Chapter 11 #2
“Our friendship may have changed,” Eleanor said quietly, “but once, we were close. Once, you were my hero. I owe you, Sean. How many times did you rescue me from myself when we were growing up? In good conscience, I cannot leave you here alone.”
He stared at her, his gaze hard and wide. It was a moment before he spoke. “You don’t owe me anything, Elle…Eleanor. I could never live with myself…if I let something happen to you…because of what I have done.”
“You can’t live with yourself now,” she dared. And her heart broke. “Oh, Sean! What is it?”
He started, his entire body stiffening.
She realized what she had said, and also that she was right. “What could have happened to make you blame yourself, and perhaps hate yourself, so much? Why have you changed so much? Where is the man I loved and trusted?”
“We need to eat!” He jerked a chair from the table and sat. Then he dug his fork into his food, shoveling bite after bite into his mouth.
She had hit a nerve. She was uncovering his feelings, but not the reason for them.
She sat down. Sean was halfway through the huge plate.
The compassion she was so afraid of now filled her.
She had never seen anyone eat as quickly, except wild, starving dogs.
“Sean, I won’t pry anymore. Enjoy your meal,” she whispered.
He paused, the fork halfway to his mouth. Then he laid it down and finished chewing. He looked up at her, his gaze disquieting and direct.
“Please.” She attempted a smile and before she knew it, she had lightly grasped his forearm. Her heart lurched wildly at the feel of so much power and strength, and she quickly slid her hand away.
His face was hard. He stared at the table, his plate or her hand, she could not tell.
He lifted his fork and as she wasn’t expecting him to speak, his words surprised her.
“You always snooped. Spied.” He continued to stare at the table—or into their past. His mouth softened. “You were impossible…I had no secrets.”
She shivered. “I didn’t mean to be so annoying. I loved you so! I had to be with you all the time—I couldn’t stop myself.”
His cheeks were pink. He never raised his eyes. “So impossible,” he said softly.
She studied him as a silence fell. Was he reliving parts of their past? She trembled, desperately hoping so. In spite of the dire crisis they were in, she would give up everything to have the old Sean back.
She wet her lips. “But you rescued me anyway, all the time, even when my life wasn’t in danger.”
He made a sound, and it almost resembled a grudging laugh. “Yes. I did.”
“Remember when you told me not to go in the lake, as it had rained for an entire week? Of course, I did not listen.”
He slowly lifted his gaze. “You never listened.”
“I got caught in some branches and I would have drowned, but you dived in to save me.” She smiled. “I was eight or nine.”
“Ten,” he corrected. “You were ten, because I was sixteen.”
She instantly understood. “How could I forget? The new governess was blond and beautiful and you were in her bed the moment she came to Adare!”
He just stared at her.
Eleanor was aware of the tension instantly changing, becoming hot and sexual. Her heart had picked up a slow, heavy beat. “She was slender and for a woman, tall.”
His lashes drifted down.
She stared at him now. Sean had been besotted with Lady Celia that summer and, at ten years of age, his infatuation with the slightly older woman had been entertaining in every possible way.
As Eleanor was now, Celia had been dark blond, slender and tall.
Eleanor tried to tell herself not to read too much into that slight coincidence.
“You should eat,” he said.
She had watched him dancing with her outside on the terrace while a midsummer ball was in progress, inside. They had been so engrossed, they had never noticed her spying from the shadows. “Were you in love?”
He shrugged. “I was always in love…it never lasted.”
She met his unwavering, too bright gaze. “Then it wasn’t love. True love never dies.”
He made a slight and harsh sound again. “I was sixteen.”
She smiled. “And when I was sixteen, Mother and Father forced me to come out. Do you remember that?”
His mouth twitched. “I felt so sorry for you.”
“No one was sorrier than I!” she cried, then sobered. She had hated her Season in London and she had hated being sent to Bath, too. It had been a blur of misery and constraints; for her, coming out had been a prison, too.
But Sean had rescued her even then. She suddenly looked up and found him watching her closely and steadily. Her insides shifted. “Sean, you came down to London for my coming-out ball. God, I haven’t thought about that in years. It was so awful!”
