Caroline #2
‘But aren’t you—’ he began, but she cut him off.
‘When I was at my lowest point, Frank picked me up. Now it’s my turn to do the same for him. It makes me feel better for all the mistakes I made, rebalances it somehow.’ Almost dejectedly, she repeated Frank’s mantra: ‘It’s what marriage is about.’
He looked at her, concerned. ‘If you and I had married, it would have been about building a life together, about friendship, not what one of us owes the other.’
He got up as if to go to her, but then, thinking better of it, went to the window.
‘Do you know how hard it was, coming home after the war, finding out that you’d married Frank?
I came up here and threw myself into my job.
It was the dogs and horses, the countryside that kept me going, the red deer and the foxes, the hawks in the sky, and the mountains to watch over me. ’
Discomfort crept through her as she acknowledged the reality. ‘Work kept me going, too. When I work, I feel in control of something – good at something – that the more hours I do and the more money I make, somehow I’ll be able to earn some kind of reprieve.’ She stopped, knowing she’d gone too far.
‘Reprieve from what? From Frank? Or from us, of what we did together before marriage?’ He frowned, hurt. ‘That was the best moment of my life, Caroline, and for you, it’s reduced to a sin?’
‘I loved you!’ She felt her voice break. ‘But you vanished. You left me when I needed you most.’ She wrung her hands together. ‘We should have waited until we were married. How many times I’ve cursed myself for not marrying you before you went to war.’
‘Weren’t we married in spirit – at least, that’s how I felt about you,’ he said.
‘It’s why it was so painful when I didn’t hear from you.
I never knew that your letters hadn’t reached me.
Then I came home to discover that you’d married someone else.
’ He swallowed and then added in a quieter voice, ‘It broke me.’
Out of the window, she watched the dark mountains, resilient through everything. The red deer didn’t have to worry about marriage, did they? They did what was natural, as she’d done.
‘Why is this world so complicated?’ she murmured, burying her face in her hands.
He sat back down. ‘I would have done anything for you – anything to stop you from marrying someone else. I remembered Frank from the palace. He was always waiting for you, watching you. I even wondered if he was obsessed with you. No wonder he stepped in after I was gone.’ He paused, as if in deliberation, and then asked, ‘Did you ever love him?’
She shook her head. ‘I put love behind me. When I was young, I assumed that I’d have a loving home, but I’ve come to realize that love is a luxury.’
He got up and came over to her. ‘Caroline, I’m begging you, leave him. Come and live here with me.’
And before she knew it, he got down on one knee in front of her, like he had so many years before. Blood rushed to her head, and she held out her hand to stop him, but he carried on.
‘We’re meant to be together, Caroline. Can’t you see that? Annabel is my daughter, my flesh and blood. Are you going to deny me a relationship with her, and her with me? You saw us together, we’re so alike. She likes me, too. And who knows, we might have more children growing up in our happy home.’
He reached to take her hands, but she pulled away.
‘There’s something you should know. Before I came here, Frank warned me that if I left him, he’d keep Annabel.
No matter what I want to do, I can’t risk losing her, and what’s more, I can’t leave her alone with that man.
’ She clenched her mouth closed to stop herself from crying. ‘I have to put her first.’
‘But,’ he said, unable to take it in, ‘why would Frank want her?’
Suddenly, she felt anger well up inside her, hot and fast. ‘She’s old enough to cook and clean for him – soon he’ll have her washing dead people’s clothes like me, taking over where I left off.’
‘There has to be a way around it. Maybe we can pay him off, find a lawyer who can help us – there must be judges out there who will see the situation for what it is.’ His eyes seemed to beg her.
‘Marry me, please!’ He gestured towards the cottage, his arms outstretched as if encapsulating it in his arms. ‘We can work it out, build a home for our family right here.’
She imagined Annabel at the town school, the cottage filled with their belongings, not Frank’s mess, the place alive with songs and laughter – with conversation.
She imagined herself with her hands on a bump beneath her clothes, the movement of another being inside her, Angus by her side, as he always should have been.
But life isn’t as simple as that.
‘I can’t.’ She drew a great breath. ‘Frank’s name was put on her birth certificate; he made sure of that.’ She could barely breathe with the truth of it. ‘He trapped me, and there’s nothing I can do.’
With a final gaze around the room, she gathered her clothes and ran back up to the bathroom to change.
The dream was over.
No matter how much she longed for a different life, she couldn’t leave the one she was in. This lost chance might haunt her, but she could never live with herself if Frank wrestled Annabel away from her.
Carefully, she took off the shirt Angus had given her, clasping it to her chest and smelling the detergent, smoothing the fabric with her hand, placing it back on the windowsill.
When she walked downstairs, he was putting more logs on the fire.
‘I have to go back to the castle,’ she said, avoiding his gaze. ‘Now that it’s raining, the queen will be back.’
Gently, he nodded, taking his coat and leading her to the car.
Silence fell over them as he drove away, and then she said, ‘I think it’s best that we don’t meet anymore. It’s just too hard.’
‘If that’s what you want,’ he said quietly, his eyes on the road ahead.
‘If I have to come to Balmoral or you to London, we have to avoid each other.’
‘What about Annabel? I’d like to keep in touch with her.’
‘I’ll tell her that she can write to you,’ she said. ‘That’ll have to do for now.’
He didn’t reply, the only sound coming from the wipers going back and forth, back and forth, the road blurred by rain, the mountains swamped by clouds.
As they drew to a halt outside the back entrance of the castle, she turned to him, swallowing back a sob. ‘You don’t know how much I’d rather things were different.’
‘I understand,’ he said so softly that she longed to throw her arms around him, tell him to never let her go.
But she forced herself to get out. Before she left, she turned and murmured, ‘I’ll never forget you’ through the car window, and their eyes met one final time, and she saw him mouth the words, ‘I love you.’
And tears poured down her face with the rain as the car vanished down the road.
Even though he’d gone, there she stood, the deluge soaking her clothes all over again, like it was draining away every last ounce of happiness she’d ever had.
For an awful moment, she wondered if she was making a mistake, that it might work out – Frank didn’t want Annabel, did he?
The girl was too headstrong, too opinionated.
But in the back of her mind, she knew he’d take the girl out of spite.
He’d iron the confidence out of her before long, just as he had with Caroline.
And Caroline couldn’t let that happen.
Smoothing the rain from her coat, she turned back to the castle.
She had to stop dwelling in the past, had to work harder on her marriage.
But most of all, she had to forget about Angus. Now that she knew he loved her, living without him was going to be the biggest challenge she would ever have to face.