Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Adam walked into the house, went straight to his private study and shut the door behind him.
God in heaven…Did he truly not want Diana to come?
All his life, he had been so sure that she was the only one he could ever love.
But now, Diana seemed like a distant memory while Madeline was here in his life, working her way deeper into his heart with every passing moment.
He walked to his desk, opened the bottom drawer and withdrew the cedar box. He found the tiny key in one of the pigeonholes and unlocked the box, then rifled through its contents, his big hands searching for the miniature he still possessed after all these years.
There. He found it.
For a long time, he simply stared.
Adam hunted through his mind for memories of Diana, the real woman, and fought to recall how he had felt when he was with her.
He tried to summon those feelings from long ago.
His young heart had been hopelessly besotted.
He had felt intoxicated from the sound of her voice, weak at the sight of her face.
He stared at that face now, waiting for the longing to come. Trying to make it come.
He saw only a picture. He felt nothing. No surge of longing. No heat, no vigor. His blood was racing, yes, but that was from holding Madeline’s arm, trying to keep her there with him outside the gate, beseeching her for answers.
Answers to what? How she felt about him? How she felt about Diana’s potential arrival?
He reached for the letters in the box—letters Diana had written to him after she’d married Lord Thurston. They had continued for almost a year. She had written intimate things to Adam, reminisced about their times together, and he’d known she was unhappy.
Of course he never wrote back. He could not encourage her, and he was married himself by that time. She had made her choice and he did not wish to prolong the misery. Neither hers nor his.
After a while, the letters stopped coming and he had presumed she’d forgotten him and grown into her role as another man’s wife.
Thank goodness Jane had not known about the letters. At least he didn’t think she had. If she had gone through his things and found them, it would certainly have explained some of her anger and insecurities.
So many hearts had suffered. Adam squeezed his forehead with his hand, racking his brain for an answer, a plan, a proper course of action.
In the end it was his heart that guided him. He knew what he had to do.
* * *
“I love you, more than anything in the world. You are planted so deeply in my heart, sometimes I think you must have been born there. Not even a poet could express what I feel for you, my darling.”
Madeline heard the words spill tenderly from Mary’s lips, just as she stepped into Mary’s open doorway. Chessboard in hand, Madeline froze. She saw Jacob leaning over the bed, kissing his young wife.
Just then, everything on the board—the kings and queens and knights and pawns—started to slide and Madeline had to fumble in a panic to keep from dropping the entire game onto the floor with a resounding crash.
“Madeline!” Mary called out, surprised but not the least bit sheepish over what Madeline had just seen and heard. She rose from the bed, straightened her skirts and went to greet her. “Come in. Oh, bless your dear heart, the baby just fell asleep and I am in need of some distraction.”
Madeline handed the chessboard over to Mary. “Well, I should leave you two….”
“No, no! Please come in. Jacob was just trying to leave, and I wouldn’t let him.”
He stood. “Father’s waiting for me. We are preparing to drive a herd of beef cattle to Halifax.”
“To Halifax?” Madeline asked. “But he just returned.”
“Father won’t be going, just George and I and a few fellows from Jollicure. We’ll start out early tomorrow and be back in a week.”
He kissed Mary on the forehead and whispered something secret in her ear that made her giggle and gaze at him flirtatiously.
“See you at supper, Madeline.” He smiled at her as he left the room.
Madeline moved all the way in and sat in the chair by the window.
Mary began to set the chess pieces in place on a table. “Please say you will start a game with me, Madeline.”
“I shouldn’t. With all the preparations for Lord Blackthorne’s arrival…”
“Just fifteen minutes, then I will come and help you.” Mary’s blue eyes flashed at Madeline. “Besides, you cannot leave now. You still look flushed.”
Madeline felt her cheeks turn an even deeper shade of pink. “Flushed?”
“Yes, from walking in on Jacob and me. I apologize. We didn’t know anyone was upstairs.”
“I should have knocked.”
“No, the door was open. We should have been more discreet, but sometimes, I just can’t help myself. I can’t help telling Jacob how much I love him.”
