Page 86 of Darkest at Dusk
The words rose in her chest, impossible to contain. “I love you.”
He went still at her back, no breath, no sound.
Then his mouth pressed to her wet hair, his voice breaking open against her crown. “I love you, my Isabella,” he said. Fierce. Certain. Unashamed. “God help me, I love you.”
She closed her eyes, the words sinking into her like light into stone. “Say it again.”
He turned her in his arms, water sloshing over the rim of the tub. His too-pretty gray eyes shone raw in the firelight, his mouth claiming hers.
And then he whispered it again, “I love you, my brave, beautiful, brilliant girl. My Isabella.”
She answered with her lips on his, sealing truth with truth.
They clung in the warm water, steam rising around them. The house was quiet. For the first time, truly quiet. No whispers. No shadows leaning to overhear.
Only them.
Later, when the water had cooled and their limbs were heavy, he lifted her from the bath and wrapped her in blankets, his own body damp and bare against hers. They lay tangled in his bed, skin to skin, and though sleep tugged at her, she stayed awake long enough to feel his heart steady beneath her palm.
Later still, when Rhys slept, Isabella rose. She donned his shirt and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, then padded barefoot through the hush of the corridors, the two halves of the grimoire cradled in her arms. The house did not whisper, did not stir. Its silence pressed gentle as a hand on her back.
In the library, she set the grimoire on the desk, brass seam glimmering. Once it had been weight and threat, inked with grief and fear. She laid her fingers on the cover, braced for a tremor, a tap, the bite of some unseen hook.
Nothing.
Only stillness.
She gathered the volume and carried it to a shelf. The leather was cool against her palms, the brass no hotter than any hinge. She slid it between two sober treatises and stepped back. There, it looked almost ordinary.
She sighed, not in sadness or despair, but relief. All her life, she had feared that she was nothing but a vessel for other people’s rules, condemned to wear a mask, to let no one know her true soul.
But she had tossed her mask aside, and Rhys loved her for who she was.
The blanket shifted on her shoulders. She turned and found Rhys leaning against the doorframe, hair damp and rumpled, eyes heavy with sleep. He said nothing, only watched her with a look that made her heart beat a little faster.
He crossed to her and took her hand, rough palm warm against her fingers as he twined them with his own. She leaned into him, their joined hands resting against her breast, the steady thud of her heart beneath.
She opened his fingers and pressed his palm to her heart. He bent and kissed the inside of her wrist, a vow spoken without words.
And when they left the library, it was not as haunted souls clinging to survival. It was as equals, two who had walked through fire, chosen each other in the dark, and stepped together into what lay beyond. Together.
Epilogue
The carriage jolted to a halt before Harrowgate’s front steps. Isabella descended and smoothed her skirts, still smiling from the Burns sisters’ chatter in Marlow. The house rose before her, quiet and watchful, but no longer menacing. Its windows caught the late sun, glass flashing gold. In recent weeks, Rhys had hired additional staff to set the house to rights.
Peg hurried down to meet her, cheeks flushed, curls escaping her cap.
“Mrs. Caradoc,” she said, breathless, offering Isabella’s new title with all the weight of delight. It still felt strange to hear it. Only days had passed since she had stood with Rhys in the church and spoken vows. Strange, and wondrous.
“You must come quick. There’s—” Peg lifted her hands, at a loss. “Well, you’ll see.”
Inside, the hush was punctuated by the scrape and shuffle of unfamiliar footsteps. The air smelled not of soot but of polish and fresh timber. Hammers rang from the north wing. Rhys had hired men from London to come and restore the damage.
She glanced at Peg, but the girl only beamed and led her up the stairs.
Her chamber door stood ajar and inside, boxes, dozens of them, tied with twine and stamped with London merchants’ crests, were stacked high along the walls. On the bed lay a gown of cornflower blue, its skirt spilling over the counterpane like water.
Isabella stilled in the doorway. “What is all this?” she whispered.
