Chapter 34
“Of all the pig-headed, mule-stubborn, goose-brained, ridiculous fools I have ever known—and I had to endure a dance with the Viscount Deerborne—you are the king of idiots!”
The voice cut sharply across the rear lawns, where Philip and Zachary were foil to foil in a rather vigorous fencing bout. Indeed, there was just one point between them, and Philip was not in a losing mood. He did not want the distraction of his sister roaring insults for all to hear.
“Do not ignore me!” Lizzy barked, striding down the grassy slope to the flat patch where the gentlemen had decided to challenge one another.
Zachary used the opportunity, lunging forward and driving the blunted tip of the foil into Philip’s chest. Philip attempted to parry it too late, his patience fraying to mere fibers as he whirled around to greet whatever complaint his sister had now.
“To what do I owe the displeasure of this interruption?” he asked tersely.
He had not been himself since leaving Selina’s room, which felt like an eternity ago. He knew she had not left that room since, and though he had thought about knocking a thousand times, he had refrained.
She had asked for time to think. She had asked him to leave. He had not wanted to make matters worse by intruding, nor did he think he would be able to comply if she tried to send him away again.
“Oh, I think you know very well why I am calling you a pig-headed idiot!” Lizzy ranted, coming to a breathless halt, her hands on her hips.
Zachary cast Philip an amused look, but Philip was anything but entertained.
“Is this something I should stay for?” Zachary asked.
Lizzy shot him a cold look. “Stay or go, it does not matter to me. It does not matter to me who hears this. Indeed, maybe you should stay, so you can help me in telling my brother that he is the greatest dolt in Christendom!”
She has spoken to Selina.
Philip knew it in the depths of his heart. It was right there in the fierce loyalty that shone in his sister’s eyes. These were the words and actions of someone angry on her friend’s behalf.
“This is none of your concern, Lizzy,” he said sternly.
“None of my concern?” she blustered, puce with rage.
“It is entirely my concern when you have put my friend in this position. She will be ruined publicly if she breaks off the engagement, and she will be ruined personally if she stays in a marriage with a husband who will not give her children! So, I repeat, you are being a pigheaded idiot!”
Zachary turned his back and pretended to clean his foil, no longer so obviously amused.
“Has she asked you to speak on her behalf?” Philip asked.
Lizzy glanced back over her shoulder, her jerky movements rife with guilt. “No, but—”
“Then it is between me and her,” he interrupted. “I will not explain myself to you.”
Lizzy’s eyes burned, her hands balled into fists at her sides.
“I know I was lucky, Brother. I know I was fortunate to be raised by Grandmama instead of him. I know I can’t even begin to understand what you suffered, how cruel he was to you, and though I am aware we are not close, I have never thought you to be anything like him.
You have never been cruel. That is, not until now. ”
“Pardon?” Ice laced Philip’s voice.
“If you remain stuck in the past, seeking revenge on ghosts instead of looking toward a future with Selina, then you are being cruel to yourself, and you are being cruel to her,” Lizzy replied fervently.
“If you deny her this dream and force her to break off this engagement, you are being cruel indeed. You are feeding her to the wolves.”
Philip shook his head. With all the preparations that had been ongoing within Ashbrook Manor, he had assumed that Selina at least intended to proceed with the wedding. Yet this was the second time his sister had mentioned his bride breaking off the engagement.
“She means to cancel the wedding?” he asked, his chest sore and tight in a way he could not explain.
“If you continue with this idiotic notion of denying her children, then yes,” Lizzy replied. “Yes, she does. For reasons I cannot fathom, I believe she likes you very much, and this will break her. But she will do it if she has to.”
Philip pressed his knuckles to his chest, trying to push out the unease. “She doesn’t understand about our father. She doesn’t understand what might be hiding in my blood.”
“She does understand,” Lizzy shot back. “And even if she didn’t, it is ridiculous. Forget about that twisted old devil. He cannot hurt anyone now, but you are letting him hurt Selina.”
Philip flinched inwardly. Was that really what he was doing? Was he allowing his father to hurt the woman he cared for, the only thing he had cared for in a very long time, even though the wretch was dead and buried?
“Think of what your children could be like,” Lizzy continued.
“Children with Selina’s eyes and wit, sneaking into your study to steal books or running through these gloomy hallways, filling each one with laughter for once!
Children who will change this place from a mausoleum to a…
well, it might be a circus, but at least it would be a thing of joy! ”
He frowned, struggling to imagine the rooms and hallways of Ashbrook brimming with the sounds of giddiness and play and happiness. He had never heard such cheer within the walls of the manor, but the more he forced his mind, the more a vision began to emerge.
He could see them, children of his own running amok in that godforsaken manor, transforming it. New life to chase away any lingering ghosts.
“That is what you will miss,” Lizzy urged. “That is what you are denying yourself, Brother. You are not protecting anyone. You would just be giving Father’s memory a reason to keep existing, instead of being so bloody happy that you forget that Ashbrook was ever any other way.”
She was breathless when she finished, her face still bright red with anger, though tears welled up in her eyes.
“Idiot.” She hurled that final word at him as she turned sharply and walked off up the slope to the manor, her hand brushing those tears from her cheeks.
Philip released a slow breath, his mind still clinging to the vision that she had conjured in his head of what Ashbrook could be like if he just let go of his father’s ghost.
Selina is thinking of leaving.
A fear he had never felt before shivered through him. The fear of losing something that he actually wanted, that actually mattered to him, that he actually cared about.
His gaze flickered to Zachary, who had finally turned back to him.
“Don’t look at me,” his friend said with a shrug. “I could not agree more with your sister. I came here to see my friend get married, and I shall not be able to offer much sympathy if it does not come to pass.”