With a twinge of sadness that seeped into her bones and ached like an old wound on a damp day, Madeline stared absently at the chess pieces.
Ever since her conversation with Adam out on the road, she’d felt flustered and disconcerted in the most bothersome way, and she hated that she did not know what was going on and how he felt about her.
When she tried to leave and he had taken her arm and pulled her toward him to ask questions about Diana, she could have sworn she’d seen passion in his eyes, that he’d wanted to kiss her. But that couldn’t be true. It must have been wishful thinking on her part.
Nevertheless, her heart had leaped into her throat and it had taken every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep from kissing him first. How she had wanted to.
Then he asked about Diana, and Madeline was knocked backward and off her feet, back into her sad reality.
Now, to walk in on two young lovers who seemed to know so much more than she did about love and life, she suddenly longed for some new understanding. She wanted to feel she was knowledgeable and capable, that she could handle and understand her emotions when it came to Adam.
“You spill out your hearts to each other,” she said to Mary. “You hold nothing back. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Mary’s voice brimmed with sincerity and an odd hint of commiseration.
“What other way is there to love someone? There’s no need to keep it inside.
Jacob likes it when I tell him I adore him, and I like it when he tells me.
Love is as much about what you say and do and what you show, as it is about what you feel inside, because the one you love can’t read your mind.
Besides, it feels wonderful to tell him.
I can’t stop myself. I know it sounds trite, an exaggeration, but my heart swells every time I say it. ” She moved her first pawn.
While Madeline considered her own first move in the game, she found herself wondering what it must be like to feel so free to give and receive love.
She supposed she’d never had any example of it before.
She had never had a mother and father who would express things like that to each other, nor did anyone express such things to her.
She could not imagine telling someone she loved them.
Was it something a person got used to? Like jumping into the cold ocean?
Shocking at first, then it almost began to feel warm?
How did Mary become so secure in her belief that Jacob would not break her heart in return? Madeline could see for herself that Jacob shared Mary’s feelings, but when did Mary come to know that? Who took the chance and declared their love first?
Maybe they just knew how the other person felt.
Would Madeline ever just know?
She knew John Metcalf was interested in her, but he was not passionate, the way Jacob and Mary were. At least she didn’t think so. Maybe that came later.
With Adam, on the other hand, she knew how he felt, because he continued to make his feelings about Diana known.
As Mary said, love was about what you said and did and showed, not just about what you felt, and Adam had already told Madeline that after all these years, he still loved Diana, and he’d asked questions about her that very day.
Madeline found herself wondering what Adam would do if he knew how Madeline felt. If she came right out and told him.
Then, while she waited for Mary to make a move in the game, Madeline began, as she always did, to fantasize.
She imagined that if she did tell Adam that she adored and wanted him, he would take her into his arms and tell her he felt the same way, and together they would find a way to resolve the situation with Diana.
Perhaps Adam could prevent the proposal from reaching her, and if he couldn’t, well…
marriages could be annulled, couldn’t they?
Yes, Diana would be angry, but she would recover from it, the way everyone recovered from pain in their lives. No one was safe from it.
Madeline rested her cheek on her hand and tried to imagine Diana learning that Adam was jilting her. For her younger, less beautiful sister.
Diana would be shocked out of her petticoats to be sure. Normally, Madeline was not a spiteful person, but she couldn’t help but enjoy such a thought.
Diana would probably break something. A piece of china. A mirror. Madeline could almost hear her sister screaming like an old witch for someone to come and clean up the shattered glass at her feet.
Oh, she really had to give up these foolish dreams, for she was coming dangerously close to making a fool of herself and spoiling any chances of a continuing relationship with this family—whom she was growing to love—after Diana came.
It was her turn in the chess game, but as she gazed down at the board, she could see no logical way to move her pieces.
* * *
“Mosquito,” Penelope said with precise diction. “M-o-s-q-u-i-t-o. Mosquito.”
Everyone clapped. She sat down beside Charlie on the chintz sofa.
Charlie rose to stand in front of the fireplace like a soldier, his arms planted firmly at his sides.