It played on repeat in her head and she’d have it do so infinitely.
Her words came out a whisper. “But… but Miss Wilde…”
“Miss Wilde is a dear friend who is in love with Clark Bennet. And he is in love with her, too. She does not have my heart. You do. Do you hear me Margaret? Do you understand?”
She stared at him. At the robust lines of his face. The buried sadness, the hidden joys, the past all etched into his countenance.
She knew how hard this was for him. To be truly honest about his heart. He’d been hurt before.
And so had she.
But now wasn’t the time for fear.
It was the time for bravery.
So she didn’t say a word.
She kissed him.
***
Lord Nathaniel Sterling, Earl of Comptonshire
He knew, as soon as the words were out of his mouth, that he should have said it months ago. Perhaps if they’d both been honest, with each other and themselves, about their feelings… perhaps then, they would never have parted.
When she kissed him, his entire world remade itself around them. So many things had broken him apart over the years, but her kiss was the remedy to every sorrow and every plight he’d ever had.
He hadn’t breathed, not since their lips had come together. He took her face in his hands and kissed her like she could sustain his body for life on that kiss alone.
When they parted, they each sucked in a wanton breath. Her eyes were still closed when she whispered, “I love you.” She did not say it once. She said it over and over, in a whisper that faded into silence after a few moments.
Her eyes opened.
“I should have asked…” she admitted, as her hand rose to hold his cheek. “I should have asked. I was just…”
“You were afraid,” he concluded, with a soft countenance. He could understand her fear. It was the same fear that had kept him from asking her if it was true about William.
He hadn’t wanted to risk hearing that it was from her mouth. He hadn’t needed that haunting memory occupying his head, as he’d been certain it would.
“Do you truly love me?” She whispered, with a quivering lower lip. He felt her thumb move along his jaw. A breathless smile broke out across his face.
“I do. Shamelessly.”
She smiled too, with tears of joy pricking at her lashes.
Margaret kissed him again, ever so softly. And when their mouths parted, she whispered one single word.
“Shamelessly.”
“Then say yes.”
Margaret tilted her head a little. “Say yes to what?”
Nathaniel felt the earth under his knee, cool and soft, before he realized what he was doing.
He heard her take a sudden breath.
But it didn’t stop him.
He stared up at her from where he knelt. “Margaret Abigail Baxter. Will you marry me?”
The trees were silent. Even the birds had stopped to listen for her answer. And when it came, they chirped back into song.
“Yes.”
The Extended Epilogue
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Book 3 – A preview
Chapter 1
Miss Charlene Ellington knew that she wasn’t meant to be out in Raven’s Hollow on her own. It was unseemly for a woman to come out to this cool and damp bit of forest all by herself.
It was dangerous. Who was she supposed to ask to chaperone her, though? Most people gave Raven’s Hollow a pass.
It was spooky, they said. Haunted. Charlene very much doubted that, or at least, she had never come across any reason to believe the place to be haunted.
There were plenty of hazards, from careless missteps to wild animals, but as long as one was careful and respectful, well, she at least had never had any trouble.
The only person that she could have asked to accompany her was her father, the eminent Dr. Ellington of Bath, but that would defeat the purpose of her being out here collecting herbs.
These were meant for his homemade medicines, and Charlene was here not only because she tended to be quicker at the task of gathering, but because her father’s time was better spent in town looking after the patients in his care.
Of course, Charlene and her father would never agree on that front. She was sure he knew, logically, that Charlene was right to do this, but he was her father and protective of her. He would never consent to her being out there on her own.
If she were a son, that would be one thing, but she wasn’t, and she had no right to act as one. Charlene could practically hear him in her head now: It just isn’t proper, Charlene.
He always stopped short of reminding her that if she did enough things that were considered improper, it would be impossible to find a husband for her.
No one wanted to marry a wild hellion, that was what her mother had always said. Just as well; Charlene wouldn’t marry anyone who thought that going out to gather herbs meant that she was a hellion.
No threat of argument could keep her from slipping away that morning. She would go crazy if she spent another day cooped up in the house with tutors – or worse, alone!
Besides, she might as well make herself useful in whatever way that she could. Things had been hard for her father as of late.
Charlene was startled from her contemplation of a particularly interesting vine when she heard a long, drawn-out groan.
Immediately, she tensed, cocking her head to the side in case the sound came again. It hadn’t been an animal that made that sound, she decided. No, it must have been a human. A human in pain, too, if she knew anything.
