by Erica Ridley
He touched her there.
She shattered around him. Had been halfway there just from hearing him ask the question. From hearing herself say Yes, I want it as his shaft stroked deep within her. Was brought to her peak yet again when she felt him reach his own.
Had she thought she’d found pleasure before? She was spoiled now for all other men. Didn’t even want to meet any other men. No one would ever hold a candle to Lucien. Was it any wonder she’d fallen in love with him?
Her heart hiccupped. Not because she was surprised she’d fallen—anyone would have—but because she was only now realizing how utterly destroyed she would be when he left. She held on as tight as she could.
He let her, for a while. Held her just as close and just as tight. And then he kissed her forehead and reached for his clothes.
She let him go. Watched in silence as he pulled on his breeches, his shirt, his waistcoat, his jacket. Watched him tie his cravat before picking up the hammer and straightening the crooked shelf, just like she’d asked him to do.
And then he reached for the door.
“I meant it.” His voice was quiet, but clear. “When I asked you to marry me. I won’t bother you again. I’m sorry we aren’t a good match, but I am glad my first time was with you.”
She bolted out of bed, naked. “What?”
But he was already gone. She could hear his footsteps, fading. The sound of the front door.
The endless emptiness of goodbye.
Chapter 15
Meg fell backward onto her bed and stared unseeingly at the ceiling.
She, who had sworn never to want the same man twice, wanted Lucien forever and ever.
He, who had sworn never to settle for less than fellow French nobility, had proposed to her. And meant it.
Aargh, how she had longed to say yes! To believe she could say yes would turn her entire world upside down. Life had shown her, again and again, that nothing good ever lasted, and the same was true now. Yes, he’d walked away because she had said no. But if she hadn’t… Lucien would have run away.
She wasn’t just some unimportant English farm girl. She was the granddaughter of unimportant French farmers. Lucien’s parents might have hoped the rebellion would die down, but Meg’s parents had actively fought in the revolution. They were the exact sort of people whom Lucien rightfully blamed for murdering his parents. She could not hide a secret that big. Not from someone who trusted her enough to want to marry her. And the moment Lucien found out the truth…
He’d be gone.
Which left what? She gathered clumps of blanket in her fists and sucked in a shaky breath. Houville, that was what. Moving to a slightly larger village full of complete strangers and cheap rooms to let, because that was all she could afford to do.
Living alone, as appeared to be her destiny. Too far to walk to see her cousin. Too far to even see the castle. A thousand miles away from France and Lucien.
Meg rubbed her face with her hands and turned onto her side. The pillow smelled of Lucien. She hugged it to her chest and refused to cry, no matter how sharp her eyes might sting. She would not let her tears wash away any trace of him.
She did want him. More than anything. He was smart and sweet, family-oriented and loyal, and best of all… he wanted her.
She’d always thought that taking a husband meant losing her freedom, losing autonomy, losing any semblance of control over her own life. But now that she’d turned down Lucien’s offer, it was saying no that had sent her on a spiral of loneliness. She didn’t feel stronger without him. She felt empty.
So what was she going to do about it?
Meg pushed herself upright and stared at her simple muslin gown laying crumpled on the floor.
Even if she were an aristocrat too, she would still be scared to give up everything she knew and the roots she’d desperately been trying to put down, just to gamble on an unknown. Saying yes to Lucien meant saying yes to leaving Cressmouth, to leaving her cousin, to leaving England. It meant saying yes to a different country and a different world than the one she was used to.
But her biggest fear, her secret fear, wasn’t having to begin again with strangers somewhere new. She was terrified of starting a new chapter with someone she knew, someone she hoped to keep, creating a home together in which she hoped to stay. Leaving of her own free will was so much more palatable than being rejected.
It was also more cowardly.
Hadn’t she accused Lucien of running away from Cressmouth rather than giving it a chance? What was she doing, if not the very same thing?
With trembling hands, Meg snatched up her gown from the floor and pulled it on.
She was scared, but she wasn’t a coward. She hadn’t thought she’d live through those years in the attic, but she’d done it. She hadn’t thought she’d ever find a way out of France and back to England, but she’d done it. She hadn’t thought it would be possible to make a home in an idyllic village of perpetual Yuletide, but she’d done it. She hadn’t thought her barricaded heart would ever fall in love, but she’d done it.
Meg had always had to come up with new plans whenever the old plan stopped working. Her fear of change might be natural, but she couldn’t let it hold her back. If ever there was a man who kept his word and was the very definition of loyal, that man was Lucien le Duc. If he promised “forever,” he meant bloody forever. The rest of the world could change anything it wished, but Lucien’s heart always stayed true.
But before she could let him agree to anything… she had to tell him the full truth.
Chapter 16
The last thing Lucien wanted was to return to his bedchamber. Rather than scurry home, he stalked back to the empty smithy instead. Here, the scorching heat from the forge would mask any pain in his heart. He could swing hammers and clang metal as loudly as necessary to drown out the relentless cacophony of his own jumbled thoughts.
