Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
That night, they stayed in Oscar’s chambers after the maids had cleared the table.
Isabella fell asleep next to him, aware that, at any moment, he might ask her to leave. But the night grew deeper, and he did not order her out.
Instead, she tumbled into a lust-addled sleep, sated and boneless, and Oscar’s body tucked behind hers.
His arm draped over her waist, their bodies pressed to one another, skin-to-skin, and the last thing Isabella remembered was drawing her fingertips up and down his arm.
She toyed with his fingers, marveling at the sheer presence of him.
But she was awakened by the sound of low groaning, broken up by a loud shout.
“Help him,” Oscar shouted. “Help him—help—help me.”
Isabella was fully awake at once, not wanting to push him awake in case he startled and confused her with his nightmares.
Now, it made sense.
He was not just angry and distressed in slumber; he was back on a battlefield, wounded, and watching his other wounded comrades. His words were deeply anguished, torn, and pained.
“Oscar,” she said urgently. “Oscar.”
“Please,” he moaned. “He needs—he needs—”
Sleep took him back under before he finished his plea, but he jerked his head, his arms coming up to grasp somebody who was long gone.
His distress continued, and Isabella was helpless, but when he began to shout again, wordless yells of desperation, she finally did push her hand against his shoulder.
Before he could react, she had one of his hands in her own, and the other on his sweat-slicked face, holding him.
“I am here,” she told him as his eyes flew open. “You are here with me, Oscar, and you are safe.”
She stroked his face, carding through his dark hair. Her fingers ran over his thick beard, raking through the soft hair, bringing him back to her as the vacancy in his eyes cleared. His body trembled, and sweat coated his chest and neck.
“You are here with me,” she repeated softly.
Finally, his eyes met hers, and his labored breathing evened out with some difficulty.
“Isabella?” he croaked out.
She kissed his damp forehead gently. “If I am being too much, do tell me. Do you need me to leave?”
After a long moment, when she prepared herself for him to say yes, he shook his head.
Slowly, his muscles relaxed, and he sighed, slumping back into the pillow where he half raised himself as if to check he was indeed in his chambers and not a battlefield.
“I… I am used to them.” His free hand swept over his face, rubbing his eyes. “I recovered quickly enough by now, but I… I do not like that you have had to see the evidence of them.”
Isabella lay back down, tucking herself into his side as she continued to comfort him with grounding touches.
“Your shadows may be dark, Oscar, but there is nothing deep or dark enough for me to get lost in. I can handle everything that you are. My concern is only for you.”
He made a low, almost pained noise as he wrapped his arms around her tightly, as if he needed her as a tether more than anything. His face pressed into her neck, and he breathed her in, shuddering out a breath.
“Thank you for not leaving,” he said. It was so quiet she almost thought she had imagined it. “For so long, I have feared chasing you away with everything I am. Every horrid, ugly part that I cannot get rid of.”
“As I have told you,” she whispered, “I am not afraid of you. I am not afraid of you, nor of your past. And when you are ready, you may speak to me about any of it.”
He let out another shaky sigh as he nodded.
She waited for him to say something else, but in moments, his breath had evened out back into slumber. She wondered how much the nightmares exhausted him to drag him back into them.
Please, she thought, thinking of any force that could help, let him sleep peacefully this time. Let him rest.
Let him forget, if just for the rest of the night.
Later that morning, after Oscar had remained asleep without nightmares, the two of them walked Morris down one of the country lanes around Rochdale, finding a stall along the way that sold meat and fresh produce.
Without hesitation, Oscar bought a hunk of meat, forgoing the brown paper it was offered to be wrapped in, and immediately tossed it to Morris.
Morris chased after it, where he had thrown it further down the road, and Isabella laughed as the dog growled into his new treasure, tearing off strip after strip.
As they headed back toward Rochdale Castle, Oscar finally let their brushing hands link.
“You offered this morning for me to speak about my time in the war, and what causes my nightmares,” he said quietly, “and I think I am ready. Having you there through the night was a risk, and it was not as disastrous as I had always worried it would be. You did not run, you did not leave, nor shy away or look at me as though I was a monster.”
