Chapter 22 #2
She lowered her glance and removed her bonnet. She undid the fastenings of her cloak too, though she left it around her shoulders as she sat in the chair to one side of the fire. He threw off his greatcoat and took the chair at the other side.
This, he supposed suddenly, was not at all proper.
But to the devil with propriety.
“I am glad you chose to read the letter,” he said, “and I am glad you chose to do it here. Was it very hard to read?”
She touched her middle fingers to her temples and made circles there for a while as she looked down at her lap.
“I had not realized,” she said, “what a…living thing handwriting is. It was his handwriting, and it was as familiar as his face. I felt as if I were looking at him a few minutes before his death.”
He said nothing.
“He loved me,” she said, looking up into his face and lowering her hands.
“Of course he did.”
“He thought his death would be the best thing for me,” she said. “He was facing disgrace and perhaps worse, and he chose death for my sake. Can you imagine anything more foolish than that?”
He watched tears well into her eyes. She blinked them away.
“How could his death benefit me?” She drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “He made provision for me, and told me I would be happy.”
“Provision?” he said.
“Oh, Peter,” she said, “they are coming to Fincham today—my two grandfathers and my grandmother, all the way from Gloucestershire. But they are strangers. Whatever am I to do?”
He thought of her as a twelve-year-old in London, trying to find employment and of the same child being sent to school in Bath as a charity girl, all alone in the world. How very different her life would have been if she had waited.
He would never have met her—except on that one barely remembered occasion when they were children.
“I would not plan on doing anything if I were you,” he said. “Meet them and allow the relationship to develop from there. They are your blood kin.”
“I am so frightened,” she said. “And what a very foolish thing to say.” She sat farther back in her chair.
“It might be worth remembering,” he said, “that as they draw nearer to Fincham today, they are probably very frightened too.”
“I had not thought of that,” she said. “Do you suppose it is true?”
“If they are prepared to make such a long journey in the dead of winter just to meet you,” he said, “I would say it is undoubtedly true.”
“Oh,” she said, and she closed her eyes.
He let her rest while he poked the fire in order to disperse the flames more evenly. A shower of sparks crackled up the chimney.
“They sent him away,” she said without opening her eyes, “after he had fallen in love with his brother’s wife and then killed his brother in a fight. But she followed him and they married.”
“Your mother?” he asked, seating himself again.
“Yes,” she said. “I think it must have been a great and very painful love. One filled with guilt. I wonder if they ever knew a moment of happiness.”
Probably not. The William Osbourne he remembered had certainly not been an unfeeling brute of a man.
“He wrote,” she said, “that my mother paid the ultimate price when she died giving birth to me and that now it was his turn.”
“But why then?” he asked. “Why did he wait twelve years?”
He thought she would not answer him, and he certainly would not press. This was her story. He had no right to hear it unless she chose to tell him. But she did answer after a while.
“His secret was out,” she said. “He had recently told Sir Charles himself since someone was trying to blackmail him by threatening to expose him. But then sh—. But then that person decided to ruin him anyway by telling untrue stories that surely would have been believed when his past was disclosed too.”
It sounded, Peter thought, like something a woman might do—a scorned woman. And Susanna had been about to say she before she used the more neutral person instead. Poor Osbourne. Perhaps he had tried to find comfort in another woman’s arms, and it had cost him his life.
He was facing disgrace and perhaps worse, she had said earlier. Worse than disgrace?
Had rape been the threatened charge, then?
“It has just struck me,” she said, “that my one grandfather and grandmother lost two sons within twelve years of each other, and that my other grandfather lost a daughter. And that the circumstances must have been particularly painful for all of them.”
“And then,” he said, “they lost you when you disappeared.”
“Theodore told me,” she said, “that they searched for me but could not find me.”
She spread both hands over her face.
He knew after a few moments that she was not weeping but that it was costing her an enormous effort to control her tears.
He got up out of his chair, crossed to her, and without really thinking of what he did, scooped her up into his arms, leaving her cloak behind, and sat on the sofa with her on his lap.
He cradled her head against his shoulder and held it there when she buried her face against him, her hands still covering it, and wept.
He knew that she was weeping out eleven years’ worth of grief—for her mother and father, for her grandparents, perhaps for her dead uncle.
And for herself. He held her and let her cry as long as she needed to.
At last he offered her a handkerchief, and she took it and dried her eyes and blew her nose before putting it away in a pocket of her own.
“I am sorry,” she said, resting the side of her head against his shoulder again. “Did you even know I was at Fincham?”
“I did,” he said. “Why do you think I went there this morning?”
“Theodore said something about an invitation for his mother,” she said.
“An invitation for you all,” he said, “but especially for you. There is to be a ball at Sidley on Christmas evening. We have a houseful of guests and I have invited everyone from the neighborhood too. It will be the first grand event that I have hosted at Sidley. You must come.”
“Oh, no, Peter,” she said, sitting up and looking down at him with troubled eyes. “I cannot possibly do that.”
“You can,” he said. “It is for you. I thought you would be proud of me. It is a very little dragon I have slain, but I have done it anyway. It was my idea, and I have done all of the planning and all of the inviting. Don’t refuse to come. Please don’t.”
He would not want to attend himself if she did not—and that would lead to a mildly absurd situation.
“As host,” he said, “I will have to dance all evening. I will have to waltz with someone else if you are not there.”
“Oh, Peter,” she said, cupping one of her palms about his cheek.
“Tell me you don’t want me waltzing with anyone but you,” he said.
“Peter—”
“Please tell me.”
She bowed her head and closed her eyes.
“I cannot bear the thought of you waltzing with anyone but me,” she half whispered.
“Susanna—”
She opened her eyes and looked into his, her own still somewhat reddened from the weeping.
“I really cannot bear it,” she said, but he was no longer sure she was talking just about the waltz.
He spread his hand over the soft curls at the back of her head and drew it down toward his until her arms came about his neck and he kissed her.
And he knew at that moment that love would never die, that it would never fade away altogether.
The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else.
He might even be reasonably happy. But there would always be a deep, precious place in his heart that belonged to his first real love. To Susanna.
But he was not going to think meekly about that someone else and that reasonably happy life he might live.
He was not giving up what he really wanted without a fight.
He might never have been much of a knight during his twenty-six years, he might never have been in the habit of searching out dragons to fight and quell—indeed, he had run from them five years ago.
But he would find one and fight it to the death if Susanna were the prize.
Or perhaps even if she were not.
Her face was a little above his, cupped in his hands, her auburn curls spilling over his fingers, her eyes very green.
“Let me take you upstairs,” he found himself saying. “There is no fire up there, but the bedcovers are warm. Let me make love to you.”
He felt as though he had walked out to the end of a plank, a helpless prisoner on a pirate ship.
He felt more vulnerable than he had ever felt in his life before.
If she said no, every dream he had ever dreamed would be shattered.
For he was not asking her just to bed with him.
He was asking for her love. He was offering his own.
He was offering everything he had, everything he was.
Did she know that? Did she understand?
He watched her swallow.
“Yes,” she said.