Who cared if he didn’t feel like working on anything? It was better than walking into his bustling cottage and confronting the happy, smiling faces of his uncle, his brother, his sister-in-law. Even the pig seemed unreasonably chipper this afternoon.
It wasn’t that Lucien was at loose ends. He’d had a plan for the past eighteen years. He still had the very same plan.
He just didn’t want it anymore.
The thought of taking his rightful place in the elegant madness of French high society seemed… uninspiring. He would win back the family’s lost assets—he was very much looking forward to that—but if all went well, that part of the plan would wrap up around the second of February.
Which only left the entire rest of his life to glower around ballrooms in search of someone, anyone, who remotely interested him even a fraction as much as how deeply he cared for Meg.
Huzzah. Le plan, c’est magnifique.
But what else was he to do? He’d asked her to marry him. She’d said no. That was that. If he was captain of his own ship, she certainly deserved to be captain of hers.
Lucien just wished it was the same ship.
He touched his fingers to his waistcoat pocket, where the boat passage rested close to his heart. Before, the tickets had always made him feel lighter. Now they felt incredibly heavy, as though they were leeching into his skin in order to rip new holes in his battered heart. He tossed his leather gloves aside and leaned his shoulders back against the wall.
The plan wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Lucien never gave anything but the plan a fair try.
He’d concentrated so hard on returning home to France that he never acknowledged he’d made a new home, right here in Cressmouth. The difficulty wasn’t waiting to see if the villagers would ever accept him as one of their own. It was Lucien finally wielding his power to accept them as his own.
The world wouldn’t end if he admitted he liked Cressmouth. It wouldn’t even end if he admitted England itself wasn’t so bad, either. Having a second home didn’t mean he had to give up the first one.
He’d thought belong
ing to the aristocracy was what would make him important. But importance wasn’t defined by a society he did not control, but rather by who Lucien decided he’d like to be important to.
He was already important to his family. He was even important to the village of Cressmouth. He’d wanted to be important to Meg, too.
Heaven knew how important she was to Lucien.
His parents had taught him to always put family first. For years, he’d defined family as his siblings and their uncle. Over the past year, he’d revised the definition to include a new brother-in-law and his two children, a new sister-in-law and her father. If Meg couldn’t see that she was part of his family, too—
His breath caught in horror. Of course she couldn’t see.
He’d told her he wanted her to marry him, but he’d skipped the part where he mentioned why.
The bit about joining the family? Left out entirely. The wee detail about being hopelessly, madly in love with her? Also not part of his speech. His cheeks burned. Had he thought speaking French made him more eloquent? It made him take things for granted. It highlighted his tendency to insist upon things his way, how he liked them, however he was more comfortable.
He should have done it in English. Garbled grammar, mortifying pronunciation, and all. It would have proven he was willing to put in effort. Willing to meet her halfway.
And he maybe should have mentioned something about love.
The sound of footsteps on gravel caused him to lift his gaze to the open door.
Meg!
Lucien leapt off his stool fast enough to send it spinning to one side. He didn’t care about the stool. All he cared about was one more chance with Meg. Had she changed her mind? Was she here to say yes after all?
Heart beating far too fast, he hurried through the smithy to meet her.
“I’m sorry I botched the proposal.” He reached for her hands.
She tucked them behind her back. “I’m not here to accept it. I—”
“Of course you shouldn’t accept it. It was a terrible proposal. Mortifying, really. Which is why I—”
“We need to talk, Lucien. No one should make a decision without full knowledge of all pertinent factors, and there are a few things you—”
“I left out a lot of things. I realize that now. I’m trying to do better.” He switched to English. “Marry me. I love you.”
“You don’t even know—”
He pulled the extra boat ticket that had been meant for his brother out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand. “Come with me. Or not. I want you to know you have options. I want you to know that—”
“Lucien, listen to me.” Her voice broke. “I haven’t been completely honest.”
His flesh went cold.
“I’ve never lied to you, but I left out a few important…” She rolled back her shoulders and visibly forced herself to meet his eyes. “I already have options. My mother’s dowry was passed down to me. It’s a plot of land.”
He tilted his head in confusion. “A secret dowry is… a strange confession.”
“It’s land in France.” Her gaze was bleak. “My mother’s parents were farmers. French farmers. They were nobody. Not even gentry.”
“I knew you weren’t nobility before we even—”
“My family fought on the side of the rebellion,” she blurted out. “They hated how unfair the system is. They wanted a revolution. People were dying out there in rural areas, and determined that if a few aristocrats had to die too in order for France to become a land of parity and equality, where a man’s worth was determined by his character rather than the bloodline of long-dead ancestors—”
He took a step back. “Your family was part of the angry mobs who…”
She swallowed and gave a tight nod, her eyes tortured. “We didn’t live in the same area as you, but…”
We might as well have. If we’d been neighbors then, my parents would have killed yours.
She didn’t say it aloud, but Lucien heard every word anyway.