“That is your response?”
Zachary nodded. “I would appreciate it if you did finally get married, but either way, I must soon return to my daughter. So, you should probably find out if you are going to have a wife tomorrow or not.”
Philip’s eyes slid back in the direction of the manor, his gaze turned up to Selina’s window.
A curtain twitched… and he knew what he had to do, for he would not lose the only good thing that had happened to him in his thirty years of life, even if it meant admitting that his annoying little sister was right.
For goodness’ sake, Lizzy!
Selina supposed she should have known that Lizzy would go directly to her brother to berate him. She had not been able to hear what her friend had said to Philip, but the gesticulations and motions had been clear enough—Lizzy had gone against her wishes.
“Why would you do that?” Selina sighed, turning her back to the window.
Philip had looked up; she knew he had. But she didn’t think he had seen her looking back.
“You silly thing,” she muttered and padded over to the wardrobe, opening it wide to glance once more at the covered wedding dress.
She still didn’t know if she would ever wear it, though time was ticking away rather quickly. By tomorrow, the wedding day, she would need to make up her mind.
Closing the wardrobe doors on the dress, she walked to the nearest armchair and sank into it. She reached for the cold teapot and poured herself a cup, not bothering to summon anyone for a refreshed tray.
She had just taken her first sip when a knock sounded at the door.
Well, if you are expecting a warm welcome, Lizzy, you shan’t receive it. I asked you not to speak to him.
She was about to call out that very thing to her friend when a masculine voice spoke instead. “Selina?”
Nerves jangled in her veins as she sat bolt upright, almost upending the contents of her teacup.
Philip must have run rather quickly from the gardens to reach her door. What did that mean? Did it mean that Lizzy’s rebuke had worked, or had he perhaps come to chide her for speaking to his sister?
“Selina, may I speak to you?” Philip’s voice came again.
She gulped. “I am unchaperoned.”
The door opened anyway, as if he had just been waiting for her to respond, to know that she was in the room. After the nightmare with Lord Ramsbury, it was to be expected that he would check first.
Selina’s heart somersaulted at the sight of him right there in her chambers, slightly browned by the sun, his hair swept back, his eyes bright with feeling, somehow more handsome than he had been a moment ago when she had seen him in the gardens.
“What do you want?” she asked crisply, recovering.
He moved closer. “I came to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? For what?” She turned her gaze away. It was too hard to look at him, knowing she might have to leave before tomorrow.
He came closer still. “I am sorry for making you doubt me. I am sorry for being cruel. I am sorry for not… thinking of the future but wallowing in the past. I am sorry for hurting you, for thinking I had any right to deny you your dreams when, in truth, they are my dreams too.”
A lump formed in her throat while confusion swirled in her mind. What did that mean? What were his dreams?
“You haven’t been cruel,” she said, frowning.
“I have, in ways I didn’t understand,” he countered. “I was cruel to ask you to marry me while taking away your opportunity to be a mother.”
She cleared her throat. “With respect, you were forced into an engagement with me.”
“And I have never been gladder for any twist of fate,” he said as he stopped in front of her and lowered himself slowly to his knees. “Still, I should not have asked you to give up the idea of children when this is my chance to prove that I do not carry my father’s demons in my blood.”
Selina couldn’t yet bring herself to look at him, in case he was some figment of her imagination saying exactly what she had been hoping to hear. Maybe she had dozed off and was now dreaming. The wake-up would be excruciating, if so.
“My sister, coarse and uncouth though she is, made me realize what an idiot I was being,” he continued. “She painted a picture of Ashbrook Manor as a happy place, filled with our children, our laughter, our love, our joy. Yours and mine.”
Selina could see it, too. Children playing in those immaculate gardens, causing chaos in the hallways and rooms, climbing into bed with her and Philip of a morning to begin the day together as a family.
It was that very vision that had made his refusal so painful.
Our love…
The words fizzed in her mind, a warm thought that tingled all the way to her heart.
“I cannot lose you, Selina,” he said softly, his hand coming to rest on her thigh. “I love you, and I would fight a thousand battles to keep you, even if they are just wars in my mind, waged against a dead man.”
She looked at him at last, her breath catching. “You love me? Truly?”
“I do,” he replied, with such certainty that her feelings felt set in fated stone. “I love you, and I never want to lose you or what we might build together here in this manor. I want the dream of us, my love, and a family of our own—children who shall never know a single moment of cruelty.”
Her heart ached for him, knowing what he had endured. It was a wonder that he had not turned out like his father or that war had not turned him cold and cruel. Indeed, from their first meeting, he had not been the cold and callous man that Lizzy had insisted he was.
Rather than wearing his scars on the outside, he wore them on the inside, and she desperately wished to be the one to help heal them.
But she could not let him think that he had won her over so easily.
“How can I possibly trust you?” she said, shaking her head.
“Because I ran to you when you were in danger, and I would do the same thing over and over if I had to,” he replied.
“But keeping you safe is not enough. I want to keep you happy. Because I love you, and that means I will never hurt you or let you down again, not if I can help it. I want a future with you, my love, with as many children as your heart desires.”
Her breath stuttered. “What… changed your mind?”
She knew Lizzy was part of it, of course, but that could not be everything. He was certainly not the kind of person who listened to his sister much.
“What changed my mind?” he echoed with a smile, his hand sliding up her thigh, her hip, the curve of her waist, his arm curving around her. “You, my love. You.”
He pulled her to him, and his mouth found hers in a fierce, fervent kiss that she couldn’t help but return.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, and his powerful body shifted between her thighs as he pulled her closer, bringing her to the edge of the armchair.
In that moment, she forgave him entirely.