The sound didn’t come again, and there was a part of her that wondered if she had only imagined it. Maybe it had been nothing more than the wind blowing through the creaky trees.
Charlene wasn’t known for her imagination, though. She took after her father, the doctor: all focused practicality.
Not only that, but she knew that if there really was a man lying around here in pain, there was no way that she could abandon him. That just wasn’t in her nature.
She searched the area, looking for anything that might help her in her search. There, a footprint in the mud! Flattened grass, too wide of a path and straight for it to have been made by an animal.
It didn’t take her long to find a boy, nearly a man, lying down in the brush and cradling his left ankle.
For a moment, all Charlene could do was stare at him. It was rare for anyone to venture into this part of the wood, let alone one so finely dressed as he.
From the discarded bow and arrow sheath, he had been out hunting, or at least practicing his archery. Most people coming to Bath came for relaxation at the spa, not to go bushwhacking through Raven’s Hollow.
He must have had no idea what he was getting himself into, Charlene thought, shaking her head.
She stepped closer to him, wondering what had happened to his ankle. A twist? A break, even? He looked up at her with his cerulean eyes, and for a moment, Charlene could barely even think, lost in those deep pools of emotion.
Her breath caught, and she felt her heart beat a hair faster. She pushed those thoughts aside, though, remembering how Dr. Ellington worked with his patients.
She knelt next to him on the loam, feeling the slight dampness through the fabric of her skirt. “Let me see,” she demanded, trying to gentle her voice so as not to frighten the man.
Although,
if the first sight of Raven’s Hollow itself hadn’t managed to scare th
e boy off, there was little that Charlene could do to frighten him.
The boy shook his head. “There’s blood,” he said, like that should warn her off.
Charlene rolled her eyes and carefully pried his hands away. The boy, Eric Cumberland, reluctantly let her, his eyes curious as she tore a piece of fabric from the hem of her skirt and wet it from her waterskin.
The girl dabbed at the wound, wondering what had caused it. As she wiped away the excess blood, though, it was obvious: an adder.
Charlene gave the boy a troubled look. “Did you see the adder that did this?” she asked.
“Only for a moment,” he admitted, and Charlene could hear the pain in his voice. “Pale, with brown splotches. I don’t know how I missed it initially.”
He shivered slightly, and she could tell that it was more than just his body going into shock at the bite.
The girl grimaced. Venomous, she was sure of it. From everything she knew, which admittedly was nowhere near as much as her father, he still had time, though.
She dropped her basket beside him and darted off to find the herbs that she needed. She was breathless as she retraced her steps.
The boy hadn’t moved; he just leaned back against a tree, his eyes closed, his lips drawn tight with pain.
Charlene threw herself back on the ground. She didn’t have a mortar and pestle with her, but she made do with some jagged rocks, making a thick paste with the herbs that could save his life. She only hoped it wasn’t too late.
She pulled Eric’s hands away from his wound, noting how much weaker his grip was already. Or maybe it was just that he knew better, by now, than to fight her.
Charlene would never go so far to presume that he trusted her, but he had to realize that with no help at all, he wasn’t going to make it.
She used another strip of her skirt to bind the poultice to his ankle. Dr. Ellington was going to be irate when he found out that she had ruined one of her frocks, but what else was she to do?
Besides, it wasn’t as though the mud stains at the knees would ever come out satisfactorily. Might as well ruin the whole thing.
Eric’s blue eyes flicked open again, and he seemed to be considering Charlene for a moment. “What is it?” he asked, gesturing weakly towards the wrap.
“They’ll draw out the poison,” she promised him. She bit her lower lip. “You still need more help, though. I expect the fever to set in, and then you’ll need water and someone to bathe the wound and reapply the paste. I can’t do that here.”
The boy gave an experimental push, like he was going to try to get to his feet. Unsurprisingly, he was unsuccessful at it. “I don’t think I can walk,” he said, sounding worried.
“Of course not,” Charlene said impatiently, pushing him back down with a firm hand on his shoulder. “You stay here. Don’t move.”
She grabbed his arrows and put them within arm’s reach of him. “Hopefully you won’t see another adder, but if you do, try not to get bit again. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She didn’t like the idea of leaving him alone there, not in the condition that he was in. She didn’t know what else she could do, though. There was no way that she could get him back to her father’s on her own.
