Chapter Eight

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fire crackled in the hearth. A log shifted, sending a plume of sparks spiraling up to the flue. Gen sat curled in the corner of the sofa, staring unseeing into the flames.

Outside, snow was coming down. London had momentarily fallen silent, as Christmas Eve sent everyone scurrying off the streets and back to their families. Gen, of course, was alone. The townhouse, her safe refuge in the world for the past seventeen years, felt echoing and empty on this night.

Hazel had sailed for home a week ago. Gen had given nearly all the servants the holiday off to spend with their families. Only Mrs. Winters remained on. She had no family to go to and wouldn’t have left Gen on her own even if she had.

A rumble of coach wheels and the clop of hooves sounded in the street. Someone’s happy shout of greeting called out in the night. A door closed somewhere. London life went on, with or without Lady Grantham and her girls.

Soon, she’d lose Hazel. Either she’d fall for that boy back home, or she’d come back here and accept Conte Santini’s proposal. Gen had no other prospective young ladies in the offing. She supposed she could have been working her contacts, letting it be known her services were available to young ladies in need for the upcoming Season. She could have gone to America and cultivated new clients there. But she’d failed to do so, frozen by a queer sort of apathy.

The truth was, she didn’t want another girl. She didn’t want to carefully prepare one more young lady for a marriage she didn’t want to a man she didn’t love. The cold-eyed rationality required to do it for all these years seemed to have abandoned her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted it back. For so long, that hardened shell around her heart had been her salvation, keeping all the pain of her early years bottled up where it couldn’t hurt her. But Archie had returned, swinging an ax at that shell, fracturing it, and the trickle of emotion escaping was rapidly turning into a deluge.

The anger and betrayal she’d felt over him hadn’t seemed to have eased one bit in those long years locked away. Neither had her grief over her mother, apparently. Nor her fear for Leo’s fate. Not the aching loss she’d felt leaving Paris either.

After all these years, it was all still there. And she was here, alone, facing it at last.

Something was going to have to change about her life. A great many things, perhaps. If the days of the inimitable Lady Grantham—all of them—had come to a close at last, then Geneviève Valadon would need to find a new way forward.

Perhaps, she thought, a hysterical little huff of laughter escaping her lips, she’d return to Paris and turn herself in at last. Were they still looking for her? Wouldn’t that set London on its ear? Lady Grantham, of the impeccable reputation and flawless breeding, was really Geneviève Valadon, daughter of a whore, a suspected political revolutionary, wanted for helping to plan a bombing. That would certainly be the talk of the Season.

So, no, she wouldn’t be returning to Paris.

That would just be running away again anyway, and what she was discovering was that one could never outrun one’s self. She’d already faced Archie, acknowledged that what he’d done still wounded her every day. The wound wasn’t healed, but maybe confronting it—him—was a beginning.

Maman would be a harder mountain to climb. Maman was a twisted knot of emotions—sorrow, anger, betrayal, guilt. It might take her the rest of her life to untangle it all. Perhaps she never would.

“Ma’am?” Mrs. Winters poked her head inside the parlor. “Do you need the fire built back up?”

“No, Mrs. Winters, I’ll let it burn down. I don’t expect I’ll be up much longer. You should go on to bed.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m fine. And tomorrow’s your holiday,” Gen reminded her. “You’re not to step foot above stairs to wait on me.”

Mrs. Winters had been cast off by her own family as a girl, when she’d made the mistake of running off with some unworthy man and wound up on the same path as Gen’s mother. Which was why, when Winters had washed up on Gen’s doorstep begging for employment of any kind in order to escape an abusive man, Gen had taken her in without hesitation. In another life, her mother could have found herself in the same predicament, with nowhere to turn and no one to help her. Winters had entered her household, changed her name, and left her past behind. Now she ran the Grantham house with military precision, loyal to Gen unto death.

“Mrs. Fife has left a cold ham, some meat pies, and some cheeses downstairs in the larder for you.”

“I’ll see to myself. You’re not to worry about me.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to manage that, ma’am, but I’ll be sure to check on you when I get back from dinner with Mrs. Fife’s sister and her family. Happy Christmas, ma’am.”

“Happy Christmas to you too, Mrs. Winters.”

The silence left in Winters’s departure to her rooms below stairs was nearly absolute. Just the crackle of the hearth and the tick of the grandfather clock. The house, usually so snug and welcoming, felt close, almost stifling.

