Read Chapter 32: The Stables Reborn

The summons came at dawn, before the servants had even stirred the fires. Helena knew before the messenger finished his stammered sentence—knew it in the way her blood turned to ice, in the way the world seemed to tilt beneath her feet.

Her father was gone.

She rode to Ashworth House with her hair unpinned and her boots still muddy from the stables, not caring that she passed two carriages on the road, not caring that Lady Marchmont raised her lorgnette as Helena tore past at a gallop that would have scandalized any proper young lady. The horse beneath her was Ember, and Ember understood the urgency in Helena's heels without a single command.

The house was quiet when she arrived. Too quiet. The servants moved like shadows, their faces carefully blank, and Helena climbed the stairs with a numbness that frightened her more than grief would have.

Her father lay in his bed, looking smaller than she remembered. The disease that had been eating at him for months had finally claimed its prize, and someone had closed his eyes and folded his hands over his chest. Helena stood in the doorway for a long moment, then crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed.

"You might have waited," she said softly. "Just a few more days. I had such news for you."

But the news would have to wait for another audience. The Eclipse Trophy was hers—genuinely hers now, not borrowed, not stolen, not a piece in the dowager's elaborate game—but her father would never see it on the mantel. He would never see the stables restored, never see Smoke recovered and grazing in the east pasture, never see what his daughter had fought so hard to preserve.

She stayed with him until the undertaker came, and then she stayed in his study, going through his papers with red-rimmed eyes. The estate was hers now—truly hers, not borrowed, not threatened. But the weight of it pressed down on her shoulders like a physical thing, and she found herself staring at ledgers she could not focus on, accounts she could not reconcile.

A letter lay unopened on his desk. The Ashworth seal, the familiar script of his hand—he had written it before the end, and Helena's fingers trembled as she broke the wax.

*My dearest Helena,* it began. *If you are reading this, then I have gone to join your mother, and you have become the mistress of everything we built. I have watched you fight for this estate with a ferocity that humbled me, and I have watched you grow into a woman of such strength and integrity that I could not be prouder if I had raised a son. Do not grieve for me long. The stables have been my life's work, but you have been my life's joy. Make of Ashworth what you will—I trust your judgment more than I ever trusted my own.*

She was still holding the letter when Julian found her.

He came without announcement, without ceremony, his greatcoat still dripping from the rain that had begun to fall. The servants must have admitted him—of course they had, he was Lord Weston now, or near enough, and he had become a familiar figure at Ashworth in the weeks since Whitbury. But when Helena looked up and saw him in the doorway, his dark hair wet and his face tight with concern, she felt something crack open inside her chest.

"I came as soon as I heard," he said.

Helena opened her mouth to say something appropriate—something about her father's passing, about her gratitude for his presence, about the arrangements that needed to be made. Instead, she burst into tears.

Julian crossed the room in three strides and pulled her into his arms, and she sobbed against his shoulder with an abandon she had not permitted herself since childhood. He held her without speaking, one hand stroking her hair, and when her tears finally began to slow, he pressed a kiss to her temple.

"I'm sorry," she managed. "I'm not—I don't normally—"

"You have nothing to apologize for."

"He's gone, Julian. He's actually gone." She pulled back, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "And I'm standing here with an estate to manage and no idea what I'm doing. The ledgers are a disaster, the spring training schedule is in chaos, and I don't even know if I can afford to keep the east paddock staff through the winter. He handled all of it. He always handled it, and I just—I just rode the horses and made noise about the stables without ever truly understanding what it cost to keep them."

"Helena."

"Don't tell me it will be all right. Don't tell me I'm stronger than I think. I have heard those words in every letter he ever wrote me, and they are not enough to balance an account book or negotiate a breeding contract or—"

"Helena." Julian took her face in his hands, forcing her to meet his gaze. "Will you marry me?"

She blinked at him, certain she had misheard. "What?"

"I asked you before, at Whitbury, and you accepted. But that was before, when I thought I was giving up a trophy and gaining an alliance. Now I understand what I would gain—what we could build together." He released her face and dropped to one knee in front of her father's desk, in front of the ledgers and the letters and the weight of an entire legacy pressing down on them both. "Marry me, Helena. Not as a forfeit, not as a compromise, not as a response to scandal. Marry me because I love you, and because together we can do what neither of us could do alone."

"But your stables—"

"Are at your disposal."

"Your family name—"

"Will be joined with yours, and stronger for it."

"You would share everything? Your resources, your horses, your standing?"

Julian rose to his feet and took her hands in his. "I would share my life," he said simply. "Everything else is merely property."

Helena stared at him, feeling the cracked-open place in her chest begin to mend itself around the shape of him. She thought of her father's letter, still clutched in her hand. *Make of Ashworth what you will.* She thought of Smoke, recovering in the paddock, of Ember, of the Eclipse Trophy that had cost her so much to win and so little to keep.

She thought of the years she had spent fighting alone, and of the man in front of her who had offered, again and again, to fight beside her.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I will marry you."

Julian let out a breath that seemed to carry the weight of the entire season with it, and then he kissed her—a proper kiss, thorough and warm and full of promise. Helena kissed him back until she was breathless, and when she finally pulled away, she was laughing and crying at the same time.

"I must look terrible," she said.

"You look like the mistress of Ashworth," Julian said. "And you look like my future wife. The two are not mutually exclusive, you know."

The ledgers were still a disaster. The spring training schedule was still in chaos. The east paddock staff were still uncertain of their futures. But for the first time since her father's death, Helena felt the crushing weight on her shoulders begin to lift.

She pulled Julian's hand down and kissed his knuckles, one by one.

"Then let us begin."