Eleanor entered the drawing room and shut the door behind her. Søren sat at the piano, playing Beethoven’s Für Elise. He’d removed his jacket and rolled up his cuffs a turn. She came closer, watching him play, watching his long and lovely fingers waltzing across the ivories, watching his noble head as it bowed over the keyboard.
One courageous strand of his perfect golden hair threatened to fall over his forehead. She longed to reach out and brush it back. But she didn’t. She wouldn’t. The piece ended and the notes rang out and died. He looked at her.
“Hello, Little One,” he said and smiled.
“I tried to grow as tall as I could while you were gone,” she said, “so you couldn’t call me that ever again.”
He slowly rose from the piano bench and looked down at her. He held his hand at the top of her head and moved it to rest at his collarbone. He sat again, point made.
“I said I tried. I didn’t say I succeeded, Lord Stearns.”
“We know each other too well to be formal.”
“Once, yes. But now? You’re a stranger to me, My Lord.”
He met her eyes once and then put his fingers at the keys again. “Am I?” he said and began to play.
She recognized the piece at once. “Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming,” an old German Catholic Christmas hymn. Her mother’s favorite hymn, which Søren knew. She’d told him that during their first Christmas together four years ago, after he’d just brought her into his home. He’d gone to six different churches and chapels until he’d found a hymnal that included the song so he could learn to play it for her.
The piece ended. His fingers stilled.
“Eleanor, I need you.”
She almost laughed. “You need me? Where were you when I needed you?”
“You wanted me. You didn’t need me.”
“I told you I loved you,” she said, gazing down at him, fire in her eyes. “Do you know how hard it was for me, sixteen, to say those words to you, almost thirty? You, the son of a Baron and me, the common daughter of a common thief. Do you know how hard it was for me to tell you what was in my heart?”
“Very hard?”
“No,” she said. “It was the easiest thing I’d ever done or said. Because I trusted you.”
He had the decency to look away as if ashamed.
She remembered that moment like yesterday. A winter evening at Edenfell and the air was fragrant with the scent of sleeping trees and falling snow. A week before Christmas. Claire had gone to bed early with a novel. Kingsley was likely off debauching his favorite local widow. Søren sat in the low club chair by the fireplace going over the estate’s accounts. With his father in the sanitarium, Søren had taken charge of the estate. It flourished under his tender care and so had she. It had been exactly a year since he’d made her his ward. A year of new dresses and Claire’s easy friendship and lessons with tutors and dancing masters and horse-riding instructors. And her favorite part—Mass on Sundays with Søren at the small Catholic chapel two villages away. That night as Søren made little notes in his ledger, she sat at his feet in front of the fire and laid her head on his knee. Between one mark and the next in his ledger, Søren rested his hand lightly on the back of her head. With one gentle knuckle, he’d stroked her neck from her ear to throat and back up again. Had she been a cat, she would have purred. But she was a girl in love, so she turned her head and smiled up at him.
“I’m in love with you,” she’d said. “And I know you’re in love with me. If you came to my room tonight, I wouldn’t turn you away.”
He didn’t reply, not in words. Instead he caressed her lips with his thumb, a sensual touch that thrilled her even to recall it three years later. And when he pressed the tip of his thumb into her mouth and touched her tongue, she knew for certain he would come to her bedroom that night.
But he hadn’t. He’d left the house by morning, taking Kingsley with him. No note. No explanation except a letter to Claire a week later saying “business” had called him away. That night at his feet in front of the fire had been the last she’d seen of him for three years. Until now.
“You abandoned me,” she said.
“You were left with Claire’s Aunt Adeline who treated you like her own daughter.”
“But you were my guardian.”
“And I left so I could better guard you.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I can’t explain further, but I do apologize for the hurt I caused you.”
“All’s forgiven,” she said though it wasn’t. “Happy now?”
“You’re in the same room with me. Of course I’m happy.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“What would you do if I stood on your piano and screamed my head off?” she asked.
“Quite frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t already,” he said.
Quite frankly, so was she.
She took a deep breath and temporarily silenced her desire to scream.
“Now…what do you need of me?”
“I need you to marry me.”
He looked at her and she at him. In her nineteen years, no one had ever shocked or surprised her more.
“What?”
“You heard what I said.” He began to play again.
Eleanor shut the fall-board, nearly closing it on his fingers. He managed to pull them out just in time.
“Marry you?”
“Sit,” he said. “Here.”
He pointed at the piano bench. She sat. She was too addled to fight him.
Once seated, he began to speak. He told her quickly of the condition in his father’s will, how they couldn’t risk contesting it, how fulfilling it meant Claire would have a home always, and she would never have to marry for money or security, how if they failed to fulfill it…they would lose all. This house. Edenfell. The money. They only had until half-noon tomorrow.
“Father had sworn for years he was leaving everything to Claire to punish me. I shouldn’t be surprised that he lied even about that. I can’t support her and you on my own, or I wouldn’t presume to ask this of you.”
“This is madness,” she said.
“This is revenge. I told him, more than once, I would never be the son he wanted. I wouldn’t marry, wouldn’t have children, wouldn’t use my title…I would reject everything he was and stood for and wanted. I went so far as to nearly join the Jesuit order and take a vow of celibacy.”