He glanced away. “I am sorry,” he said slowly, “that I made fun of you in your gown.”
She had forgotten. Her first ball gown had been very beautiful, but she had felt like a tall, skinny fool in it—she had been tall and skinny, then.
Sean had laughed at her and she had punched him in the stomach, hard enough to cause him to gasp in pain and double over.
She had hated him for that one moment, because he was right—a ball gown hadn’t changed who she was.
But when he had asked her for her very first dance, when he had escorted her onto the floor, her arm linked firmly in his, she had been both grateful and proud.
She had missed some steps, but he had guided her through the figure so adroitly that no one had known.
She had been terrified to begin the dance, but in the end, she had enjoyed herself.
“You danced with me,” she said slowly. Her heart turning over too many times to count, she added, “And now I know exactly why I have always loved you so much.”
He stood. “Eat.”
She shook her head, shoving the plate aside. She also stood. “Sean, I need you. You have to come back to me the way you used to be.”
He moved away, shaking his head fiercely.
“Please!” she cried. “We need to speak about the past like this. We need to go to Askeaton together and wander upstairs. Devlin never finished the third floor.”
He was incredulous—or afraid.
“We can finish those last few rooms together. And whatever is bothering you will go away, I just know it!”
“It will never…go away!” He exploded in bursts of words. “Stop begging me…for what I don’t have…to give!”
“I am not asking for your love,” she exclaimed fiercely. “I can forsake your love. I can! But I want you back, damn it!”
He held his hand up, warding her off.
“No!” She strode to face him, pausing so close that his hand almost touched her nose. “No, you can’t raise your hand and send me away as if I am a ghost haunting you. I am not haunting you, but God knows, something or someone else is. I know I can help.”
He was breathless now. “Some secrets…are meant to be…secrets. I have changed. Prison does that to a man!”
“How bad was it?” She had to know. “Is that what happened to your voice? Is that why you are so thin?”
“It was bad…very bad…like being buried alive in a black hole.”
She didn’t understand. Surely he wasn’t speaking literally?
“You have changed.… And you belong to someone else.… I have changed—I am a criminal…fleeing to America.”
“There’s one thing that will never change.”
He looked at her as if he did not want to hear what was coming next.
“We can’t change the past. We can’t change our past. You are different now.
It took a very painful lesson for me to learn that.
But the past remains—and we share it. I don’t want to forget it.
I will never forget it. And if I can help you heal your wounds, if I can help you return to me, then I am going to do just that. ”
“No.” He whirled and started for the door
She ran after him, because she had to know. “Sean, you didn’t mean that you were really imprisoned in a hole, did you?” She was ill with dread.
He turned and stared at her.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped, shocked, because the answer was not just in his refusal to speak, it was in his eyes. “You were in a pit—for two years?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he rasped.
“It matters to me!” He was even more deeply scarred than she had thought. But the physical horrors he had suffered had to pale in comparison to the guilt he was afflicted with. “I am sorry, so sorry,” she tried.
“Don’t.” He reached for the door.
She seized his arm. “I know you are not a coward, yet you are running away from me, and from something and someone else. That’s it, isn’t it? You are running away, not from the British, but from whatever it is that you blame yourself for!”
He faced her, shaking her off. “You should hate me for what I did the other night.”
“Oh, so now you try to change the subject? The subject isn’t your taking my innocence—which I freely offered and gave. The subject is your running away now, from me, yourself and whatever you think you did.”
He stabbed at the air and turned to unbolt the door.
Her anger vanished. “Sean, stop. Where are you going?”
He leaned his forehead against the door, breathing hard.
“I’ll cease and desist. But my feelings won’t change.”
He made a harsh, disparaging sound.
“It’s not safe to keep going out and you know it,” she added firmly. “We are in hiding.”
He turned away from the door. “You eat and sleep.… I’ll keep watch.”
She smiled a little at him. “Very well.” But as she sat down at the table, aware of Sean crossing to stand by the window, her mind was not on her supper.
He was running, not from her but from himself, and she was going to somehow stop that flight.
She was going to find the man she loved, and bring him back to life.