"I need a partner, Norah, not a porcelain doll to stand in the corner. I need someone who knows how to survive. Someone who isn't afraid of the mud." He took the final step, closing the distance between them.
He didn't touch her, but his presence was overwhelming. The heat of him, the scent of rain and horses, the absolute, terrifying reality of what he was offering. "Marry me," Henry said. It wasn't a question, and it wasn't a command.
It was a plea. "Come to Scotland. Tear down the rest of the world with me." The church was entirely devoid of romance.
It was a squat, damp stone building on the edge of the village, smelling sharply of mildew and old wax. The sun had not yet risen, leaving the nave plunged in a cold, slate-gray twilight. Norah stood before the altar in her faded morning dress. She carried no flowers.
Her hair was pulled back into a severe, practical knot. She looked less like a bride and more like a woman standing before a firing squad. Beside her, Henry was a tall, dark shadow. He had paid the vicar double the exorbitant fee for the special license simply to get the man out of bed before dawn.
The vicar, a sleepy, nervous man, stumbled through the liturgy as though he were reading a grocery list. "Do you, Henry, take this woman?" Norah stared at the cracked stone floor. The sheer absurdity of it tasted metallic in her mouth.
Less than a week ago, she was counting the coppers in her purse to see if she could afford a meat pie. Now she was swearing an oath to the wealthiest man in the county. It felt like a trap. It felt like standing on the edge of the ornamental lake all over again, waiting for the shove.
"I do," Henry said. His voice was not loud, but it resonated in the empty church. It was utterly devoid of hesitation. Norah looked up at him.
The dim light caught the sharp angle of his jaw, the dark circles under his exhausted eyes. He wasn't looking at the vicar. He was looking at her. He didn't look triumphant.
He looked like a man who had just severed his own leg to escape a bear trap. He looked entirely free. "And do you, Norah?" She swallowed hard.
She thought of Victoria's vicious, triumphant sneer. She thought of the cold, muddy water. She thought of the suffocating, endless years of shrinking herself down to fit into the shadows of drawing rooms. "I do," Norah said.
Her voice did not shake. He slid a heavy gold band onto her finger. It was an antique piece pulled from a vault, slightly too loose on her thin finger. It felt incredibly heavy.
They walked out of the church into the biting morning air. A black traveling carriage waited by the iron gates, harnessed to four massive, restless grays. The coachman sat huddled in a heavy cloak. There was no crowd.