Gen stood, making a slow circuit of the parlor, warm and cozy with its gold striped wallpaper and gilt-and-yellow furniture. She’d diligently built this elegant, comfortable life around herself, trying to make up for all she’d lost in Paris. She’d thought she had, and yet suddenly, it felt as if she might have built it on sand, like it might wash away once again in the same, brutal swoop of fate.

The bell rang and she startled. The bell? A glance at the clock told her it was after nine. No London visitor would show up uninvited at this hour, and on Christmas Eve.

Her heart began to pound with dread before her mind fully formed his name. She forced her feet to move, leaving the parlor and descending the stairs to the entry hall. She didn’t want to open that door, but if she didn’t, he’d only ring again, summoning Winters, which would be worse. The ghosts of her past weren’t content to stay in her mind tonight. This one had come to deal with her face-to-face.

Hand trembling, she reached for the doorknob, the metal ice-cold under her fingers. A frigid breeze and a flurry of snowflakes swept in as she opened the door, and there, standing in the hazy glow of the gas lamps, snow dusting his shoulders, stood Archie.

“You’d better come in,” she told him.

“I would have thought,” she began once she’d shown him into the parlor. “That you’d be with your family on Christmas Eve.”

“The children are in bed. I’ve debated about it all week, and in the end, I found I had to come.”

He said nothing else, and for a moment, they fell into an awkward silence.

“I’d ring for tea,” she finally said, “but I’ve given the staff the holiday off.”

“I didn’t come for tea,” Archie said, looking around the room.

“I can’t imagine what you’ve come for, Lord Wrexham. Unless it’s for one of my girls? You did come to London to find a new wife, did you not? I’m afraid I have no young ladies who might suit at present.”

Gen knew she was goading him, but if there was to be a confrontation, she’d prefer to just get to it. Hash out the past so that she might be able to finally begin putting it behind her.

“I had thought to find a new wife when I came to London,” he said. “But that’s not going to happen now.”

She waited for him to explain, but he didn’t, still looking about himself with a distracted air.

“This is a good room,” he said at last.

“Thank you. I like it. But somehow, I don’t think you came here to compliment me on my interiors, Lord Wrexham. I confess, I’m still struggling to find an explanation for your appearance.”

He hesitated, looked down, and then reached into his coat to withdraw something from an inside pocket. It was a piece of paper, folded once. He held it a moment, staring down at it. Then he strode across the room to her and held it out.

“I came to bring you this.”

Hesitantly, she took it, looking for some explanation in his eyes but finding nothing but that polite distance he’d hidden behind ever since she’d met him in London.

The thick paper was battered, the corners worn soft with age, smudged by frequent handling. She unfolded it and found herself staring at her own face through the veil of years. Geneviève Valadon as a girl, with her hair down and her eyes alive. Archie’s drawing…the girl he’d captured on paper, the one she hadn’t known existed until she’d seen her reflected in his eyes.

“Why did you bring me this?” Her voice was barely a whisper, but in the quiet of the room, he heard her.

“I thought you might like to have it. You, as you once were. You, as I knew you then.”

“But—”

“I’d just like to know why,” he said.

But she was the one meant to be asking why. Why had he kept this all these years? Why did he bring it to her now?

When she looked up at him, for the first time, that chilly distance was gone, as if the mask he’d been wearing had slipped. His eyes were urgently imploring her for an answer she didn’t have. “I don’t understand.”

“Was it Leo? Did you decide to go back to him?”

She blinked. “Leo? Leo was arrested. I have no idea what happened to him after that.”

“Then, why? Why, Gen? Why did you leave?”

“Me? I left because everyone I had in Paris was gone. Leo was arrested, my mother was dead, and you abandoned me!”

“Why didn’t you wait for me? I left you instructions. I told you how to reach me. I left you money to pay for the flat, so you could escape your mother’s lover.”

A pit opened up in her stomach. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head. That horrible moment in the Place du Tertre was coming back to her, clinging to the tree as she vomited, her eyes tearing and her throat burning. The feeling of betrayal knifing through her body, the pain threatening to devour her whole. “No, you didn’t. You just left. You lied to me and you left, Archie.”

“Victor was supposed to wait for you—”

“Victor was sacked. When I went back, he’d been sacked.”

