Charles never wanted to see another bloody doctor ever again. He lay back in his bed, his torso heavily bandaged. It was just as Daniel had told him—the knife wound wasn’t fatal. It had stopped at his hip bone. Painful, but shallow. He’d known exactly where to strike to make a convincing, bleeding wound without killing Charles. The man had spared him and then saved him.
“You’re frowning again,” Lily whispered.
She lay in bed beside him, her own body bandaged to support her broken ribs. What a pair they were. Broken and bruised and bedridden on their honeymoon. But alive and together. He turned his face toward her, still overcome with love and relief. She leaned into him and pressed her forehead against his, closing her eyes.
“By all rights we should be dead, and yet we are not.” He reached up to hold her face in one hand. “I’m so grateful.”
She curled her fingers around his wrist. “As am I.”
“But it doesn’t make our good fortune any less remarkable—or puzzling.”
“Puzzling?”
“We lived essentially because Hugo hated me so much. You would think that more hate would hasten things, yet instead it caused him to draw things out, make it into a game he believed only he could win.”
“He never wanted to just kill you,” said Lily. “I think, on some level, he had to prove that he was better than you. That his values were superior.”
This only confused Charles more. “What do you mean?”
“In the last few years, I learned more about Hugo than I ever wished to. As monstrous as his actions could be, Hugo held duty, loyalty, and service above all else. You and your friends value friendship, honor, and freedom. I think he hated what you stood for as much as he hated you yourself. Yet you won.”
Charles thought back to the river, reaching out to Hugo despite all that he had done, and that last moment of revelation upon his brother’s face. Realizing, too late, that he’d been wrong all along.
They were quiet a long moment, holding hands, fingers interlaced, before Lily spoke.
“Still happy to be married to me?” Her words were playful, but there was a hint of fear in her eyes, a fear that he would push her away.
“More than ever, wife,” he promised. “More than you will ever know. I waited a lifetime to find you. Did you know that? I’ve been waiting, your name carved upon my heart.”
She flashed a smile free of sorrow, free of hesitation. This was the woman Lily was always meant to be. Unbroken. Unafraid. Courageous.
“I’ve been talking to Emily about you, you know.”
“Should I be worried?” Charles asked, raising an eyebrow.
She trailed her fingertips along his jaw. “She says you’re the last one.”
“The last what?”
“Wicked rogue.” She bit her bottom lip. “And you’re all mine, my lord.”
“Is that so?” He tilted her chin up and lowered his head to hers.
Their kiss carried the slow heat of a late-spring sun. All the pain he’d born since his father’s death faded in the wake of that all-powerful kiss. In that gentle passion, Charles was reborn. “How did I ever have the good fortune to find you?” he asked Lily.
She gripped his neck, gazing at him as though lost in dreams of her own. “We found each other because it was meant to be. Call it fate.”
“Fate,” he said solemnly, his heart filled with hope for the future. “And I’ll never let you go.”
She kissed him again, and he felt the world suddenly open up with a lifetime of possibilities and wonders yet to come.
This was love. This was what the poets wrote about. He may have been the last rogue to fall in love, but he was also the luckiest.
The past could remain in the past. He could mourn those he had lost. He could learn from his mistakes. And he could be thankful for his friends and family, who always stood by him. But he would no longer let the past define him. Everything was going to be different from now on. For once, he could look eagerly toward the future.
He held his wife in his arms and kissed her as though the world was ending, even though he knew it was just beginning.