Page 97 of The Lost Cipher

“Elise,” he said, and now there was no hesitation in it. “I am no longer merely Edmund.”

Her mouth curved faintly. “So I have heard.”

“I am Ormond,” he went on, “against my wishes and despite my efforts to avoid it.”

She appeared to be searching his face. “What does that mean for you?”

“It means,” he said slowly, “that I have responsibilities I cannot relinquish. I have lands to manage, people to answer for, and a life I am still learning how to inhabit.”

She said nothing, but her silence was attentive, not withdrawing.

“It also means,” he continued, “that I would not ask you completely to give up what you have built here. I would not ask you to abandon the school or the girls or the work that defines you. Miss Archer is more than capable of managing the school in your stead. Cook would rule any household she chose. Blake—” He smiled at the thought. “I believe Blake has found something like contentment here.”

Elise’s eyes softened. “He has.”

“I would not take you from this,” Edmund said, “but I would ask—if you will allow it—that you choose to stand beside me when you can. To share the burden with me, to let me return here, and to have you return with me, as suits us both.”

He drew a careful breath and went on, “I have no illusions about ease or certainty, or the world’s generosity toward happiness. With you, however, I believe I could manage what Imust. Without you—” He stopped, because the thought was not one he wished to entertain.

Elise looked at him for a long moment. The garden seemed to hold its breath.

At last she said, very quietly, “What, precisely, are you asking?”

“I am offering,” he replied. “I offer what I have, without concealment: myself; my heart.”

She stepped closer then, close enough that he could see the familiar intelligence in her eyes, now tempered with something warmer. “I have spent my life building safety,” she said, “for others, and for myself. I will not surrender it lightly.”

“I would never ask you to,” Edmund said.

She reached for his hand, her fingers warm and sure. “Then I will not surrender it at all,” she said. “I will share it.”

His heart lifted with a force that left him momentarily breathless.

He dropped to one knee then, the gesture both deliberate and slightly awkward, as if he had never practised it—and he had not. He took her hand more fully, reassuring himself in its solidity.

“Elise Larkin,” he said, keeping his voice firm despite the tumult beneath it. “Will you marry me? Not because I am an earl, nor because I have survived what others did not, but because I love you, and because I would choose you again in any life I am given.”

For a moment she simply stared at him, as if the words had rearranged the world.

Then she laughed—a soft, incredulous sound that carried more joy than he had dared to imagine—and drew him to his feet.

“Yes,” she said, without drama, without hesitation. “Yes, Edmund, I will.”

He kissed her then, in the garden where she had made her life, with the summer sun on his shoulders and the certainty, at last, that the future was something he did not have to face alone.

Several minutes later, they had removed to a stone bench, discreetly situated behind a rhododendron and out of sight of the house. Edmund had one arm about Elise as she sat with her head nestled against his shoulder.

“I have decided to destroy the cipher,” she said in a soft yet firm tone. “It would be for the best were it to be lost forever.”

“My love,” Edmund responded, brushing his lips across her brow, “you are assuredly the wisest woman it has ever been my fortune to have under suspicion of treason.”

Raising her head, Elise kissed him. “Bear that in mind, sir, on those occasions you are inclined to disagree with me!” she answered sweetly.