Of all the things that she had expected him to say, this had been very near the bottom.
“You are?”
His smile grew more confident.
“I am,” he said. “Part of the reason I was so hesitant to tell my family about Iris at first—aside from my own stubbornness, of course—was that I worried that they would make a case for taking her from me. I mean, the rest of them—they are married, settled. They mostly have children. They would all be better at caring for her than I am.”
“Ezra, no!” she exclaimed.
“It was true, before you came to help us,” he said. “But now, this is her home. And if her mother was my sister—strange as that is to say—then there is nobody else who has a greater claim to be her guardian. She will stay here. With me. Where she belongs.”
She could not have hidden her smile if she tried.
“Where she belongs,” Letty echoed.
Ezra paused, looking uncharacteristically unsure of himself.
“And what about you, Letty?” he asked after a beat.
“Me?”
He was still holding her hand fast. “Do you belong here? With me?”
He looked so hopeful.
She felt her heart start to break anew. This was the very conversation she had been avoiding.
“Ezra, we have been over this. Nothing has changed. I can’t stay on as your governess—I cannot stay as your mistress. I just… I can’t.”
“I know,” he said. “I understand—and you are right about both those things. But you are wrong about one thing. One important thing. Somethinghaschanged.”
His dark eyes were fixed on her, less raging storm and more rolling clouds, full of potential to bring life-giving rain.
“I don’t want you as my governess. I don’t want you as my mistress. I want you as my wife.”
Letitia blinked and realized that she was standing, though she didn’t remember having moved. She must have done so, though, because those intense eyes were now longer looking up at her, instead of straight.
“I... You can’t,” she stammered. “I am a servant. You are a duke.”
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink.
“I don’t care,” he said levelly.
She could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears. She had to tell him.
“I am not… I was not even born legitimately,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears that suddenly threatened to come. She knew that her parents’ choices did not truly reflect on her, but after a lifetime of being shamed for the conditions of her birth, it was hard to shake those feelings.
“I know,” he said in that same even tone.
“You... Youwhat?”
“I know that you were born to a lady and a common man who lived near her estate. I know that she did not give you her name, and that your father did not raise you. He sent you into service—that was how you ended up in the house where you met Sarah.”
She must have looked properly agog, because he gave her a faintly apologetic shrug.
“Xander told me,” he admitted.
She sank back down into the chair, mostly because she didn’t trust her knees to hold her upright for very much longer.