Archie stared at her blankly as her words sank in. She stared back, absorbing them too. Oh God, he’d left word for her. He hadn’t meant to just disappear…

Abruptly, her knees weakened and the room closed in.

“Gen.” Strong arms came around her, pulling her up against a broad, solid chest. “Come, sit down.”

Then she was on the sofa, and he was next to her, her hands in his as he rubbed them briskly.

“It’s all right,” she protested, pulling her hands away and straightening her spine. “I’m all right.”

“I’m not,” he muttered. “You never saw Victor? You never got my letter?”

She shook her head, swallowing hard against the painful lump forming in her throat. Her heart was pounding so hard, she could feel it in her fingertips and temples. The danger of fainting had passed, but she was still reeling from the revelations of the last few moments. It felt as if the solid ground beneath her had suddenly turned to water.

“You shouldn’t have left him with the money. He was sacked for stealing from the till.”

Archie muttered an oath under his breath and raked his fingers through his hair, sending it into disorder. His hand was shaking. “There wasn’t time to sort out something else…”

“But why did you go? Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“My brothers died,” he said with a toneless finality. “Both of my brothers, and the wife of my eldest. Their ship sank in the North Atlantic on the way to New York. And when word reached my father in England, he collapsed with a heart attack. In one fell swoop, nearly my entire family was destroyed, and my father was on the verge of death. My father’s man of business had finally tracked me down in Paris. There wasn’t a moment to lose if I wanted to see my father before he died. I’m so sorry, Gen. I didn’t know how to find you, and I couldn’t wait for your return.”

In the silence after his explanation, the tick of the grandfather clock was almost deafening. Gen drew in an unsteady breath and rose to her feet. “I can’t offer tea, but I can offer whiskey, and that seems more appropriate under the circumstances.”

Her hands were shaking too, she noted, as she splashed whiskey from the decanter on the sideboard into two cut crystal tumblers. She drained hers, then refilled it, before returning to the sofa. Handing him his glass, she sat down next to him again.

For several long minutes, they sat side by side in silence, drinking, staring into the fire. This knowledge—that he hadn’t lied to her, hadn’t betrayed her—should have been a relief. Instead, it only felt like a new kind of pain. What was she supposed to do with all of this? Her, him, and all these lost years? Her hatred had turned to granite years ago. It was no easy thing to move off her soul, no matter what the truth was.

She’d spent years nursing her righteous fury, indignant in her pain and grief, imagining him blithely living on, oblivious to the carnage her life had become. But he’d suffered his own grave losses. He was as wronged as she was, both of them cheated by fate and by death.

“I am sorry about your family,” she said at last.

“Thank you. And I’m sorry about your mother. You said she passed away.”

“She killed herself. That day.” Closing her eyes, she tipped her head back. Oh, this was all too much. All at once, the door holding her past at bay had burst open, letting everything spill out. For the first time in years, she could clearly see Suzette in her mind’s eye. She could hear the tone of her voice. She could almost smell that sweet perfume she used to wear.

“Gen…my God… I don’t know what to say.”

“It was a rather dreadful day.”

“Is that why you left Paris?”

“That, and the police were looking for me, on account of Leo. He and André were planning to bomb the Palais Garnier, to make some ridiculous political statement. Instead, they got themselves arrested. As I’d been seen with them while they were hatching their idiotic plans, the police thought I was involved.”

“Perhaps that’s why,” he mused, gazing into the fire.

“Why, what?”

“Why I could never find you,” he replied. “I went back, after I’d gotten things sorted at home. It had been a few months, but not so very long, yet I couldn’t find a trace of you anywhere. No one I spoke to who knew you knew anything about where you’d gone.”

She turned to stare at his profile, still all angles and edges, burnished like marble with time. “You went back to Paris to look for me?”

He turned his head and met her gaze. There was Archie, her Archie from Paris, at last. Every bit of armor had been stripped away, and his expression was utterly vulnerable, utterly devastated. “I wandered Paris for months. I sat in the Moulin de la Galette until they nearly threw me out. I traced every street and alley of Belleville. I bought the Paris paintings in my collection while I was there, desperate to hang on to something of the Paris we’d shared. When I found Pierre Jaccoud, and the painting he’d done of us dancing that night, I nearly fell to my knees and wept. It was proof. Proof you’d existed. Proof it had been real. Proof I hadn’t fallen in love with a ghost.”