He might not be a full-grown man just yet, but he was still far taller than Charlene was, and although he was slender, she had a feeling that under those fancy clothes was a body toned from horsemanship, fencing, and other gentlemanly pursuits.
Charlene couldn’t lift him, and she certainly couldn’t navigate her way over logs and such to get out of here with him draped over her shoulder. She needed her father’s help.
She ran as fast as her feet could carry her, knowing that in spite of the poultice she had applied, each moment was crucial to the boy’s survival.
Fortunately, it didn’t take much to find Dr. Ellington. He stared at his daughter’s bedraggled state as she rushed into the apothecary but didn’t say anything as he finished packaging something for Mr. Hennigan. Then, he turned towards his daughter, clucking his tongue.
“Charlene,” he said disapprovingly.
“No time for that now, Father,” she interrupted. “There’s a boy out in Raven’s Hollow who needs your help. He was bitten by an adder, and I did what I could, just like you taught me, but he obviously can’t stay there, and I couldn’t get him back here by myself.”
Father frowned when Charlene mentioned Raven’s Hollow, and she could see a storm brewing in his eyes. She was going to catch hell later, she was sure, but she didn’t care at the moment.
Her whole world was focused on the boy that she had left behind, with eyes as blue as the depths of the sea.
“Show me,” the doctor said, grabbing his things and bustling out of the shop. Charlene ran ahead and led him back to where she had left the boy, panicking silently all the while that she wouldn’t be able to find her way back.
But then, there was that messily-made trail, and there was the boy, looking grey with pain and exhaustion but still conscious.
He was reciting something under his breath, and for a moment, Charlene thought that maybe he was crazy.
But then she realized that he was probably afraid to pass out and merely trying whatever he could to keep himself awake.
Dr. Ellington checked the poultice that his daughter had made and nodded once approvingly. Then, he hefted Eric to his feet, letting him lean against his shoulder.
Charlene slipped into place on the other side, even though she was sure that the doctor didn’t really need her there to keep the boy on his feet. Still, it helped soothe her own worry to feel like she was being remotely useful.
It seemed to take an eternity to make it back to the house, but finally, Dr. Ellington was laying the boy down in a cot and administering stronger medicine to him.
“I should have introduced myself earlier, but I am Dr. Ellington. This is my daughter Charlene. I presume you have family in town?” he asked. “We will send a message to them.”
Eric’s head lolled as he turned to face the doctor. “Duke of Havenport is my father,” he said weakly.
Charlene stared at the boy in the bed, and she could tell that her shock was no greater than her father’s. If Duke of Havenport was his father, then assuming that the boy survived his injuries, Charlene had saved the son of a duke.
Chapter 2
Eric felt woozy after his ordeal and after the medicines given to him by Dr. Ellington. As he laid in the cot they had placed him in , he found himself still fighting to stay conscious.
His pain had faded as the medicines took effect, but that wasn’t his present issue. He knew that his resistance to sleep was partly out of the fear of never walking.
He had been a fool for going into Raven’s Hollow on his own. He knew that. He had just been hoping to get in a little archery practice on his own.
He simply wanted real targets, not bales of hay. And a space away from the prying eyes of every other visitor of Bath. Life in the public eye could be so uncomfortably stuffy at times.
He had barely noticed the adder before it bit a chunk of flesh out of his ankle. The thing had slithered away afterwards, like it had decided that it was no longer interested in him after that first taste.
Eric knew that probably wasn’t the case, though. The thing had no doubt been waiting for him to succumb to the venom before it finished him off. If it had not been for that girl, he would never have made it.
Speaking of the girl, Eric could hear the doctor yelling at her now. “You know better than to go out into the wood on your own!” he said. “It’s not seemly, Charlene. And ruining a skirt in the process, what would your mother have said about that?”
From where he was lying, Eric couldn’t hear Charlene’s response, but he sure could hear the doctor when he picked back up again. “You should never have been out there in the first place. What happens if he succumbs? What do you think the Duke would have to say about that?”
Eric winced. He knew that it wasn’t his faul
t that Charlene had been out there in Raven’s Hollow, but he also knew she wouldn’t have been discovered if she hadn’t needed her father’s help in getting him back to Bath. He wondered what the hell had brought her out there in the first place.
As her father had said, it wasn’t right for her to be out there. Not a woman all on her own. Oh, Eric didn’t care so much about the propriety of it all, which seemed to be the doctor’s main complaint.
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