Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Louisa had entirely taken in the hour as she stumbled down the stairs. She had not noticed a clock chiming for what felt like hours, and it was impossible to tell just how long she and David had been ensconced upstairs.
Sharing each other.
She pushed away the thought as she stood in the hall, her heart beating fast, unable to take in what had just happened.
“You cannot think to leave my mother behind!”
“Why on earth not? She was perfectly happy for you to be miserable, for us to be separated – to hide the truth!”
A knot twisted in her stomach, one that she could not unravel. The last few hours…they had been exhausting. David appearing as though from the dead; David explaining just how he had attempted to make her his wife…David making love to her…
David betraying her yet again.
Louisa’s legs shook slightly, and she tried to take a deep breath. She had to sit down, had to think.
Had to consider how she was ever going to explain this to her mother, of all people.
A slight glow emanated from under the door to the drawing room, and when Louisa opened it she saw with a surprise that the fire was still burning low. David had made an excellent blaze.
Just as he had within her, Louisa could not help but think ass he sank onto a sofa, her heart breaking. He had known precisely what to do with her, how to make her glow, how to raise the sparks in her.
Fanning them to a fiery hot blaze.
But now that blaze was gone; entirely doused, as the truth of his bitterness towards her mother was revealed.
What had he been thinking, trying to take them to Austria?
Had he no sense of what the Jarrold name meant here in England?
Was he foolish enough to think that they could just pack up their lives and leave everything they knew behind?
As he had been forced to do, a small, irritating voice whispered at the back of her mind.
Louisa pushed it aside immediately.
It was not the same. David had left England, it was true, but he had fallen into excellent company immediately, had he not? Been made an Archduke for what Louisa still believed was an absolutely ridiculous reason.
No, he had fallen on his feet – whereas they were more likely to fall on their faces. What did she and her mother know of Austrian customs?
She did not even speak Austrian!
The windows rattled as a terrible wind shook round the house, and Louisa glanced at the curtains. The storm was still raging; a storm that had kept her mother away from her, and David in here with her.
Where was her mother? What friends had she taken shelter with, and when would she be returning?
A strange sort of sick feeling grew in the pit of Louisa’s stomach, right where the knot had been.
Her mother. What would she say, if she knew what…what they had shared?
Guilt, shame, panic flooded through Louisa, utterly taken over all chance of reason. She had made such a mistake…her mother had told her what happened to young ladies who lost their virtue.
Their reputation would be gone, forever. There was no possibility of reclaiming it, no redemption for ladies who lifted up their skirts.
And Louisa…she had done far more than that…
“Make love to me, David. Again, I mean.”
Scalding heat seared her cheeks, and Louisa clasped her hands before her in her lap, as though that would help with anything.
As though it could take back the foolish actions that she had made.
“Don’t stop…”
Louisa swallowed. Oh, if only she did not love David so much. Everything had been too good to be true, too easy. David had appeared again, his love for her undiminished, and he had all the right words to say, all the right things to do.
She had fallen even more in love with him then, if it was possible, and she had not believed it was.
But who could fail to love him?
Yet somehow it had all gone wrong; a simple argument about where they should live. Should not love be easier than this? Wasn’t true love meant to make everything simple?
Louisa sighed heavily. Obviously not. Clearly there were just some things that were impossible to go back and change, and though she and David had tried to reclaim some of that glorious affection…it was too late.
Too late for them.
If only her mother was here. Lady Jarrold was not, in the main, the most comforting woman, but Louisa would have given a great deal to have her here, in this moment. A mother’s affection, a mother’s clarity of thought.
She could tell Louisa precisely what she should do – although that would, thought Louisa darkly, necessitate her telling her mother what had happened.
Something she would absolutely never do.
A slight creak in the hall. Louisa turned to look at the door, her heart soaring. It was her mother, here to make everything better. She would tell Louisa just what she needed to do, help her to understand how she could restore her life, and remove David Nelson from it.
The door started to open.
“Mama,” said Louisa, a term she had not used since she was a child.
David’s face appeared in the doorway. “Me, I am afraid.”
Louisa’s stomach lurched, though not unpleasantly. Memories of just what that mouth could do, how those hands made her feel roared through her mind, making it rather difficult to frown at the man.
“I thought you were – ”
“Lady Jarrold, yes,” said David quietly, a strange and unreadable expression on his face. “May I come in?”