How was it possible for her heart to feel so hollowed out, yet go on beating? She could barely breathe through the pain and could barely think through the confusion. Nothing that she’d believed about him for all these years was true. He’d loved her. He’d meant every word he’d said. He’d intended to keep every promise he’d made to her. But fate had stepped in to set them on divergent paths. And now, here they stood, on opposite sides of a great divide not of their making.

What was she to do with all of this? These complicated emotions and wretched pain and anger? Was she just supposed to put it away? Forget it all? Pretend the years hadn’t altered her? How could she ever release the bad, yet still hang on to the good? And how could she ever begin to knit all these broken pieces of herself and him back together into a whole? It seemed impossible.

She didn’t realize she’d started crying—if this dry-eyed, racking gasping could be called crying—until Archie took her face in his hands.

“Shh, it’s all right, darling. Don’t cry.”

His voice and his words were calm and soothing, but he was every bit as undone as she. She could feel it in the tremble of his fingertips where they curled around the back of her neck, and she could hear it in each unsteady breath he released, his forehead pressed to hers. Their worlds had just been ripped asunder, and right now, it seemed there was no one for them to hang on to for salvation but each other.

Then Archie placed a hand on the side of her face, tilted her head back, and kissed her. Her breathing halted in her chest. He was the first man to touch her in so long, and he’d been the last man who had. Now she knew why. Yes, she’d excised men from her life because they were a practical impossibility, but in truth, it was because of this—Archie had put his brand on her seventeen years ago, and she’d known, deep down inside, that no one else would ever be able to erase it.

The kiss was soft, gentle, undemanding, and yet it shattered something hidden within. The iron grip she’d held on her life for so many years began to slip, and she had no idea what lay below should she fall.

Even when the kiss had ended, Archie stayed close, his fingers stroking her face. When she tried to speak, her breathing hitched, and all that came out was another strangled sob. Her hands fisted in the sleeves of his jacket, seeking anything solid to steady her as the world shook to pieces around them. Archie, ever patient, ever kind, just waited, his thumb stroking gently across her cheek.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she finally whispered, voice shaking. “I don’t know how to undo the past and what it’s made me into.”

Archie shook his head. “We can’t. It’s happened, for both of us, the good and the bad. It’s made us both who we are. All we can do is move forward.” Leaning in, he brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth. “Please do it with me. I don’t think I can bear losing you twice in my life.”

He kissed her again, and while the kiss didn’t fix anything, didn’t undo the damage done, didn’t restore what was lost, it contained another kind of magic. Nothing looked quite so impossible from inside this kiss. It eased the pain enough to allow new and better feelings in.

This time, Archie’s kiss was edged with hunger and need, his fingers gripping the back of her neck to pull her closer. When his lips parted and his mouth slanted over hers, Gen let him in, surrendering, for the moment, to desire.

“Gen,” he murmured, dropping kisses along the arc of her cheekbone, back to her temple, his warm breath heating her skin. “I know we can’t fix everything that’s been broken, but we can find some comfort together now, can’t we?”

Words were impossible, so she simply nodded and lifted her arms to wrap them around his shoulders, to draw him to her and give herself over to him. She wanted Archie. She wanted to comfort him and ease this ache inside herself.

 

 

When they came together, it was not as frantic lovers long kept apart. It unfurled slowly, each kiss lasting longer, going deeper, as his hands moved to explore her with slow, gentle strokes, until her body had caught fire for him.

Breaking away from her mouth, Archie stood up from the sofa, towering over her, and held out a hand to help her to her feet. He turned her around and methodically began unfastening her gown. The black velvet dress slowly peeled away, revealing her pale shoulders and arms. Next, he unfastened her petticoat, and then, reaching around her body, deftly released the hooks of her corset. His lips pressed into the back of her shoulder, and Gen’s knees felt weak. So long since she’d been touched by him—since she’d felt this languid heating of her blood under his hands. She didn’t think these feelings possible anymore, but it seemed as if they’d been lying dormant in her blood for years. All it took was his touch to bring her back to life.

She felt his fingertips skate up the back of her neck, tangling in her hair. “May I?”

