Page 50 of A Duke in Pursuit of Passion
"Your work here is done. You need not stay. I am sure you have business to attend to elsewhere in England or even Scotland now that you have escorted us home."
The words threatened to stick in Ella's throat. She couldn't bear the thought of his leaving again.
"Ella," he sighed deeply, and the way he broke the distance between them caused Ella's heart to stop. Somehow, she found her hands gripped in his. "I never wish to say goodbye to you."
"Then say something else …" Ella breathed out the words, barely more than a whisper, and she tightened her grip upon his hands, unable to blink where her gaze had met his.
"Ella, there are so many things I wish to say to you," he said, and the way his face twisted suggested that saying anything at all was painful. "I just have no idea how to say them."
"Then try," Ella whispered, scared that if she spoke too loudly she might frighten him away entirely.
Her heart fluttered like a caged bird as she waited with bated breath.
Yet when his response finally came, it was not in the spoken word. Instead, he reached up, stroked the hair away from her face, and cupped her cheek before softly kissing her shock-parted lips.
The next moment, he whispered against them, "I love you, Ella."
The words were filled with such painful emotion that Ella felt them tearing down every single wall she had ever built against him. Her hands slipped onto his chest, and she stepped into his arms, unable to bear another moment away from him.
"I love you too, Nate."
Sliding her arms around his neck, she brought his lips down to hers again, kissing him more passionately.
Their noses brushing, foreheads pressed together, Nate said, "You have no idea how long I have waited to hear you say that."
He held her close for several moments, and Ella felt all the tension of the last few weeks melting out of her. More than that, she felt the wounds of the last several years fading as though his embrace was somehow sticking her back together.
And it was only when she realised she was weeping that she buried her face in his shoulder, trembling in his grip.
"What is the matter?" he asked, sounding more than a little concerned. Only when he wedged his fingers beneath her chin and urged her face up to meet his did she look him in the eye again.
"I … I do not remember ever having been this happy," Ella admitted, her heart swelling to twice the size it had been before. It was almost painful and more than a little frightening. All too easily, she thought, he could rip it all away from her again.
And yet he seemed to have no intentions of doing so as he asked, "Does this mean you will finally allow me to ask your father for your hand?"
The hope that glistened in his dark gaze made Ella tingle all over, and she could not stop the smirk that spread across her face from ear to ear.
"So long as you can promise me one thing?" she said, smiling until her cheeks were sore.
"Anything."
"Marry here beneath the tree where everything began," Ella insisted. She had never been a fantastical thinking woman, not since she had grown up and grown hard with grief. And yet, here at this moment, she felt like the damsel in one of the story books her sister so loved to read, finally getting her happily ever after.
"There is nothing I would rather do," Nate assured her, and he kissed her again, a soft and loving kiss that spoke of the future they would share together.
Epilogue
Three Months Later
"Are you sure you are okay with this?" Ella asked Louisa as they awaited the open-top carriage that would bring her to the willow tree for her big day.
Louisa, though she had been recovering steadily, was still clearly suffering the efforts of what Mr Giles had put her through and sometimes Ella could still hear her crying at night through the thin wall that separated their bedrooms.
Clutching her bouquet a little more tightly, she awaited her sister's response. Though she had asked several times during previous weeks while they were making plans, she still felt awkward about her own happy ending when her sister's had gone quite so terribly wrong.
Louisa reached out and gripped Ella's wrist as though she would have taken her hand. Slipping it off her bouquet, Ella grabbed her sister's hand and smiled.
"I could never begrudge you your happiness, Ella," Louisa said, shaking her head. "Besides, how could I when you and Nate are the only reason I am even standing here today."
