Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Tessa found Remmy a half hour later right where she knew she would and settled next to him on the ground, leaning her back against the moss-covered side of their rock.
He’d discarded his cravat and jacket and unbuttoned his waistcoat. He sat with one leg bent, arm propped atop his knee and the other leg extended toward the lake where he seemed to study the horizon.
“I’m leaving. Your mother is sending me in a carriage to the rectory soon.”
He tore up strands of grass and tossed them just as quickly.
She reached for his hand—red and raw and swollen.
He flinched away from her touch.
“It needs tending, Remmy.”
“I don’t care.”
His words felt like fists thrown at her, and she turned from him, pulled her knees up to her chest beneath her skirts.
She should have been appalled at Remmy’s violence. She’d been thrilled. No one but Remmy had ever fought for her.
Her parents had merely sustained her, tended her like a plant in the garden behind the rectory. Lady Chattaway had cultivated her, loved her in her own way, but the lady saw who she wanted Tessa to be, not who Tessa was.
Remmy had always seen Tessa, had always wanted for her what she wanted. He didn’t simply tend to her most basic needs, he uplifted her soul. He tried to beat down with his bare fists anything—anyone—he saw threatening it.
“You should have left,” he said. “There’s no reason to speak again.”
But there was. Her friend had given her his whole heart, and he deserved this gift in return. It was the only thing she could give him.
“I realized something as you punched Tilbury.” She focused on the water rippling across the lake. Easier than looking at him. “I… I found it possibly… embarrassingly… arousing.”
He lifted a single eyebrow and looked at her from the corner of his eye. “Arousing?”
“Yes, but that is not the revelation I speak of. For some reason”—she licked her lips—“I realized when you were breaking Mr. Tilbury’s nose—”
“Is it broken?”
“I do not know. Will you let me finish?”
He lifted his chin, a sign to continue.
“As I was saying, I realized while you were possibly breaking his nose that…” Another deep breath before she jumped. “That I love you.”
He snorted. “Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what?” Not at all the reaction she’d expected.
“Do not tell me what you think I want to hear. Do not pity me.”
“That’s not what I’m doing!”
“Yes, it is.”
“It’s not! I realized when I saw Tilbury’s blood running down his face… I love you. I love you so much, I would have bloodied Tilbury’s nose myself if he had hurt you.”
“How can you know me all your life and only in a single moment of spilt blood realize how you feel?”
“I’m not saying I’ve been in love with you as long as you have with me, but that is how I feel now.”
“Because I stood up for you?” His voice was softening.
She nodded. “It’s not just that you stand up for me, though. It’s that you stand up for everyone. It’s that you understand why I’m doing this.”
“You wanted freedom. I can give you that.”
“I want Verity to know she is loved. Everyday. You understand that. Which is why I love you. And because you’ve worked so hard to make your theatre wonderful.
Because your employees trust you so well that they’ll loan their wives to you to make a scandal.
Because your brain runs to making scandals to saying the most outrageous things to doing them.
You know what you want, and you go after it. I admire that.”
“Admiration is not love, Tessa,” he said softly. “Do not confuse them.”
“Do not be insulting.”
“See!” He wagged his finger in her face.
“That is something I love about you. When you are comfortable, you do not let anyone say a word against someone you care for. You do not let them trample all over you. And if I could make you comfortable all the time so that you were always bold and loud like that I would. Because it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. ”
“And every time you say something like that, I cannot help but fall a little more in love with you.”
He still picked the grass, tossed it away. Pick, toss, pick, toss.
“What will it take to make you believe me?” She sat on her heels, facing him.
“What if I tell you that upon first returning to London the only thing I could think about was getting to you? At first, I thought it was because I wanted to slap you. Yell at you for not writing to me. And then I saw the Folly and all I could think about was hugging you and telling you how magnificent you are. And that night, after you dropped me off at Lady Chattaway’s, all I could see was that little smirk below the gold of your earring.
” She reached for the earring, but he was still too hard to touch.
She dropped her hand. “And then when you waltzed into Crossvale with those women, I felt all knotted inside and hot and a little bit angry, and I didn’t know why.
I thought it was my mother and my father being so near and wanting so very little to do with me.
But it was you. I was jealous, Remmy. You were supposed to be mine, but you weren’t anymore.
I did not like it. I felt that way when you sat down at the breakfast table, too.
It’s one of the reasons I followed after you to the stables.
I wanted to stake a claim. On you.” She lifted his hand and placed it on her chest, over her heart.
“Do you feel how quickly it is beating? Do you feel how terrified I am you won’t believe me? ”
His hand curled into a fist against her chest. She was losing. Had already lost. And her heart shrank away from the fist. She tried to pull away, but he caught her, hooked his fingers into the bodice of her gown and held her tight.
“I am your Remmy?”
She nodded, clasping his hand with both of hers.
“You’re mine, and I know it does not matter, and I know it changes nothing, but I needed you to know.
I need you to understand. There’s a gaping hole inside me, and inside it is a little girl crying.
I’m crying as I cried for a year after leaving with Lady Chattaway.
It sometimes seems too much to ask for my mother to love me.
And she still might not, but I can love Verity.
So she never feels alone as I have.” Her last words trembled, and she brushed tears off her cheek.
“It is cruel of me to realize I love you, to tell you I do, when I am refusing to… when I am walking away, choosing…” Not him. “But I cannot deny myself.”
He gathered her into his arms, and he held her tight and rested his chin, atop her head.
“Yes,” he said, voice gruff, “I understand. Sometimes you have to say it, even if there is no hope. Especially then. Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“And again.”
“I love you.”
“One. More. Time.”
She said it with something of a sob. And it was also almost a whisper. “I love you. It’s carving my heart out, and I don’t know how to make it right.”
“No, sweetheart. Never. God, don’t cry. Shh.” He kissed her forehead. “Please don’t cry.”
“But I want to.” She collapsed into his shoulder, and he held her tight, ran a smooth, comforting hand up and down her spine.
“Then cry. Cry all you want. Cry until you flood the lake up into the house. Drown while crying. As long as I drown with you.”
She chuckled, wiping away her tears. “I cannot leave Verity alone. She’s too bright. She needs me.”
“I know.”
“I love her.”
He pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “I know.”
“I love you, too.” Now she’d said it, she could not stop. The love doubled, tripled with every repetition, every glimpse of him, every touch.
His eyes were closed, his jaw working side to side. “God, that makes me happy, Tessa.”
But he didn’t look happy.
And she certainly wasn’t. Her tears soaked his shirt as he held her close.
At some point, whispers became kisses, and kisses become frantic, desperate touches, and bodies didn’t need clothes in the summer heat. Cravat and jacket, waistcoat and stays, shirt and trousers, shift and smalls—all littered around the rock as they clung to one another behind it.
He spread her gown out like a blanket and laid her atop it.
Above them—the spindly tree branches, the whispering leaves, the endless blue sky tinted yellow by bright sunlight.
And Remmy, his eyes just as blue, just as unfathomable.
Wind shushed across the lake, ripping Tessa’s hair, doing nothing for her heated, sweat-slicked skin.
He slipped into her, holding her gaze, and she dug her nails into his back, needing him closer, closer.
Never as close as she desired, as she needed. And each rocking second seemed to move them farther apart from one another.
When she came, she dragged his head down for a long and desperate kiss, and he let her drink from him as he thrust faster.
When he came, spilling his seed on the grass beside their bodies, a drop of something wet landed on her cheek. A bead of sweat? Or a tear? His eyes were pressed firmly closed, his jaw hard as the rock that hid them. As hard as her heart must be, too.