When she nodded an assent, he began to pluck the pins from her tightly bound hair. Slowly it loosened, then released, tumbling down over her shoulders in a rush. She never wore it down. During the day, it was up. And at night, Molly, her lady’s maid, made quick work of taking it down and braiding it for bed. Gen avoided even glancing at herself in the mirror during those moments, because it was the only time she looked at all like the Geneviève of old. Having it down made her feel intensely exposed…vulnerable. Even more so than removing her clothes had.

Behind her, Archie bent to press a kiss to her hair. “You smell just the same. I’ve never forgotten.” His hands slid up her body, over her chemise, until his palms covered her breasts. “Ah God, Gen, how I’ve missed you.”

She lifted an arm, reaching behind her to run her fingers through his hair, and her breasts pushed forward against the delicious pressure of his hands.

He pulled her in tighter to him, and she could feel him, the hard pressure of him against the small of her back. Quicker now, he undid the ribbons holding her chemise closed, and it soon joined the pile of fabric in a puddle around her feet. When she would have stepped clear of it, Archie bent and lifted her effortlessly into his arms, just as he had their first time together.

This time, he laid her on the rug in front of the hearth and stood for a moment, staring down at her bare skin in the flickering light of the flames.

A sudden flare of self-consciousness had her raising an arm to cover her breasts. No one had looked at her naked body in years—certainly, no man—and she wasn’t nineteen anymore.

Archie shook his head. “Don’t hide yourself from me, Gen. You’re just as beautiful as you ever were.”

“I’m older.”

“So am I. Older than you, in fact.” His raised eyebrow and smirk were so reminiscent of the one she remembered from Paris years ago, her heart gave a pang of longing.

“You’re still unfairly handsome,” she whispered. “You haven’t changed in any of the important ways.”

“Neither have you, not in my eyes.”

Made bold by the hunger in his eyes as he gazed down at her, she moved her arm, lying naked before him. He didn’t take his eyes off her as he rapidly stripped off his own clothes.

Yes, he was older. Nearly forty, if not over. He’d thickened and broadened, the lankiness he’d had as a young man replaced by the solid muscles of maturity. He was still in remarkable shape, his stomach flat and his chest firm. There was a bit more hair than she remembered, some of it sprinkled with silver. His skin, so smooth and unblemished before, now held the odd dark mark or crease. But the subtle traces time had left on his body had only made him more beautiful, not less.

She opened her arms to him. “Come down here.”

Archie lowered himself to the rug beside her, his hand coming up to cup her face. “This is still every bit the precious gift it was years ago. Perhaps even more so, because I never thought I would see you again.”

Those words were just as intoxicating at thirty-six as they had been at nineteen. Gen’s wounded heart softened, yearning for Archie to make it complete. If she did this, opened herself up to him once again, she’d be leaving herself vulnerable in a way she hadn’t been in years, and it terrified her.

Archie read the fear in her eyes, leaning in swiftly to kiss her. “Don’t be afraid. One step forward at a time, Gen, each one together.”

Again, his kiss was the balm that momentarily banished fear and eased pain. Maybe this was the secret, she thought, as she wound her arms around his neck and allowed him to deepen the kiss. Maybe she didn’t need to know how to heal them all at once. Maybe she just needed to try, one small step forward at a time, and let the healing take care of itself.

Her fear had vanished by the time Archie lowered his body over hers, moving between her thighs. And by the time he entered her, forcing a gasp of pleasure from both of them, she couldn’t think what she’d ever been afraid of in the first place. There was only this, Archie, connected so intimately to her once again. Only his eyes looking into hers as they came together over and over. Only the mounting pleasure, and, finally, only the explosion of bliss that blotted out every other concern.

 

 

Afterward, after Archie got up just long enough to build up the fire, they lay tangled together on the rug as if the ocean had washed them up there. Gen’s head was pillowed on the hard expanse of Archie’s chest as his fingers toyed with her hair.

“Are we in danger of shocking the life out of your servants like this?”

“I told you when you came in, they’re all off for the holiday.”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t hearing much of what you said when I came in tonight. The sight of you, as always, had left me speechless and thoughtless.”

She had to stifle her laughter against his chest.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’re still no poet.”

He laughed too, his body vibrating pleasantly under hers. “No, I’m not.”

“But why aren’t you a painter anymore? You so loved it.”

He inhaled deeply. “It has to do with my brothers. And my father. Perhaps we’d better not be naked for this conversation.”

