Chapter 17 #2
He’d come for her. Of course, he had. He always seemed to know when she needed him, as if some invisible thread connected them across the distance.
She tried to speak, but her voice was gone, shredded by screaming.
So she signed instead, her hands shaking so badly she could barely form the shapes. I wanted to go home.
Something flickered across his face. Pain, maybe. Or understanding. Or both.
He reached for her, and she let him pull her up, let him wrap his arms around her, let the solid warmth of his body anchor her against the wind.
He smelled of horses and smoke and rain, and when he lifted her into his arms—as easily as if she weighed nothing—she buried her face against his neck and let the last of her tears fall.
The castle was in an uproar when they returned.
Servants rushed forward with linens to dry them, their exclamations of worry echoing off the stone walls.
Someone herded her toward the enormous hearth, where a fire crackled despite the warmth of the summer evening—built, she suspected, specifically for her return.
“Witless thing to do,” she heard Old Wynne mutter as she passed. “Running about in a tempest. ’Tis a wonder she weren’t struck dead.”
Gareth hadn’t left her side. He dismissed the hovering servants with a gesture, wrapped a dry cloth around her shoulders, and pressed a cup of small ale into her trembling hands. The pottery was cool against her fingers, and she clutched it like a lifeline.
They stood in silence for a long moment, watching the flames dance. The storm still rattled the shutters, but it felt distant now, muffled by thick stone walls and the crackling heat.
Finally, Gareth signed. You wanted to go.
It wasn’t an accusation. His hands moved carefully, deliberately, and his face held no judgment—only a kind of quiet resignation that made her heart ache.
I have to try, she signed back. Her fingers felt clumsy, uncooperative. I have obligations. People who depend on me. A life.
She didn’t tell him that her life felt increasingly distant. That his face had become more real to her than her own flat, her own office, her own memories. That some traitorous part of her was relieved the magic hadn’t worked, because staying meant—
She couldn’t think about what staying meant. Not yet.
Gareth nodded slowly. I understand.
But his eyes told a different story. His eyes were the colour of the storm outside, and they held a grief so profound it stole her breath.
He was letting her go, would help her try again, if she asked.
He would tear apart the world to send her home if that was what she wanted, because that was who he was—a man who gave and gave and asked for nothing in return, who had locked himself in silence and solitude rather than burden anyone with his pain. And she was breaking his heart.
The realisation hit her like a physical blow. She swayed, and he reached out to steady her, his calloused palm warm against her elbow, and the touch sent sparks racing up her arm.
“Gareth,” she whispered. Her voice came out as a croak, wrecked from screaming. “I—”
She took another drink. The words caught in her throat, tangled with everything she couldn’t say, and suddenly she was babbling—the nervous chatter that always overtook her when emotions ran too high.
“I had this friend,” she heard herself say.
“Rachel. American. I told you about her. We met at a conference in Edinburgh, both of us presenting papers that everyone thought were rubbish. She invited me to visit her in Boston once, for their Independence Day—the Fourth of July, they call it. Massive celebration. Fireworks and barbecues and everyone waving flags about.” She laughed, though it came out more like a sob.
“She kept going on about how brilliant it was that they’d got rid of the monarchy.
No kings, no queens, just—just elected officials and constitutions and the freedom to cock everything up themselves without blaming it on some bloke wearing a crown. ”
Gareth watched her, patient as ever, his head tilted slightly in a way that meant he was listening with his whole being.
“I thought she was barking mad,” Elodie continued, swiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“I mean, I’m British. We like our royal family—most of us, anyway.
Tea towels with the King’s face on them, that whole business.
But Rachel said something that stuck with me.
She said home isn’t about where you were born.
It’s about where you choose to plant your flag. ”
She looked up at him, at this scarred, silent, beautiful man who saw her more clearly than anyone ever had. Who heard her when no one else did. Who would let her go rather than see her unhappy.
He shook his head. Rest now. We will speak tomorrow.
He was protecting her. Even now, even with his heart cracking behind his eyes, he was giving her space, giving her time, putting her needs before his own.
She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t sure she wanted to go anymore.
That somewhere between teaching him signs and making him almost-smile and learning the shape of his silences, she’d started building a life she might actually want to keep.
That when she’d knelt in that clearing screaming at the sky, part of her grief had been terror that the magic would work, that she’d be ripped away from this place, from these people, from him.
But the words stuck in her throat, tangled with exhaustion and confusion and the sheer overwhelming weight of everything she couldn’t quite bring herself to admit.
So she just nodded. Let him guide her toward the stairs. Let Marian appear to help her change into dry clothes and bundle her into bed. And as she lay in the darkness, listening to the storm finally begin to fade, she faced the truth she’d been running from for weeks.
She was in love with Gareth de Clare.
And she had no idea what to do about it.