Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“What a lovely paintin’,” Emilie chimed, plastering a smile on her face as she gazed over Aurora’s shoulder. “Is it of a fish swimmin’ through water?”
Aurora turned, giving Emilie an offended look.
“It’s a bird in the sky,” Aurora corrected, sticking her nose in the air at Emilie’s mistake before turning back to the painting that she’d been working on.
Emilie winced, her tone immediately apologetic.
“And what a bonnie bird it is,” she chimed, but Aurora just ignored her.
Sighing, Emilie crossed the children’s playroom, collapsing into the large, overstuffed chair in the far corner of the room. She looked up, eyes gazing over the twins who were both sitting straight-backed at a small easel, with the canvases she had procured for them earlier that day.
They hadn’t had lessons that day, as it was one of their scheduled days off. At first, Emilie had been thankful for it.
With the twins not having lessons to occupy their time, she would be able to more easily come up with excuses to ignore her husband. But now that a few hours had passed, and she hadn’t seen anything beyond the four walls of the playroom, she was growing exhausted.
“What am I goin’ to do?” she whispered, making sure to keep her voice low enough that the children would not overhear.
For days, Emilie had been barely speaking to her husband. When she’d first run out of the drawing room, the guilt and the shame had been so immense she had barely been able to speak.
She had broken her vows to God, after all. And that was not something that she would easily be able to process.
But as the hours and then the days had worn on, her shame had begun to diminish.
What had she done wrong, really?
When Emilie had left the abbey, she had not yet taken her vows. Despite all of her wishes, she had never fully become a nun. In fact, the only vows she had ever made had been to her husband.
And wasn’t marriage a sacred bond, exalted by God and blessed by him? Did God not command wives to honor and obey?
Had Emilie not been honoring her husband, honoring the bond between them when she had allowed him to kneel before her, feasting on the flesh that she had promised to him?
This is the entire reason why I ken that I have to leave. Listen to me, rationalizin’ the things that I’ve done, the ways that I’ve changed.
But that was the thing, though, as much as she knew that she should leave, she truly didn’t want to. Not anymore. Not after the way she’d grown to love the children, and the pleasure that she’d experienced at the hands of her husband.
What did the abbey have in store for her that could be more fulfilling than all of that?
“Can ye come look at me paintin’ Emilie?” Louis asked, grabbing Emilie’s attention from the spiral that she had been falling into. “I need help with me castle.”
“Ye’re paintin’ a castle?” she asked, pushing herself out of the chair and crossing the room in a few quick strides.
Louis nodded, pointing toward something on his canvas.
“A castle that’s under siege from a beithir,” he said excitedly.
As Emilie walked around him, standing behind the small boy so that she could get a good look at what he was working on, she chuckled.
Sure enough, Louis had painted a castle. Its resemblance to Castle McGregor was quite uncanny. The long, black blob in the center of it, though, she never would have been able to make out for herself.
Emilie was glad that Louis had told her what it was, lest she have a mishap like she just did with calling Aurora’s bird a fish.
“What part are ye needin’ help with?” she asked, and Louis raised his brush.
He pointed it toward what Emilie assumed was the head of the creature.
“I need help with its face,” he advised. “Right now, it just looks like a really big, really ugly worm. I need to make it clear that it’s nae a worm attackin’ the castle, but a fearsome beast.”
Emilie nodded, taking a step back to admire the painting.
“Ye ken,” she began, her tone contemplative. “With the legend of the beithir, they’re known to live around water in caves and in valleys. Ye could try paintin’ the sea just beyond the castle. And then some lightnin’ as well.”
“Why lightnin’?” Louis asked, cocking his head to the side as he glanced over his shoulder in Emilie’s direction.
“Well,” Emilie explained, “some legends claim that the beithir comes out of its cave only when there is lightnin’.
Some say it’s because they’re afraid of it, some say it’s because the sound of the thunder disguises their roars.
But whatever the reason, beithir are often depicted in the middle of a lightnin’ storm. ”
“So the sea and some lightnin’?” Louis clarified, grinning when Emilie nodded. “I can do that.”
He turned back to his painting, clearly no longer needing her help. And, when Emilie glanced in Aurora’s direction, she found the girl exactly where she had just left her a few moments ago.
Aurora was huddled over her painting, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth as she dragged her brush back down her canvas. Even at a distance, Emilie could see the large glob of blue paint she was smearing down the painting.
The thick strokes had looked like waves, and that was why Emilie had been so certain that what she’d been looking at had been a fish.
She chuckled to herself as she walked over to the window. She stood within its frame, looking over the grounds. From this particular window, she was able to see some of her favorite parts of Castle McGregor so far.
The rose garden was below, the red, white, and yellow blooms visible even at a distance. To the right, she could just make out a corner of the hedge maze, and she knew that if she leaned forward a bit, she’d be able to make it out entirely.
And then there, to the left, was a sliver of the sea, its waves capped in white and its waters sparkling in the evening sun.
How could I do it? How could I leave this place and these bairns if I was even able to convince me husband to get an annulment? Nae that I’d ever be able to convince him of that, nae at this rate.
Sighing again, Emilie shook her head. She’d fallen woefully behind on her plan. Not that she had been doing a very good job of it in the first place.
But she couldn’t face Archer again. Not until she knew for sure what she wanted to do. Either she was going to come up with a new plan to get an annulment, or she was going to commit to this marriage.
Either way, Emilie knew that she couldn’t spend another day trying to ignore him and feeling like she was operating in a world of in-betweens.
So, she toiled with the idea while the children painted silently behind her. She imagined what her life would be like if she returned to the abbey.
It wasn’t hard for her to imagine. Not when she had spent so long living there before she came to Castle McGregor.
Nothin’ ever changed there. Every day was the same.
There was a time that she had liked that, a time that she had craved the monotony of the day-to-day that the abbey provided.
But now that she had gotten out and ventured beyond its walls, now that she had met the twins, and met Archer. Now that she had realized all the ways in which she could truly live. Could she go back to that?
Nay.
The word welled up inside her, quick and resolute in its truth. And it shocked Emilie how obvious it felt that this would be her answer.
Because, while she was certain that she could return to the abbey tomorrow and nothing would have changed, that didn’t mean that she would be happy there any longer. Even if the abbey hadn’t changed, deep down, she knew that she had.
And she didn’t think that she could be happy there, tucked away within the cloisters, never seeing Archer or the children ever again. She simply couldn’t bear it.
So, what does that mean then? That I stay here and see this marriage through?
The idea was an enticing one. Emilie had already experienced so much since getting married. And that had all been while she was fighting against it tooth and nail.
What would happen if she leaned into it? What would happen if she allowed herself to be at Castle McGregor and be a wife? Be a mother to the children?
What if she allowed herself to just be?
A thrill ran through Emilie at the thought, and she smiled despite herself. Because Emilie didn’t know the answer to the questions that she had just asked, but she did know without a shadow of a doubt that she was incredibly excited to figure it all out.