“I could never,” she affirmed. “All I have ever wanted is to know you.”
“I think I am ready to tell you. At least a bit more. When we return, I will take you to the northern turret myself.”
Isabella didn’t know what to say, not after his last reaction to finding her in there without permission. But he was doing as she had posed the evening before: the two of them were unlocking those doors together, and she could not ask for more.
She squeezed his hand, happily walking alongside him back to the castle, with Morris still carrying the meat between his teeth.
Still slightly unable to believe she would be let in, once they arrived at the castle, she waited for Oscar to disappear. To make some excuse that meant they would not go to the north wing, but he didn’t let go of her hand and instead took her right to that padlocked door.
This time, his movements weren’t jerky, harsh things, but more practiced and slower, as if he needed to take his time. Isabella followed him inside, noticing how the layers of dust had been swept away. She glanced at him questioningly, and he smiled tightly, offering no explanation.
Has he done this with the intention of inviting me in here today? She wondered.
Firstly, they returned to the gallery, where he pointed out a portrait she had missed: Oscar and Edmund in their final year at Cambridge, the two of them grinning, arms around one another.
It was a less practiced, poised portrait, and it showed life, true life, rather than the stiffness of posing as a pretense like the ones Oscar had with his family.
“It was our gift to one another upon completing university,” he told her, as if he understood the difference in the art style.
“We approached an amateur painter and paid handsomely to have the relaxed portrait done. I have never shown anybody. My parents found it, though, and ordered me to hide it from sight. Heaven forbid their son smile for a reason that was not of their doing.”
“What were they like? Your parents.” Her eyes swept over the painting of a younger Oscar, the one where his parents each had a hand planted on his shoulders.
“My father was cruel, but he could turn a room from discontentment to gratitude. He knew how to play any social game, and he was very good at it. Yet, with the hand he shook in greeting, he could also belittle, and everybody wanted to be his associate.”
“He met my mother at her debutante ball. She was young and beautiful, with hair the color of the sun, and a smile that charmed every suitor she could ever want. Yet my father was revered, and she had her sights set on him from the moment they each entered the ballroom and encountered one another. Some say it was love at first sight. Perhaps it was at first, but they were both socially hungry and saw one another as a game piece to use.”
“They must have been the diamond couple of their generation,” Isabella mused.
Oscar nodded. “My mother was known for her beauty and was often asked to be painted. Ladies envied her, men wanted her, and my father soon grew tired of enduring her theatrical charm that she used to get her way. Despite being married, she still flirted as if she were unwed. She was not unfaithful, but her behavior was decidedly seductive.”
“Did she love your father?”
“Maybe once. Behind closed doors, they were ghastly to one another. I do not know what their marriage was like before I was born, but I saw, as I grew up, that they despised one another. They would tear one another down. My father would accuse my mother of being a harlot; she would drink too much wine and vanish, and he would follow her. They would not return for days, and when they did, it was like they were a renewed, happy couple again. Only, days would follow, and they would return to their games of screaming obscenities and accusations at one another.”
“Heavens,” Isabella cursed. Her own parents could bicker, but nothing like the turmoil he spoke of. “That must have been difficult.”
He nodded. “I believe the worst was that because they hated one another so much, they turned their attentions to the next best thing. Me. I was their showpiece, as I told you last night. If I pleased them, I was granted affection. A good night’s kiss, a dinner as a family.
If I displeased them, did not look handsome enough, or if I used one wrong word in a conversation with one of my mother’s friends, then I was resigned to my room with isolated dinners and would endure their silence for days. ”
“Oscar,” Isabella whispered, her heart breaking, for now she could see why he did eat alone, why he had grown to prefer it.
It had meant he had been his true self, and even if it had been a punishment once, then it still would have meant he was not performing.
“Silence is a weapon, and they used it well,” he ground out. “My own silence is often out of protection or in foregoing the need for words. If I have ever punished you with it—”