“You never told me that.”
“There are many things I’ve never told you.”
“How many?”
“How many things haven’t I told you?”
“Yes. How many secrets are you keeping from me? I want to know the number.”
He raised his hands in surrender, but then she saw him ticking off his fingers as if counting.
“Four,” he finally said.
“Four. What are they?”
“If I told you they wouldn’t be secrets, would they?”
Eleanor growled and stood up. Not to leave but to put some distance between her and Søren. She couldn’t think when she sat so close to him. He was far too beautiful. Her fingers itched to touch that spun gold hair of his. His eyes were grayer and wilder than she remembered, like a stormy December sky, and when she breathed in, she could smell the scent of him—like frost on a pine tree in a snow-deep forest.
“I know you despise me now,” he said. “I’m not asking for a true marriage. We’ll have an arrangement. We’ll marry, and you can live at Edenfell with Claire. Or here if you prefer. You’ll have a generous allowance. Kingsley and I will return to the continent, and you’ll be free of me.”
“Not good enough,” she said.
“Name your price.”
She turned and faced him. “Everything.”
“Everything?”
“You asked my price. My price is everything. I do want a true marriage with you and everything that comes with it, including your secrets.”
“You can’t imagine what you’re asking.”
“Why? Because I’m a virgin?”
“That’s certainly part of it.”
“There’s this marvelous book called a Thesaurus. Have you seen it? It lists synonyms for words. If you look up the word ‘virgin’ it in, you’ll find ‘naïve’ is not listed among its synonyms.”
“Of course not,” he said. “They’re entirely different parts of speech. One’s a noun, the other’s an adjective. ‘Virginal’ is the adjective form of ‘virgin.’ ”
“‘Virgin’ may also be used as an adjective,” she said. “Example—He trampled the virgin snow under his feet. No one would call it ‘virginal snow.’ That would be snow that’s never been sexually defiled.”
“And what would you know about sexual defilement?” Søren demanded.
“It was discussed in a religious pamphlet Aunt Adeline made Claire and I read.”
“And what did the pamphleteer have to say about sexual defilement?”
“He was against it.”
“And you?”
“I thought it sounded quite nice, myself.”
He laughed first, softly and she laughed next, just a little louder.
“Tell me, Søren. Please?”
It seemed he couldn’t look at her. He turned his head away as if mesmerized by the low fire in the grate.
“Is it Kingsley?” she asked.
“No,” Søren said. “If you didn’t know about he and I…then yes. But as you do…”
She did know. Her first summer at Edenfell, she’d seen them share a clandestine kiss. She’d gasped and run off. When Søren caught up with her, she’d been certain he would send her away for good to keep his dangerous secret. Instead he’d trusted her with the truth—that while he and Kingsley both desired women, they also desired each other. They were lovers and had been since they were very young men. She’d loved him more after that, not merely for trusting her but because she knew when he told her he desired women, he meant that he desired her.
“I would never ask you to cast him out of your life,” she said. “Only to let me in as well.”
He said nothing. His face was expressionless.
She touched his shoulder and at once he put his hand over hers, clutching it. “Was I mad to think you desired me? Or simply stupid? I must have been one or the other for you to spurn me and then to offer me a loveless marriage.”
“You are neither mad nor stupid and God, yes, Eleanor, of course I desired you. You knew. Kingsley knew. Even Claire knew. But I made a vow—”
“Damn you and your vows to your father. He’s dead.”
“I meant my vow to you.” He met her eyes.
“To me?”
“The night I took you from the police station, the night I said I would make you my ward, you were frightened. Don’t deny it.”
She had opened her mouth to deny it, but her denial would have been a lie. He was the son of a wealthy Baron, powerful in his own right—anyone who looked at him wanted to bow or curtsy. If he’d wanted to violate her, enslave her, even kill her…he could with no consequences. She knew better to think a handsome face was proof of a good soul. Her father had taught her that.
“That night in the carriage, when I brought you home from the police station to this house…I vowed to you that you would always be safe under my roof. I would never give you any cause to fear me.”
“I am not afraid of you,” she said.
“And I wish to keep it that way,” he said. “A wife should never fear her husband.”
“A woman has every right to fear marriage. If I marry you, you will own me. Legally I will be your property forever. Forever,” she repeated. “There is no divorcing for Catholics. I spent three years pining for my guardian. I won’t spend the rest of my life pining for my own husband. Either we have a true marriage or none at all.”
He said nothing. She had her answer. Eleanor nodded. She turned to leave.
“Yes,” Søren said.
Eleanor turned.
Søren stood from the piano bench and walked over to her.
“Yes what?”
“Yes,” he said. “We can have a true marriage if you insist. You do give up a great deal to marry me. It’s not fair of me to give you so little in return.”
“Oh,” she said.
“You will marry me then?”
“Yes, of course,” she said quickly before she could change her mind. She held out her hand to shake. “Forever.”
He took her hand in his.
She expected him to shake her hand. He didn’t. He lifted it to his lips and turned it, wrist up. Then he pressed a long hot slow kiss inside her palm.
He whispered, “Everything.”