His breeches were once again at his waist, Louisa thought wryly, so she supposed he was technically respectable.
The question was, was she respectable any longer, now that she had seen what was precisely underneath those same breeches?
“I…I suppose so,” said Louisa quietly.
She was not one to forbid anyone to enter a warm rom, and a part of her – a growing part of her, she was astonished to find – was desperate for his touch again. To find that more of her heart wanted him than wanted to rage at him.
What did this man do to her?
David stepped lightly into the room and closed the door, but he did not move from it. “I…I want to apologise.”
Louisa glanced over at him, but then looked away. Looking at David was too painful at the moment. “You do.”
“You have lived your whole life with your mother,” said David with a heavy sigh – one Louisa did not entirely appreciate. “I should have respected that – I do respect that. It is just…I am selfish, I suppose. I want you all to myself.”
A little shiver crept up Louisa’s spine at the thought of being alone with David; truly alone. In their own home. Where he could do whatever he wanted to her…
Forcing away the delightful visions of David kissing her again down in her secret place, Louisa cleared her throat.
“I want to reconcile – I want to make this work, Louisa,” said David with a little more eagerness, and he took a few steps forward. “Why don’t you trust me?”
“Because you left!” Louisa hated the anger in her voice, hated how her very body seemed to be echoing with those words, but knew they had to be said. “Because we had finally realised what we were to each other, and then you disappeared!”
“You know that was not of my making.”
But Louisa could not take his words in, not with such pain rushing through her. The last year…losing David, losing her father, losing her place in the world, having to come here to this pokey townhouse where everyone in the ton looked down on them because they had lost their station in life…
It was intolerable. How could David not see?
“How am I supposed to trust you?” she asked quietly. “There has been so much pain, so much hurt between us.”
“And so much affection,” David said with a wry smile.
Louisa felt her cheeks flushing at the mere hint of a suggestion of what they had shared upstairs.
But David was shaking his head. “I do not mean that – well, I do. I suppose I should say that I do not only mean that. I mean the connection we have, the memories we share growing up together. The understanding that we have. The affection that has only grown, for me, while I was forced to be away from you. As I hoped…as I hoped it also grew in you.”
The knot in Louisa’s stomach had managed to find its way up her chest and into her throat. She nodded, rather than attempt to speak.
“We knew this would be complicated.”
“Did we?” Louisa tried not to laugh bitterly, but it was difficult. “Because I did not even know that you were coming here until a few hours ago, and now you are here, and you love me, and you tried to marry me, and now you’ve bedded me…I am finding it impossible to know what comes next!”
There was just a hint of desperation in her voice, but Louisa did everything she could to keep it down.
David, the man she loved.
David, the man who had left her.
David, the man who had appeared again, who had apparently not wished to leave her, had wanted to marry her…
It was all too much.
“This is what I know.” David spoke low as he took another step into the room. “I love you. You love me. All the rest is just details.”
“Just details?” Louisa almost laughed as she rose to her feet. “David, the details are the rest of our lives! You do not think they are worth worrying about?”
“Not as long as I have you,” said David simply. “You are everything. All I want this Advent is you.”
Louisa stared. She could not have heard those words, could she? Spoken so clearly from the heart that they seemed to burst out of him, pouring from David as though he could not hold them in.
For the first time since he had followed her downstairs, Louisa looked into David’s eyes – and saw perfect love. An affection that would not waver, a devotion that had never waned.
He loved her, and she could not lie to herself and say she did not love him. Yes, she had hoped it would be easy; but it had been difficult enough to get to this place. Were they not bold enough to see it through, right to the end?
“But if you want me to leave, I will.”
Louisa stared. David’s face was a picture of pain as he spoke those words, softly and with no malice.
“You…you would?”
“I would do anything that would make you happy.”
He would really do it, she could see that. If she asked for him to leave, he would leave. He would disappear from her life as he had done before, but this time he would not return.
The thought of it was scalding agony in her heart, and in that instant, Louisa knew the only way that she could be happy.
Slowing lowering herself onto one knee, Louisa saw a startled look overcome David’s face.
“What are you – ”
“Archduke David Nelson,” Louisa whispered, hardly sure where this boldness was coming from, but knowing this was the most important thing she had ever said, “will you marry me?”