Chapter 11 #2
Her name sounded in the darkness again, but the rush of the wind, the thudding of hooves beneath her swallowed the sound. She let her head tip down, trusting Calpurnia to carry her home, to deliver her safely when nothing in her world provided stability. Not her family, surely not her husband…
Her skin tingled beyond what the cold caused, and her lungs tightened around her frigid breaths. Even as she knew the risk, she urged her mount faster, as though she could escape the tormenting emotions clawing at her back.
She rounded a curve, and the rush of wind from an open field tugged at her bonnet, whipping the brim over her eyes. Releasing one hand from the reins, she shoved the brim back in place, but knocked loose a lock of hair now conspiring with the bonnet to blind her.
She yanked at the reins to slow Calpurnia to an easier pace, but the leather slipped from her fingers. With the fabric and hair robbing her of her sight, she grasped for the reins but felt nothing, teetering in the saddle as choking panic climbed up her throat—
“Lily, hold on!”
She grabbed two fistfuls of coarse mane as Calpurnia jerked violently to the left, skidding to a stop that nearly unseated her.
Her breath rasped from her lungs, and fear sent her stomach spinning.
When she blinked away the haziness in her vision, Philip was beside her on his gelding, her reins in his hands.
“Easy, love. I have you. You’re safe.”
Boots crunched on the crushed gravel, then his hands wrapped around her waist, steady and firm. “You can let go. Hold onto my shoulders. I’m going to get you down now.”
She lacked the strength to argue and complied, sliding her shaking feet from the stirrups before he lifted her from the saddle and lowered her down the solid length of his body to the ground.
With his arm secured on her lower back, she couldn’t collapse like she wanted to, like she would have had he released her.
His voice was a soothing rumble in her ear. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head tightly, and he cupped her cheek, running his thumb over her cheekbone to collect the moisture—
Good heavens, she was crying?
But once the tears had started, she couldn’t stop them, her lungs seizing as horrifying, humiliating gulps and sobs fell from her throat.
She leaned against his chest, hoping to hide her anguish, but he missed nothing, damn him.
He dragged his hand from her lower back to brace between her shoulder blades, the hand on her cheek curling around to cup the nape of her neck as she wept.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered when her wailing had calmed to mortifying sniffles. “What’s happened?”
“You had no right to behave that way in the shop.” What should have been an admonishment was far too weak, reduced to a whining whisper.
He hadn’t stopped stroking her back. “I need you to tell me what you’re objecting to, love.”
She should put space between them, push against the firm plain of his chest. But her arms refused to cooperate, and she released a convulsive sigh into the fastenings of his greatcoat, the wool absorbing the sound. “They’re not your family. They’re mine. My mother, my nephews.”
He stiffened, but did not stop rubbing her back. She wouldn’t admit enjoying it.
“Was it the candy?” he asked. “Do you want me to return it?”
She pressed enough against his chest to lift her cheek, but she focused her attention on the tail of his scarf poking through the opening in his coat. Her breath formed clouds of condensation in the chill between them. “No, it’s—it’s the candied ginger.”
A moment passed while she tried to speak past the fist around her throat but failed.
“I don’t understand—”
Her gaze snapped to his. “It’s for women during pregnancy. To settle the stomach.”
Philip stiffened and leaned away from her, his eyes darting to her midsection and back to her face. His eyes burst with surprise, and a wave of indignation surged.
She huffed her disbelief, and her hands fisted at her sides. “Do you think they’re for me?”
His mouth worked for a moment before he found a response. “I—I don’t… Are they for you?”
“No!” She meant the word to be a bark, something sharp and aggressive to send him running, but instead the tears overwhelmed her, spilling down her cheeks. “They’re never for me.”
A flash of relief crossed his features before his dark brows furrowed. “Then who—”
“My sister. And don’t ask which one. You don’t have the right to know.”
He dropped the hand from her nape and ran his thumb over her cheek, catching the moisture.
He hadn’t the right to her tears, either. Not when he caused them.
“You can let me go,” she bit out, attempting to put space between them. “I’m fine.”
His arms slackened but didn’t release her entirely. “You’re not fine.”
Damn him. “I am.” She stepped back, out of the circle of his warmth, but she bumped into Calpurnia’s side.
But he followed, his steady gaze refusing to relinquish hers. “This isn’t about candy. Tell me, Lily—”
“You stole my future when you disappeared.”
The tears she’d been fighting since they left the shop—hell, for the last eight years—surged, unstoppable, spilling over her lower lids.
The wind kicked up again, pulling at the edges of her cloak and nipping the exposed skin of her cheeks.
She was hot and unbearably cold at the same time, too much and not enough.
“You knew I wanted children,” she continued. Her lungs seized as though they were reaching out to grab the words and shove them back inside. “I wanted a family, like my sisters have, like I had. I wanted Christmases, laughter and love, and so did you.”
He lifted a hand towards her cheek but paused, grasping Calpurnia’s reins instead.
“I did.” He held her gaze and refused to release it as he saw past the mask she kept in place, the one that apparently hid nothing, not from him.
His jaw tensed and released as he rolled his lips between his teeth, then spoke in a rush. “I wanted that too.”
“You stole our future.” The fire of her fury was gone, replaced by aching, soul-scorching sadness, pain that scraped from the deepest recesses of her body.
“You made a choice for me without even asking me or explaining. I could never be happy, always wanting you. And the worst part was I could never hate you, not entirely. Not when I still—”
Not when I still loved you.
She didn’t say the words, didn’t need to because he heard them, anyway. His chest rose and fell with rapid breaths, so close the wool of his greatcoat nearly brushed her cloak. “It’s not too late.” His dark eyes searched her face. “We could—”
She shook her head and spoke in a whisper. “How can we have a family when I don’t know if you’ll still be here tomorrow?”
The words slashed through the air like a crack in the ice, splintering and plunging them both into dark, frigid reality. Her chest ached, as if eight years of pain had been purged and left her peeled open and wanting.
When he pulled in a breath, the shudder rattled from his body to hers. “I can’t prove something I won’t do. I can only continue to be there for you, when you need me and when you don’t.”
Therein lay the problem. Could she trust him, or would she spend the remainder of her life teetering on the precipice of fear, on the knife’s edge of worry that he’d be gone the next morning?
She wouldn’t face a lifetime of waiting to hear the door open when he returned, or praying for a note from him to arrive.
The pitying looks from her sisters, lying to her mother…
Explaining to their children why their father never came home.
“Lily.” He cupped her cheek, and her wandering gaze snapped to his.
“I’m not the same man you fell in love with.
That man was broken and could never be the husband you deserved, couldn’t love you the way you needed.
” He leaned closer. “But the man I am now, I won’t leave you.
I know what it means to stand up to fear, and I will go to battle every day for you.
For us, for our family. I only need you to give me the chance. ”
She wanted to refuse him, to protect herself from more pain. But what else would she lose if she sent him away?
“I want—” she started, but the words she almost said frightened her into silence.
I want to forgive you.
I want to try.
“I want to go home,” she finally whispered, sounding regrettably like a small child but unable to muster any more gravitas.
Whether she meant Boar’s Hill or the estate in Lancashire, or something entirely different, not a place but a time in their lives before he’d broken them, she did not know.