Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Valerie! Valerie!”
Two figures charged across the bedchamber, nearly knocking her over with the force of their enthusiastic embrace. In an instant, Valerie’s arms were around them, sinking down to her knees so she could hold them better, and trying very hard not to burst into tears as she clutched them to her.
“Oh, my precious beauties,” she crooned, squeezing them even tighter. “My little rascals. My sweet, sweet rascals.”
Her brother and sister hugged her back with equal fervor, as though she had been away for years instead of weeks. And, for that one moment, everything felt all right with the world again. She could drop the weight of her misery, just as long as she kept holding onto her siblings.
It was Cecil who pulled away first. He stepped back and folded his arms behind his back like a little gentleman. “Why did you come back?”
“Pardon?” Valerie had to laugh, otherwise she would weep at the abrupt question. “Did I not promise that I would return by Christmas? Did you think I would miss spending this day with my beloved rascals?”
The young boy eyed her with suspicion, all his former excitement gone from his frowning face. He could not have known how much that expression would sting her, when all she wanted to do was forget she had ever been away.
Nora draped an arm around her older sister’s neck, content to perch on Valerie’s lap. “Cecil said you wouldn’t be home until January,” she explained. “But I saw the carriage from the window! Didn’t I, Cecil?”
“You did,” the boy replied. “I thought you were going to stay away until after the wedding date?”
Valerie had forgotten about that. Before her departure, she had intimated to Cecil that she might not return by Christmas after all, in order to avoid matrimony. He had encouraged it, urging her to stay away, but she had not had the heart to tell Nora that.
She cleared her dry throat and sank back on her haunches, holding onto Nora. “There was a… change of circumstances. I had no choice but to return.”
“Did you find our sister?” Nora asked in a whisper, putting a finger to her lips for extra secrecy… although their father already knew what Valerie had learned about the missing twin.
“I did not,” Valerie replied with a sigh.
“There was a terrible storm and… I was injured and had to recuperate for a while. I never made it past that storm, so I could not even begin my search. But, fear not, I have not given up; I must simply think of another way to find her. It was foolish of me to think I could just go to Scotland and find her; Scotland is a rather large place.”
Nora gasped. “Injured? Are you better?”
“Mostly,” Valerie replied.
Her wrist no longer hurt, but she could not say the same for her heart. Truthfully, she believed it would be a very long time until that ceased to ache and the breaks would scar over.
“But why did you come back?” Cecil insisted. “I thought we were agreed that you would not.”
The boy sounded unusually serious. He was always such a cheerful boy, making jests and up to mischief, yet his frown and the worry in his voice belonged to that of someone much older in years.
“Yes, you said you wouldn’t marry unless it was for love,” Nora said with a happy nod of her head. “A fairytale, like the stories you read to me.”
To tell the truth or to lie: that was the choice in front of Valerie.
It felt oddly pivotal, as if whatever she said next might influence their own futures and their own happiness.
Yet, lying had already gotten her into a place of devastation; she did not want to lie to them, too, and add that guilt to the burden she carried.
“I returned because I realized there was no use in running,” she replied carefully.
“I have no fortune of my own, I have no friends who would harbor me, and the money that I did have would have run out quickly. Moreover, I do not believe there is anywhere in this country that I could have hidden away. So, I decided to be brave, and I decided to return home to do my duty.”
It was a partial lie, but one that she was undeniably comfortable with.
She could not, in good conscience, tell her siblings that she had to marry her father’s choice of stranger because otherwise they would be destitute and she had scuppered any hope of an alternative groom.
It would scare them to hear how close to ruination they were, and she did not want that.
More to the point, they might look at her brief escape in a very different light if they learned that the marriage would save the family… and she had run from it.
“But… what about love?” Nora murmured, her nose scrunched in confusion.
I do not believe in it anymore.
“There is more to marriage than love,” Cecil interjected before Valerie could come up with a palatable reply. “You are a baby, Nora, so you would not know that. Duty is what is important.”
Valerie raised an eyebrow, puzzled by the sudden change in her brother’s tone and sentiments. A moment ago, he had been asking why she had returned at all, yet now he was speaking like their father would. Haughty demeanor included.
“For some, duty is paramount,” Valerie explained, taking her time.
“For the two of you, it is my hope that you will be able to marry for love, and that you will find that love. For me, at this present moment, I am one of those for whom duty is of the utmost importance. That is why I came back, and that is why I will proceed with the wedding that Father has arranged.”
For you, my darlings. For you. To make amends for ever leaving.
“Now, though you may think you are too old and serious,” she continued with a smile at Cecil, “come here and embrace me again. I need all the love and affection I can squeeze out of the pair of you. Indeed, that is all the love I shall ever need.”
Her brother rolled his eyes, shuffling reluctantly toward her.
A boy in that strange place, and at that strange age, where he thought he should behave with more maturity than his years.
A boy who was at risk of copying his father if he did not have other, more suitable, more kindly men to emulate.
But as he put his arms around her and hugged her tight, he became the child again, and she was so very grateful for it as she gave both of them the biggest squeeze of utter relief.
“When I am married,” she said softly, “I will insist on you both coming to live with me.”
Cecil smiled against her shoulder. “Do you promise?”
“With all my heart, I do,” she replied.
“Can I still sleep in your bed with you?” Nora asked, lifting her head for a moment.
“Of course you can!” Valerie said, as she prayed with all her might that this coming wedding was truly going to be one of convenience. So convenient, in fact, that she did not even have to see her husband unless it was on rare occasions.
“Will you tell us about your journey?” the little girl asked, a minute later, squirming with the impatience that only a child possessed.
Valerie laughed and slowly released the children.
With a groan, her legs aching from an entire twenty-four hours or more of traveling, she got to her feet and moved over to the fireplace.
Her favorite armchair welcomed her with a few creaks and groans, while Cecil went to sit in the opposite one, and Nora took her usual spot on the rug, where it was warmest in the winter.
“It had been snowing for hours, falling so thickly that you could not see a thing out of the windows. Only white, like a curtain had been drawn. I was jostled and tossed about so viciously that I feared we had veered off course and were hurtling down a mountain! But when the cart wheel struck the rut—now, that was when I truly thought I was about to die…” she began, her voice low and mysterious, taking inspiration from Mrs. Leggat and her ghost stories.
In a way, Valerie realized, this was a ghost story, for the time she had spent with Adrian and the love she had started to feel for him and every experience he had opened up to her mind and body and heart—it would undoubtedly haunt her for the rest of her life.