She hadn’t bothered to cover her tracks. She took one of his coachmen and carriages. Which only indicated to him that she didn’t think he would care. She didn’t think he would give pursuit.
She was wrong.
Max rejected taking a carriage himself, knowing he would catch up with her faster on horseback. An hour after departing, with London well behind him, it started to rain. A steady downpour that soon soaked him to the bone.
He didn’t let the rain stop him. If anything, it would slow her down. He knew she couldn’t be far ahead. He pushed himself harder through the deluge. Fortunately there was no lightning, so he didn’t have to concern himself with that danger.
Time crawled. His thoughts spun to the rhythm of rain and pounding hooves. She left him. She was his wife. She carried his child.
His life . . . his future was rushing away from him and it was his fault. He had to get it back. He had to get her back.
Aurelia. She’d always been there. Larger than life.
Desperation hummed inside him, an anxious energy that propelled him, coating his mouth with bitter panic.
He loved her. He was in love with her. He’d loved her for a long time, but recently that love had changed, grown into something so fierce and consuming. Elation swelled inside him. Fear was there, coupled with the memory of his family—his father, but for the first time the prospect did not cripple him.
Loss was a part of life. An undeniable absolute. There was no escaping it. Only learning to accept the inevitability of it—and live well and fully in the interim—that was reaching contentment and happiness. Finding someone, joy, love . . . that was never a guarantee. But he had found it. He’d found it with Aurelia. And he turned his back on it. On her.
Never again. No more.
He nudged his heels and urged his mount faster.
The wind howled. Several branches snapped off trees and littered the road. He stayed alert, watching the ground ahead of him, making sure his mount avoided some of the bigger branches that could trip him. He was so busy studying the ground immediately before him that he wasn’t looking into the far distance. Not until he heard the wild whinny of a horse.
His gaze snapped up, spotting the mangled corpse of a carriage ahead. He pulled up on his reins, everything in him clamping down hard as he recognized his own carriage. Bile surged in his throat. One of the doors was ripped from its moors, hanging askew. The sight of his family’s crest was a slap in the face. A haunting reminder. Nearly two decades ago another carriage bearing his family’s crest had met such a fate. His mother and sister had died inside it.
“Aurelia,” he choked, digging in his heels and launching his mount forward.
He jumped from the horse before it came to a full stop. “Aurelia!” He ran to the carriage and grabbed hold of the door, ducking his head to look within. Empty.
“My lord!”
He turned to face Thomas, the coachman. The man looked hale except for the gash in his forehead. Blood welled up from the wound before the rain washed it clean.
He grabbed the man by the shoulders. “Where is she? My wife—”
The coachman looked over his shoulder and gestured toward the tree line.
Max turned. The moment seemed to drag on into infinity as his eyes searched for his wife, dreading what he would find, what he would see. He begged to God to spare her and thereby him. To give him this.
To not take her, too.
Aurelia stared at Max through a gray wash of rain. She blinked, convinced her eyes deceived her. Why was he here?
He bounded across the distance and reached for her, his hands gentle on her arms, as though she were some fragile piece of crystal. “Are you hurt?”
He’d come for her.
She shook her head, trying to shake sense into herself. Her knee ached where she had banged it into the side paneling of the carriage, but she was otherwise unharmed. “I banged my knee and scraped my elbow . . . nothing more.” She motioned to Cecily where she sat at the base of the tree. “Cecily hurt her ankle.”
Cecily waved her hand. “It’s nothing.”
Before Aurelia could speak again, Max scooped her up in his arms and lowered her to the ground beneath the tree. They had taken shelter under it, the thick canopy of branches and leaves blocking most of the rain.
Her hand fluttered to his shoulder. “I’m not hurt, Max.”
He lifted her skirt and peered up her stocking-clad leg to examine her knee. A bruise was already beginning to form there. He tested it gingerly with his fingers.
“It’s not broken,” she assured him.
His stormy eyes settled back on her face, searching her features. “You’re fine?”
A smile tugged on her face. “Yes. I promise.”
His gaze dropped to her stomach, and his expression was both tender and terrified. “The babe?”
Her breath shuddered out of her. His hand moved to cover her stomach then and she jerked at the contact. At the burning imprint of his hand on her. Something passed over his eyes that looked very close to pain.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, shaking his head, his voice ripe with misery. “I was afraid to love you . . . to love this baby, but it’s too late for that.” He paused, his gaze locking in on her face. Moisture brimmed there, and if she wasn’t sitting down she felt certain her legs would have given out.
He continued, “I do. I do love you . . . I love you.” His voice seemed to gain strength each time he uttered it. “I love you. I already love our baby and can’t wait to meet her.”
She couldn’t speak. She could only stare, trying to reconcile his words with what she knew. With what she thought she knew.
“You can’t love me,” she whispered. “Because . . . you can’t.”
“That’s what I always thought. It’s what I wanted you to think. But how—” His voice choked on a sob. He stopped and swallowed, his rain-damp throat working. “How could I not fall in love with you?” He brought his other hand to cup her cheek, pushing back wet snarls of her hair. “Say you love me. Say you’ll come home with me. That we will be a family.”
She moistened her lips, the lump in her throat blocking her words. “Max . . .”
He nodded, one hand still caressing her stomach, the other holding her face.
“How do you know we’re having a girl?”
He laughed roughly, throwing back his head. “Wishful thinking. A little girl just like you . . . The world would be so lucky to have her.”
“Lucky indeed,” Cecily chimed in.
Max flashed her a grin before looking back at Aurelia. His grin faded as his eyes searched her face, his expression turning grave, and she realized she had not said anything in response to his declaration.
She moistened her lips. “I’ve loved you, Maxim Alexander Chandler,” she said, “fourth Viscount of Camden, Max to your familiars, since the first moment I clapped eyes on you.”
“And then you hated me,” he reminded her with a wry twist to his lips.
“No. I was just waiting for this. Waiting for you . . . for me. For the both of us to get to this point. To get it right.”
His chest lifted on a deep breath. “I’m here now, Aurelia.”
She crushed her mouth to his, kissing him deeply, her hands curling around his shoulders.
She was here, too.