He backed away; his breath uneven, his skin cold.
“I didn’t know you,” she said, her voice scratchy. “And you didn’t know me. But—”
“But if we had met back then, a wink and some banter would have superseded any pesky murders?” he said, his voice hollow.
“No.” Her face was pale. “We would never have met, not even if we lived in the same village. I would have hated you, and you would have hated me. But we didn’t meet then. We met here, in Cressmouth. As equals. Without the war or the past to color our perceptions even before we could give each other a chance.”
He closed his eyes and tried to block out the memories. The screams. “You have no idea what it was like.”
“Neither do you.” Her voice was soft, but steel. As if she, too, had to pretend to be as unmovable as a mountain in order to prevent the past from chipping pieces of her away.
He opened his eyes. “Were your parents executed by an angry mob in the town square?”
“No.” Her steady gaze did not falter. “They were stripped of their money, their home, and their dignity. Father was sent to work in a coal mine. Black dust filled his lungs, killing him slowly, a little more every day, right before our eyes. When we could see him, that was.”
She visibly sucked in a breath. The next words came out slowly, painfully.
“Mother and I spent most of those years locked in an attic with other terrified women too poor to do anything but sew fancy gowns for the very rich. You might not think such a thing could kill you, but Mother was not the only one in that cramped oven of an attic who…” Her voice broke, and she lowered her gaze. “Not a town square, no. Both my parents died in my arms. One after the other.”
Lucien fought through his whirlwind of emotions. Disgust, anger, betrayal, hurt.
Compassion.
He had been young the day his parents were killed. Meg would have been even younger. She should have been tucked safely away in a schoolroom somewhere, like Lucien’s brother and sister.
But she wasn’t.
“You can’t wait to go back to France,” she said bitterly. “To reclaim your birthright. But why should wealth and privilege be your famiily’s right, when the only thing awaiting mine was poverty and death? Is that what ‘nobility’ means? That an early grave should not happen to your parents, but should happen to mine?”
“No,” he admitted quietly. “No one’s parents should be stolen from them.”
It was true. The revolution hadn’t been her fight any more than it had been his. He could not blame her for what desperation had driven her family to do, any more than she could blame him for having been born in a system that… How had she put it? Defined his value based on the bloodline of his long-dead ancestors.
“My parents just wanted a chance at equality.” She lifted her chin. “Which is why they fought for change. Why they fought to matter. Why men and women just like them did terrible things out of desperation. Out of love for their own children. Out of hope for the future and fear of death. Your parents should never have been taken from you. But nor can I blame mine for fighting for a better world for their children.”
She turned to walk away.
Lucien’s heart pounded.
This was why she had refused to marry him. Not because she didn’t want to, not because she didn’t care about him, but because she didn’t believe that his love for her was more powerful than his hatred for those responsible for the terrors of the past.
“It wasn’t you,” he said, his voice low and scratchy.
Her startled eyes met his. “What?”
“It wasn’t you,” he repeated louder. “I never knew your parents, but I know you. If you say all they wanted was the best possible world for their children, then I believe you. You didn’t know my parents, but you know me. When I say that all they wanted was the best possible world for their children, I hope you believe me, too.”
A choking sound escaped her throat. “Of course I do. That’s wha
t any parent would want for their children. But mine—”
“—aren’t here. Neither are mine.” He took her hands. “We are. The past may have defined us up until now, but we don’t have to live in it. We have the power to shape our future. To build a new one, together. If we want to believe that love transcends the strictures of society, then let’s prove it. I don’t want to belong to the beau monde. I want to belong to you. Now and always.”
She threw herself into his embrace. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” He held on tight.
She felt more than perfect in his arms. She felt like home.
He whispered into her hair, “Also, not being an aristocrat doesn’t make you less French.”
She jerked her head back to stare at him in shock.
“I was born in England,” she reminded him. “I’m English.”
“Mm, with French grandparents?” He lifted a shoulder. “Someone wise once told me it’s possible to be both.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Whoever said that probably did so just to needle you.”
He widened his eyes. “Is it working?”
“Splendidly.”
He grinned and gestured at the project he’d been working on. “Do you want to help me roll this over to your cousin’s house?”
She blinked. “It’s… a miniature cart? Is it for hauling tiny calves around the dairy?”
“Close.” He passed her the wooden handle. “It’s for hauling a tiny niece or nephew to and from the park when we get back from France. With luck, we’ll be here for the birth.”
Meg’s mouth fell open. “We’re coming back?”
“We have to come back, at least for winters. At least, I do.” He affected an arrogant posture. “I am Lucien le Duc of the Christmas dukes. Perhaps you’ve heard of us?”
Epilogue
France
* * *
They’d done it!
Meg gazed about their home with pleasure. When the lands were formally restored to the le Duc family, she and Lucien had decided to keep the previous residents on as tenants, and build a cottage on Meg’s dowry land instead. It would be a few seasons before the newly planted grapes would become a profitable vineyard, but the view was incredible.
