Chapter 17 #2
“No!” She stopped at the strenuous response and turned back. Simone now worried her hands before her. “I came to tell you…to say…” She bent her head. “I can’t do this.”
Caroline’s heart sank. It was to be rejection then. Outright and without preamble. Likely Simone thought that kinder, but it felt like she’d been stabbed in the heart.
“I see,” she managed to say. “I…I had hoped there could be more conversation than that.”
Simone lifted her gaze. “Oh…no, I didn’t mean I can’t do…I meant I don’t know how to do this. To say it.”
“Oh.” Caroline’s knees almost buckled in relief. “Perhaps we could sit. I feel like I might tip over.”
A nod was the answer and Simone sat on the chair before the fire.
Caroline wished she’d chosen the settee so they could sit near each other.
So they could touch. But Simone’s choice was likely by design, she supposed.
She took the settee herself and folded her hands in her lap, gripping them so hard into fists that her nails dug into her palms.
Simone’s breath was shaky. “There are so many reasons that what you…we come from very different worlds, Caroline.”
“We do,” she agreed because it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. “I realize now that is a roadblock in your mind.”
“How could it not be in yours?”
Caroline sighed. “If I’m honest with you, I’m not particularly fond of the world I came from.
I have acquaintances there, rather than friends.
There is no depth to those relationships and it’s all very…
empty.” She met Simone’s eyes. “As for your world, I think you might not be so very enamored with it, yourself, when it comes down to it.”
Simone worried her lip. “I…I’m not. I do have good friends, but I am tired of the chase and the game. I have been for some time.”
Caroline leaned forward on the settee, just barely keeping herself from launching over to Simone.
She had to be more cautious than all that.
“I think there is another world, another life where we could meet in the middle. And if that isn’t enough argument against that point, think of Evie and Blackburn. He’s an earl, for heaven’s sake.”
“And they are still rejected by a great many former friends on both sides of their marriage.” Simone folded her arms as if she’d made some great point.
“You saw them with their baby last night. Do you think either one of them gives a damn about those who judge?” Caroline asked.
“But you might.” Simone gripped the arm of the chair now, her knuckles white with the exertion.
“You can write off the loss of those acquaintances and invitations now in the heat of the moment when you don’t know the true cost. But what if you regret whatever it is you are suggesting by declaring your heart?
What if it changes over months or even years and one day you look at me with disdain? ”
“You’ve known me for seven years, Simone,” Caroline said softly. “Do you think me so changeable as that? So fickle?”
Simone bent her head and her voice was shaky when she whispered, “No one stays. Not truly. Some are forced to remain, but no one really stays.”
Caroline’s heart hurt that Simone believed that. Feared that. “I love you,” she whispered. “And I will stay.”
Simone covered her eyes with her hand and remained in that position for a few moments. Caroline let her, even though she wanted to push into her space. She wanted to cup her cheeks and kiss her and make her feel the love she had declared.
“Fine,” Simone said at last and looked at her over her hand. “You’ll stay. You’ll hide me away and keep on with your life so you’ll have no regrets, but—”
“Wait.” Caroline held up a hand. “When did I say I’d hide you away?”
“Caroline,” Simone said with a shake of her head. “What the hell do you think you’ll do? March me through Hyde Park? Kiss me in the middle of some stuffy party?”
“Well, I would certainly ride with you in Hyde Park. We’ve met there before, if you recall, and walked together.”
“We bumped into each other there,” Simone interrupted with a shake of her head.
“Is there such a difference between a meeting of happenstance and going there together?” Caroline asked with a shake of her head.
“Many people share picnics and rides there, it seems to be the purpose of the place. As for kissing you in the middle of stuffy parties, I wouldn’t be very likely to do that with a man, either.
And I don’t want to go to stuffy parties.
I feel as though I haven’t made myself clear as to what I do want when I say I love you and perhaps that is making this overly complicated. ”
Simone was staring at her as if she’d grown a second head, but she waved her hand. “Fine. Tell me.”
Caroline rose. This was it. The moment for pure vulnerability and bravery.
It was something she’d struggled with all her life and yet it felt easy when she held the stare of the woman she so loved.
“My world is empty. It has been for a long time, but I didn’t realize it until I met you.
Until I got to know you and became your friend and then admitted I wanted to be much more than that.
If you turn away from me out of some misguided belief I’d be better off, my world would be even more empty because I’d know what it was to love you. And…and to be loved by you.”
Simone stirred but didn’t deny the charge.
That was something. Caroline came closer and then dropped to her knees at her feet.
“I want to make a new world with you, Simone. One with our girls, with our life, with our passions. When I picture our life together, I see us going to the salon to discuss politics and art. We’ll walk in the park and I’ll identify birds while you laugh at me and pretend to be interested.
” Caroline touched her face and loved that Simone’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment like she was out of ways to resist. “We’ll…
I don’t know, have a cottage by the sea together where we’ll go in the summer to make love in the water. We’ll learn to fish.”
“I know how to fish,” Simone whispered.
“Then you’ll teach me.”
“Did you know I always wanted a cottage by the sea?” Simone asked, her gray eyes welling with tears. “Did I tell you that?”
“No. But I want that with you. And if you want it with me, then why can’t we have it? Unless I’m wrong and you don’t love me.”
She held her breath as she waited for Simone to respond. Simone leaned forward and rested her forehead on Caroline’s. “I have loved you from the first moment I saw you in my parlor, I think. I might have loved you even before I met you,” she whispered.
Caroline slid her hands into Simone’s hair and tilted her face so she looked at her. “Then please, please, be with me. Be mine. Never ever leave me again and trust that I’ll never, ever leave you no matter what happens.”
Simone didn’t answer with words, but with a choking sob that was swiftly followed by a kiss that outranked in passion and emotion any other they’d ever shared.
Caroline sank into her, loving her and wanting her and knowing with absolute certainty that the rest of her days would be filled with joy because of this marvelous woman.
Because of everything they felt for each other and how it would grow for the rest of their days.