Chapter Fourteen #2
Slowly, slowly, Bernard moved step by step deeper into the rippling water.
When it reached his knees, he had to stop, for he was suddenly overcome with a memory of standing at the edge of water much like this with his knees just as wet, and silence surrounding him where cries of laughter should have been.
By the time the water had reached his hips, he stopped. “That… That’s far enough.”
Lucy stepped against his side, bringing her hand around his waist. “I am very proud of you, you know.”
Bernard tried to laugh, but it was more of a ragged exhale filled with relief that the worst was over than anything else. “Yes. Yes. Good.”
He was doing it. Not swimming, not exactly. If she asked him to take both feet off the ocean floor, he would merely stride back to the safety of the shore.
But he had done it. He had come out here and faced—well, not exactly his fears, but himself. His past.
And he had done it.
“Do you want to go back to the—”
“Yes, please,” Bernard said hastily, turning around and walking, at a much swifter pace, to the shore.
It was strange. As he strode up the bank of the beach to where their clothes were waiting for them in a pile, Bernard found he was shivering.
Oh, the shivering was to be expected.
But it was from cold, not from the dread of the past. Somehow, that part of him had gone, melted away under the steady glow of Lucy’s gaze. She had been with him all the way in and all the way out, and she sat herself down on the shingle looking out at the ocean without a word.
Not asking—not demanding answers. Just sitting with him.
Bernard sank onto the shingle beside her. Honestly, he was surprised his knees had lasted this long.
Lucy tilted her head and rested it on his shoulder, still saying nothing. And perhaps it was that silence, that welcoming, loving silence, that allowed him to say what he had never thought he would ever tell anyone.
“My mother died in the ocean.”
Bernard felt Lucy stiffen, but she did not move, and she said nothing, giving him permission to continue speaking.
The last of the poison, the last of the fear. It all had to come out.
He blew out a slow exhale and tried to speak calmly, but the memories of that day, that terrible day, were flickering before his eyes. “It was… We were visiting the seaside. For the first time, I think. I could only have been three or four, and my brother—”
“You have a brother?” Lucy evidently could not stop herself, but the question was quiet, and Bernard could tell she would not be offended if he did not reply.
For a moment, he did not reply. The wind blew past them and died down, and the undefeatable waves continued to rise up and down, up and down along the shore.
“I had a brother.”
Lucy slipped her hand into his. “Oh, Bernard.”
“It was supposed to be a wonderful day out,” Bernard said bracingly, as though if one spoke the truth this way, it would not hurt. “My mother, my father, Tommy, and myself. I’d always wanted to see the sea.”
How strange, that he had forgotten that fact all these years.
Bernard swallowed. “Tommy was older than me, braver than me. Our father said he would take us in and teach us to swim, after he’d eaten his luncheon. But Tommy… Tommy was too impatient.”
“Oh, my God,” murmured Lucy, the truth of what had happened clearly dawning on her. She lifted up her head from his shoulder and looked at him, eyes wide. “He didn’t.”
“He did. He went in without us, and for a while, we… Oh, Lucy, we didn’t even notice.” Bernard’s voice had cracked and he couldn’t go on.
Lucy took his hand and said fiercely, “You were a child, Bernard—a child! Barely loose from the apron strings. There’s no way it was your responsibility to notice such a thing.”
“My mother was the one who eventually noticed. She saw his arm waving, the absence of screams, and—” Bernard worked his throat harshly, forcing the words to come out. “She rushed in.”
“But it must have taken time! After all, removing her gown, untying her—”
“Oh, my mother did not do all that,” said Bernard bitterly, trying to hold back his anger at the woman who had not thought, just rushed toward her struggling child. “She launched herself into the sea fully clothed as her eldest son slipped under the waves.”
“I should never have brought you here,” said Lucy hurriedly, rising to her feet and picking up her gown. “Let’s go home. You don’t have to tell me another detail.”
“I rushed to the shoreline and I was about to go in because my mother was crying out and I didn’t know why,” Bernard said, his attention fixed on the ocean before him now, unable to stop the words pouring from his lips. “But my father told me to stop.”
“Bernard—Bernard, don’t go in!”
Slowly, slowly, as though he were a wild animal and could bolt away from her at any moment, Lucy lowered herself to his level. Even in the darkness of the night, he could make out her horrified expression. “Your father.”
“He’d just lost a son, and a wife,” Bernard said darkly. “He didn’t want to risk anyone else.”
“But your mother—he could have saved her…”
“As I said,” and Bernard knew his condemnation of his father was perhaps too harsh, but he would never forgive him. Never. “He did not wish to risk anyone else.”
Lucy sank into a cross-legged position before him on the shingle. “Oh, Bernard. I… I am so sorry.”
And it was her presence that brought him back to the moment, to the living. It was only now that he realized how lost he had been in the past, how desperately he had tried to outrun it.
Outrun the man whom Bernard had never been able to respect.
“I was sent to school the following year, and after that, university, and then I chose to leave my country. I left Mo—I left the place I had grown up as soon as I could.”
“And you and…and your father?” Lucy bit her lip. “You don’t have to tell me. I just wondered…”
“We have never been close.” That was an understatement. “And while I was…well, let us say, away, I received news that my father had died.”
Lucy’s inhale caught in her throat. “So you have no one, then. You are alone.”
Bernard blinked, and saw before him: home.
Family. Connection, a wife in the future if all things went to plan, a person who knew him and saw him without even needing to know his name.
A woman who cared, deeply, and would do almost anything for those she cared about.
A woman whose heart was so big, she was willing to extend it even for the man she’d never met who’d made a mistake he could never take back.
And he smiled. “I am not alone. I have you.”
The kiss was gentle, and it was restoring in a way Bernard had never believed possible.
Lucy tipped herself into his arms and he clung on to her like a port in a storm, like a lifeboat tossed about the sea, and she was his harbor, the one place he felt safe, the one place he knew he could always come and just… be.
When the kiss ended, and it was a shame it had to, it was because of the footsteps.
“Oh, Lord,” Lucy muttered, grabbing her gown and tugging it over her head.
It was less easy for Bernard, but he made a decision to pull on trousers first, not shirt, and so it was with a nervous smile that he greeted the two gentlemen clearly walking back from a night in a gaming hell or one of their clubs.
“Vagrants,” one of them muttered after a single glance at the pair of them.
“These working poor are all the same,” the other returned with a snort. “Look at them; they’ve never eaten a good meal in their lives. It’s sad, really.”
Bernard could not help but laugh as Lucy stared indignantly after them.
“Did you hear—did you hear what they called us?!”
“I mean, we are lying about on the beach,” he pointed out reasonably.
Lucy swelled with indignation. “That’s no reason to be so cruel. So judgmental.”
“Just be grateful they didn’t recognize you for the refined lady you are,” Bernard said, pulling his shirt over his shoulders and chuckling as he saw her face. “Be grateful they didn’t recognize you as Lady Lucy Chance.”
The hackles clearly lowered. “Oh. Yes. That was probably a good thing.”
“Now, I have absolutely no desire to return to the ocean,” Bernard said with a small shiver he could almost blame on the breeze, which rose up around them at just that moment. “But I do have a desire to return to your bed.”
That was sufficiently distracting. Lucy grinned as she pulled on her shoes. “Oh, do you, indeed?”
“Only if I am welcome, that is,” Bernard shot back, the tension that had built at the base of his skull melting away and taking with it the pain and apprehension of thirty years.
Lucy’s eyes glittered with desire as she grabbed his hand and started pulling him along the street. “Oh, you’re most welcome…”