Chapter 26 #3
His eyes lifted to hers. He eased closer, but she sensed the movement had very little to do with her and more to do with whatever tightened the lines of his face. “I wish to God that were true.”
“My lord—”
“No, you cannot think well of me. You cannot be kind.” His brow distressed. “Not now. Not after the proverbial den of lions I allowed you to face alone.”
“I was not alone.” Tom had come. She’d known he’d come. “And I think it would be right, for both of our sakes, to say goodbye with nothing grievous between us.”
“Nothing grievous.” He repeated the words slowly, as if they inebriated him.
“An insurmountable feat, as there is nothing but grief between us. Margaret, I am a coward. You must know that. All this time, you thought well of me for my generosity, and you were too angelic to see that is the deepest my virtues reach.”
“You are brave. If not always in action, then certainly in conviction.”
“Conviction is nothing without performance.”
“I disagree.”
“Only because you still do not know the truth.”
“What?”
Sallowness swept across his complexation. Something about his stance—the way he stood too fast, rushed his hands into his hair—caused alarm to ring through Meg’s temples.
“My lord, speak to me.”
“I cannot. I am a coward, even in this.”
Long, terrible seconds fluttered by. Birds cried melancholy tunes, their echoes bouncing back and forth between the vine-covered courtyard walls.
When Lord Cunningham finally faced her again, a bulging vein of torture cut through his forehead.
“Darling, I lied. Or rather altered the truth in such a way that it would garner your sympathy.”
“My sympathy?”
“Violet is not dying.”
A bolt of denial crackled through Meg. “You are mistaken. The doctor—”
“Is a pessimistic man. My medical studies in company with my initial fears have set his opinion in granite.” Lord Cunningham glanced down at the hardback on the stone bench.
He shrugged. “I think I was so afraid that whatever plagued my father would take Violet from me too. It was easier to imagine the worst than to face the possibility she might only be cursed with debility.”
“How long?” Meg stood on legs that lacked strength. “How long have you suspected her condition was not so severe?”
“Months. Her ability to recover from the fever made me certain.”
“But you did not tell me.”
“No.”
“To what avail?”
“To the avail that if I were so unable to secure your heart … I could, in essence, secure your compassion.” He reached out, and though every part of her body wanted to shrink back, she allowed his hands to grab hers.
His thumb worked slow, repentant circles against her skin. “You understand me now. You see me clearly. In my futile attempts to show you the best of me, I have only ever shown you the worst.”
A fusion of too many emotions overtook her. At first, grief that he had deceived her so long, followed by joy because Violet no longer awaited death. Then it struck Meg with sad but potent force.
The same thing she’d always felt for him.
Pity.
“We are all cowards, my lord.” She leaned forward, hesitated, then pressed the faintest kiss to his tear-trekked cheek. “It was never me who made Penrose Abbey bright for you. No more than it was me you loved.”
“I do love—”
“No, my lord.” She shook her head, ever so slightly, as her heart pulsed with new understanding. “You loved the man I saw when I looked at you. You loved that I saw someone noble, someone I could lean on, who was strong and brave.”
His lips parted, trembled, with acknowledgment of the truth.
“Be that man,” she said before giving one last squeeze to his hands and walking away.
Everything was different here. Warm afternoon air bent the tall grasses like waves rippling across sea-green water. All the bushes Tom watered were a vibrant green.
A little overgrown, a little reckless in their shape.
But flecked with so many flowers, so many white and graceful blooms, that it didn’t matter. The painted red walls drew her closer. How strange that they should mesmerize her like this.
Without warning, a thousand vibrations marched alive inside her. They hummed as she reached the door and stepped across the white-framed threshold. “Tom?”
No one occupied the cottage room.
Like a wanderer long gone but finally come home, she stood a little hesitant and afraid, lifting her straw bonnet to a peg. Her eyes traveled the room.
The chairs Tom made himself.
She smiled.
The braided rug Mrs. Dickey had woven.
A clay vase on the table, where faded purple flowers drooped and lost petals that fell to an open Bible. She approached, touching things, sweeping her fingers over hanging copper pans and the dustless mantel and the curtains she’d sewn herself.
Heavens, she was ridiculous.
For stroking his overturned pipe on the arm of a chair. For finding the metal comb and the pinch of emotion that stuck in her throat. She looked at all of this—these pointless nothings—so lovingly it hurt.
Then she pressed to the window.
Outside, a small flock of birds soared across the hazy summer sky, and the crab apple tree waved its leaves in time to the breeze. Tom sat beneath the boughs. A large basket was nestled beside him, half filled with fruit, and a rickety wooden ladder leaned against the trunk.
He slept.
Linen shirt gaped open at the chest, without his shoes, probably already sunburnt for the thousandth time in his life. Someone should wake him, send him to bed. Someone should be here to wash the fruits, peel them, bake them into tarts for when he woke up.
Dropping the curtain, she slipped back from the cottage and trekked around the side. Her steps were soundless on the grass. When she settled next to him beneath the tree, he didn’t even stir.
She memorized every part of him.
Her eyes drank in his hands, his arms, the knot in his throat, the motion of his chest, until looking wasn’t enough and she touched him.
Her arm slinked around his. Her head fell onto his shoulder.
Tom.
The fear, the anguish of everything was gone—and she loved him. That’s all she knew. He was wonderful, not for anything he’d done in the past but for what he’d done for her now.
For taking her to the water and letting Meg forget her shoes.
For making her laugh in the curiosity shop.
For brushing her hair.
Taking the bullet.
Painting the cottage red.
With a deeper breath, he stirred. A yawn stretched his arms as he took a long, confused look from the crab apple basket to her face. “What are ye doing?”
“I came to see you.”
“Ye shouldnae have come.”
“But I—”
“Ye walked too, didn’t ye?”
“Well, I—”
“Lass, ye’ve no sense. Yer shoulder—”
In one heart-leaping second, she leaned up, grabbed his face, and cut off his reprimand with her lips. She pressed with wildness. Jolts intensified as his reaction wavered from surprise to hunger to whatever it was that wept in her own heart.
Longing so precious, but so long left wanting.
“Lass.” Deep, shuddering.
Her kiss found his cheek, his other cheek, then his mouth in a flurry of excitement. La, but he tasted so familiar. A little tart like crab apples, a little soothing like honey. Her stomach fluttered. “Tom—”
“I just wanted to keep ye, lass.” Why did the words ache? As if they were murmured in pain and wrought from too many days of starved hope.
She dragged her hands back behind his neck. His warm skin flushed her face. “I wish I would have known us … before.”
“Ye would have loved the cottage.”
“I love it now.” She hesitated. Then breathed against his mouth, “I love you.”
“Ye dinnae know me.”
“I do.”
“Och, but there’s things I never told ye. About my brother … the reason he’s dead.”
“I had secrets too. I do not remember when I told you, or why I did, but you must have stayed close enough for me to whisper them in your ear.” Her finger slid beneath one of his eyes, brushing away the trace of moisture.
“I want to be that for you. I want to be so close … that should you ever wish to tell me anything, you need only turn your head and whisper it.”
“Marry me, and I’ll get ye that chair.”
“The wingback?”
“Aye.”
“And you shall sit in it?”
“Aye.”
“Every day?”
“Och, every day.”
“Fine.” She burrowed deeper into him—smiling a little, crying a little too—as he swept one last kiss across her salt-stinging lips. “Return my stockings, Tom McGwen, and it’s a deal.”