“You are late, Duke Haven,” the Speaker called. “Which is not a small amount strange, considering the business of the day. Additionally, your inappropriate attire insults the circumstance of the House of Lords.”
He wasn’t wearing his robes. Or his wig.
“I do apologize,” he said. “I was whipping votes.”
Sera went cold at the words, then fiery hot.
“Well, you’ve done a poor job at it, as the count is a tie.”
Was that a smile on his lips? She could not look away from that expression—not happy and not sad. What was happening? “Ah. Well. Perhaps, as I am here, now, I might be able to cast a verbal vote?”
The Speaker paused. “That is unorthodox.”
The room erupted in a chorus of pounding fists and hissing. “Let the man speak,” came a cry from somewhere below her.
And then Mayweather spoke up. “He’s got a right to vote on his own marriage, doesn’t he?”
“He does,” she said softly.
Her sisters heard her. Sophie turned to look at her. “You want him to vote.”
If he voted, it would be to keep their marriage intact.
Yes.
Shock coursed through her, and she nodded, the movement barely there, so small that no one should have seen it. Of course, her sisters saw it, and they set to hooting and shouting themselves, banging their hands on the observation railing, and drawing Mal’s attention to the upper level of Parliament. When he found her, he met her gaze without hesitation, and she saw everything there. Love. Passion. Conviction.
He wanted her, and he would do anything to have her.
And in that moment, she realized, she felt the same way.
“I don’t think you’re getting your divorce now,” Sophie said, squeezing her hand.
“But it does seem like you might be getting a grand gesture,” Sesily said happily. “I told him we like a grand gesture.”
“All right then, Haven, get on with it,” the Lord Chancellor said with more than a thread of irritation in his tone. He seemed to have eschewed parliamentary formality.
Haven moved to the center of the floor, his gaze riveted to her, and somehow, all Parliament fell away, as though it were the two of them somewhere private and perfect. The underwater ballroom at Highley. The stage of the Sparrow in the early morning. Somewhere the world could not see them.
She caught her breath, waiting for him to speak.
“I love you.”
A chorus of irritated harrumphs sounded around the room as peers from across Britain realized what they were in for, but Sera found she did not care a bit. She stood, clutching the rail of the observation gallery for support, wanting to be as close to him as possible for whatever was about to come.
Especially when he pressed on. “I have known I wanted to marry you since the moment I met you, when you gave me a dressing down for insulting women’s motives in marriage. You were magnificent.” He pointed. “Mayweather was there. He would have thought so, too, except he was in love with Helen already.”
Her sisters all offered little sighs of pleasure, so Sera assumed the marquess did something lovely at that, but she was too busy watching her husband, who was moving toward her, as though she weren’t ten feet in the air. “Do you remember what I said to you that night?”
“You said that love is a great fallacy.”
Several of the men assembled seemed to agree.
Mal nodded. “I did. And not ten minutes later, I had tumbled into it.”
Her heart pounded. She had, too. She’d been planning to seek him out, this legendary eligible duke, and then she’d stumbled upon him, and he’d been perfect. And she’d almost been disappointed that he was the same man she’d thought to catch.
“Do you remember the first song you ever sang to me?”
Of course she did. And he knew it. She’d sung it that last night at the Sparrow. “I do.”
Mal had reached the first of several rows of seats separating them, all populated by robed, wigged lords. “Careful, Haven,” one of them grumbled.
He didn’t seem to hear. “She was born that day in the heart of a boy. I always thought it was about you. That you found yourself in me.” Tears pricked at her eyes. “But as the years passed, I realized it was a fool’s thought. Because what of him? What of the boy, born that same day, in the heart of a girl?”
The words were thick with emotion, and Sera’s knuckles turned white with the force she used to clutch the railing. “What of the boy who hadn’t seen the sun until he’d seen her? The moon? The stars?” He stilled, staring up at her, his gaze tracking every inch of her face as she did the same, wishing he were closer.
He must have wished the same, because he moved then, climbing up onto the heavy benches below, caring neither for the venerable furnishings, nor the venerated aristocrats who had to lean out of the way or find themselves trampled by the Duke of Haven. He seemed to care only for getting closer to her.
“Here it comes,” Sesily whispered.
Sera leaned over to watch him as he reached for the inlaid pillars in the wall beneath and, without hesitation, began to scale the wall.
The room gasped in collective shock, a dozen men on the floor bursting into angry censure, and two directly below reaching for him, as though they could stop him.
They couldn’t. He was too fast, and too strong, and too damn perfect, throwing one leg over the rail as Seleste and Sophie backed away to make room for him while Sesily squealed her excitement from several feet away.
At least, Sera was fairly certain it was Sesily. She wasn’t about to look away from Mal to be certain. And then he was standing in front of her, breath coming harsh from the exertion of—Dear God. He’d scaled a wall.
He reached for her, his fingers trembling as he pushed a curl behind her ear, leaving a trail of fire in the wake of his touch. When he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion. “What of the boy who couldn’t let her go?”
Tears came, hot and unexpected. “That was always the problem,” she said to him. “You wouldn’t let me go.” Or perhaps it was that he wouldn’t keep her close. Nothing made sense anymore. Except this. Him, here, touching her.
He shook his head. “I was a bastard. I didn’t see that the closer I held you, the farther you’d fly. I didn’t realize you could take flight. And I was young and stupid, and God knows I did young and stupid things, not the least of which is vowing never to let you go.”
He paused, and she ached for the people they’d been, for the young, beautiful, restless people who had done everything wrong. “Even when you returned, I swore I’d never let you go, Sera, because I never stopped wishing that you’d stayed.”
But she’d had to go. She’d ruined so much.
It was as though he could hear her thoughts. “I know you think we failed, my love, but we did not. I failed. I failed you.”
She shook her head, tears coming hard and fast. “No.”
It wasn’t true, of course. They had both failed, and they had both succeeded. They were better for their losses, for their risks, for the world they had left behind and the new ones they had built.
They had not failed.
They had loved.