Gen pushed herself upright. “That sounds serious. There’s a lap rug in that trunk in the corner.”

Archie retrieved it, tucking it around her shoulders, before shrugging back into his shirt and rejoining her on the rug.

“Was it losing your family?” she asked.

He draped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side, as they stared into the flames together.

“It dates to before that. My oldest brother, Albert, met his wife, Clara, in New York. She had money. Quite a bit of it.”

“Ah, I see. And your brother didn’t.”

“The family fortunes had been drained dry in recent generations.”

“I understand better than you know.”

He spared her a wry smile. “Yes, I suppose you would. You’re rather an expert, aren’t you? Well, anyway, Clara’s fortune restored our family’s financial health, and my father thought, if one son marrying an American heiress had done so much good, the other two sons marrying heiresses could only improve things.”

“That doesn’t sound like something you’d have agreed with as a young man.”

“Definitely not. He wanted me to accompany my brothers and Clara on a trip to America. Ostensibly, it was so that Clara could visit her family in New York. The real purpose would be to secure wealthy wives for Walter and myself. I refused to go. My father and I fought bitterly, and he threw me out of the house. He said I could take care of myself if I was unwilling to do my duty to the family.”

“I’m sorry, Archie.”

He shook his head. “I’m not sorry for refusing, but I would come to regret the fight. At any rate, that’s how I ended up in Paris.”

She toyed with one of the buttons on his shirt. “I never knew you came from a titled family.”

“No one did. Because for all intents and purposes, by the time I reached Paris, I no longer did. My father had disowned me, and I was responsible for myself. I had a very small inheritance from my mother that he had no control over, and that was what I lived on. As you saw from the flat I was living in, it didn’t go far. I’d hoped to make it stretch far enough to pay for the school in Rome, but then…well, everything changed.”

“Is that when you stopped painting?”

“Yes. My father survived the attack, and lived for several more years, but his health was always fragile afterward. He was rarely out of bed. Every time I looked at him, I felt guilty…for our fight, for running away to Paris, for not being with him when the news came, for suddenly being all he had left once he’d lost Albert and Walter. I was the overnight heir, elevated to Viscount Tenley, and suddenly responsible for the entire estate and all our dependents. It had never been in the plans for me. I was unprepared and inexperienced, but failure wasn’t an option. Too many people were counting on me. Painting seemed like a selfish indulgence in the face of everything.”

He fell silent, eyes still fixed on the fire. It explained much about him. He was so much more somber than he’d been in those early days, as if all the joy had been crushed out of his life. In a way, it had.

She picked up his hand and turned his palm to hers so she could thread their fingers together. “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t help, but I am.”

He turned his head to smile at her, that gentle smile and soft eyes she’d first fallen in love with. “It helps more than you know to have you here, Gen.”

There was something else in his past she needed explained. Something very big. “Tell me about your wife.”

His eyes dimmed. “Her name was Margaret. She was a good woman, but I didn’t love her.” He lifted a hand and stroked a finger down Gen’s cheek. “It had been years since I’d seen you, and I’d long since lost hope that you’d ever come back to me. But I think I knew even then that I’d never get over you. If it had been my choice, I’d have never married, not when I knew I’d never love anyone else.”

“Then why her?”

“My father was fading. He wanted to see me married, to see me produce an heir. After everything else, I couldn’t find it in me to refuse him what would be his final wish. Margaret was the daughter of a friend of his. We never spoke of it, but she knew I didn’t love her. She didn’t love me either, I’m quite sure. We…” He broke off, looking down as the memory momentarily overtook him. “I thought I’d resigned myself. A dutiful marriage to a good woman. It was harder than I’d expected. I tried to keep it from her, but I’m sure she knew how miserable I was. We were miserable together. Never mean, never unkind. But the coldness, the distance, it eats away at your soul. The children were the only bright spot in either of our lives.”

Archie’s entire demeanor changed when he mentioned his children. “They’re lovely, both of them.”

“Margaret was a good mother. To Hugo, at any rate. She never got a chance to mother poor Charlotte.”

“She died in childbirth?”

He nodded, squeezing his eyes shut. “Yet more guilt to carry. I wish I could have given her a happy marriage, but it had been impossible from the very start. Perhaps if she’d lived, with the children to focus on, we’d have settled into some passable semblance of contentment, but she didn’t. She died in an unhappy marriage to a miserable man. And now Hugo doesn’t even remember her.”

