Page 64 of Unmasking the Silver Heiress
"Kit knows what I believed to be true," Nate clarified. "He has never agreed with me that we ought to take accusations of espionage and intrigue from Uncle Archie as anything other than one of his many delusions. I suppose we were both wrong."
"He believed me complicit in this distortion of the Silver Leaf Society?" she asked, sounding small and far away, even to herself.
"No," he said immediately. "No. I told him only that I wished to ensure your protection, which led to our marriage, and he did not pry further. Of course, you required no protection at all, nor did you want it. You must have believed yourself at considerable risk, running off, alone with me."
"I could not believe you a killer," she replied, leaning forward into the warmth of his body, allowing the relief to prickle across her skin as he wrapped his arms around her. "But I did not ask, because I did not want to be wrong. I did not want to confront what it would mean to love you anyway, no matter what you had done."
"You never believed it?" he asked, a note of wry disbelief in his voice.
It made her smile, though perhaps it was not a thing most married pairs would consider humorous. "Perhaps at first. I told myself I was protecting Gloriana from you, that I was far more equipped to navigate matrimony with a dangerous man, but that was nonsense. Glory is more than strong and capable, and the truth of the matter was that I had been infatuated with you for months and I wanted you for my own."
"Did you?" he said, sounding utterly surprised, if not a smidgen scandalized. "I had no idea! You certainly never gave the slightest hint of any romantic interest."
"I don't know how one does give that manner of hint." She laughed, burying her blushing face in his chest.
“Do not fret,” he said with clear amusement. “I would most certainly have mucked up the opportunity.”
"Do you think less of me, now? Knowing I'm nothing more than a scheming debutante who trapped a bachelor into marriage?"
“A bachelor she loved?” Nathaniel prompted, something sheepish in his voice. “I do believe you used that word, just now.”
“Did I?” she replied with a smile. “Surely it goes without saying.”
“Perhaps, but I would very much enjoy hearing it. Here, I shall go first. I love you, Eleanor. I’ve been in love with you for quite some time now, without any intent or planning ahead, and it’s been one damned surprise after another.”
“And here I thought I was utterly predictable,” she mused, shaking her head. “Very well, then. To begin with, I would categorize my fascination with you as a fantasy, a limerence. You cannot imagine my joy at discovering the reality to be so much more than what I had imagined. The idea that a future may have existed in which we did not marry is too chilling to rightly consider.”
He was silent, smiling down at her with that half-cocked amusement that he’d worn across from her in a carriage, what seemed like a thousand years ago. His eyes glittered with gold and green and brown, a beautiful mirage of ever-changing nature.
“What!” she demanded, her brows drawing together in the beginnings of a pique. “Have I ruined it?”
"I daresay I am even more taken with you than I was a moment ago," he said with a chuckle, holding her tightly against him and dropping a firm kiss onto her head.
They lay like this for a while, quiet and entwined, with no masks nor artifice about them. They were simply Nell and Nathaniel, and that was enough.
"We have a damn gauntlet ahead of us, you know,” he said, stroking her hair absently under the pads of his fingers.
"I do not even know where to begin," she confessed, lifting herself up to gaze down at him, her hair tumbling down over her shoulder. "What does one do first when there are so many things to achieve?"
"Well," he said with a half smile, "I rather thought our first order of business would be to hire a locksmith and have this house re-keyed."
She laughed, which made him laugh, and somehow in the next moment, they were kissing, tangled together and painted in sunrise-hued stripes from the light without.
"Do you think we are finished with surprises," she asked, brushing the tip of her nose against his, "at least for a little while?"
"Absolutely not," he chuckled, capturing another kiss as he rolled her onto her back. "I hope you surprise me for the rest of my life, Miss Applegate."
"Nell," she corrected, as she wrapped her arms around him.
Epilogue
My dearest brother,
I hope this missive reaches you in good health and positive spirits about the task ahead of you.
I can say with complete honesty that I am envious. You are on the cusp of a grand adventure and a heroic quest while I am contracting the movement of staff and the commission of furniture and all manner of boring nonsense.
Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to come with you anyway, and I’m certain you do not want your bothersome sister along for such a thing anyhow. I’m certain the Season will bring its own set of excitements, especially for the wife of such an important man at such an important juncture in Parliamentary history.
