
“She learned from both of us.” Mel looked down at the trunk, at the packed bags and the careful preparations that had nearly carried her away from everything she wanted.
“I should unpack.”
“You should.”
“And we should have breakfast. The children will be hungry.”
“They will.”
Neither of them moved. They stood there in the entrance hall, existing in the space between what had been and what would be.
“Mel,” Rhys said quietly.
“Yes?”
“Welcome home.”
The words settled over her like a benediction, like something she had been waiting to hear her whole life without knowing she was waiting.
Home, she had one now, a real one, with a family and a future and all the terrifying possibilities that implied.
She picked up her trunk and carried it back toward the stairs, toward the room that was hers, toward the life she had almost thrown away.
Behind her, she heard Rhys laugh softly, the sound full of relief and wonder and the beginning of something new.
It was, she thought, a very good sound to build a future on.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“The children are finally asleep.”
Mel stood in the doorway of the study, the room where so many of their evening conversations had taken place. The fire was burning low in the grate, casting flickering shadows across the familiar furniture, the desk where Rhys pretended to work on correspondence, the chair where she had sat so many times discussing philosophy and education and the wider world beyond Hartfell’s walls.
Everything looked the same as it had a week ago but everything felt entirely different.