“It’s not your fault, Archie.”

He smiled at her again. “Perhaps in time I’ll feel that way.”

“Look at the two of us,” she blurted out without thinking.

Archie’s eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean?”

She turned away, staring into the fire. “Both of us, carrying around these immense weights from our pasts, trying to make up wrongs to people long dead. Maybe…”

“What?” he prompted when she didn’t continue. “Tell me.”

“Perhaps,” she murmured, her throat constricting around the words. “Perhaps we’re both just too damaged, after all this time. What good can we possibly do for each other?”

Archie took her face in his large palm, turning her to look at him. “Listen to me, Gen. Yes, I am a broken product of the things that have happened to me. Choices I’ve made and terrible twists of fate. So are you. You’re right, we’re no longer hopeful young people coming to each other with futures full of wide-open possibilities. It was easy then. All we needed was love. It would be a lot harder now.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but he cut her off.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t intend to try. And I don’t intend to give up on you, not ever again. One thing all this loss and misery have taught me is that love is a rare thing, and I don’t intend to let it get away from me twice.”

Her heart nearly burst with love for him, so sharp it was painful. “Archie, I’m not the girl you knew in Paris.”

“And I’m not that man anymore. That doesn’t mean we don’t still belong together.”

She shook her head, still afraid to reach out for what he seemed to be offering her. “How can you be so sure?”

“I’m not. Nothing about the future is guaranteed. All I know is that without you, I’ll be miserable for the rest of my days.”

“Perhaps I’ll make you just as miserable. You said yourself that we’re both damaged. Perhaps that’s more than love can overcome.”

“Gen, do you truly wish for me to leave? To go back to Northumberland and my life, while you continue on with yours as it was before?”

“My life was going to change, no matter what. I can’t keep on as I’ve been. What a terrible legacy I’ve got to show for my life thus far…nothing but a string of unhappy marriages like yours.”

Archie lifted their joined hands and kissed her knuckles. “Then perhaps,” he said quietly. “You might consider devoting the rest of your life to building just one happy one. Whatever difficulties we might face knitting our lives together now, surely it’s worth trying? You, me, and my children. Can’t we try to put these broken pieces back together to form a family? Wouldn’t it be worth it in the end?”

It really wasn’t fair, his bringing his children into this. Did he know how she’d cherished that secret, futile hope for years—that life might someday see fit to make her a mother? And here he was, the man she’d never stopped loving, father to two motherless children. It seemed so easy, even though she knew it would be anything but. There would always be thorny paths to navigate, and sometimes they’d probably get stuck on those thorns. But…perhaps…they could help each other through?

It was the bravest, most terrifying thing she’d ever done, reaching up to touch his face, to speak the words that would open her heart and her life to him, hoping for happiness, but knowing she risked more pain. But he was right. Going on alone was no longer an option. She wanted him, whatever difficulties they had to overcome. The happiness, she felt sure, would be worth it.

“I don’t want you to leave, Archie. The thought of living the rest of my life without you is unbearable.”

“So you’ll live it with me?”

“Yes,” she finally said. “Together.”

Archie drew a huge breath, his relief evident in every inch of his face. “Forever,” he said.

Gen nodded. Yes. Tonight, tomorrow, and every day after. She’d already endured seventeen years of days without Archie in them. She never wanted to face another one, even if those days proved difficult in ways she couldn’t yet foresee. “Forever,” she promised him.

Archie’s face split with a broad grin as he lowered his head to hers. “I think it’s time to put Lady Grantham out of business.”

“It’s been time for quite a while.”

“I promise you, Gen, you won’t be sorry to trade it for Lady Wrexham.”

His kiss was full of his promise, his pledge. And for the first time in many years, Gen fully believed in this promise of happiness. In the coming years, she suspected she might feel a great many things, but sorry would never be one of them, not when his was the face she would wake up to for the rest of her days, when his life and hers would be one.

Together, they’d be strong enough to wrest a happy ending from the jaws of fate, which had, once upon a time, had very different plans for both of them. Because Gen was beginning to think she’d been mistaken about happy endings. Perhaps they did exist, but they weren’t a gift from fate. A happy ending was something you built with your own two hands, with faith, hard work, and love. She and Archie were more than tough enough to fight for their happy ending.