Chapter 55 Jude
Jude
Elden brought them to a cottage a few hours’ walk away from the Abbey.
A quaint, sea-worn structure nestled in a quiet cove outside Little Westworth he claimed had once belonged to his grandmother, Brigid’s mother.
It had a small dock jutting into the sea where a two-person boat bobbed, a rusted fishing contraption secured to the back of it.
The sides of the cottage were whitewashed plaster; the roof, door, and windows framed in dark wood.
As Elden pushed open the door and ushered them inside, Jude felt something in him break off and release.
This was Elden’s home. Not Jude’s house. Not ánhaga – here.
It was all his, from the stack of hand-stitched quilts in a basket by the oversized, frayed sofa to the scored wood of the small dining table. It smelled of dried flowers and sea breeze and something unmistakably Elden.
He’d been forced to leave all this to come to Jude. Guilt dug talons into his stomach.
Elden lowered himself onto the sofa with a groan, propping his socked feet on the table in front of him. A contented smile hung on his lips. The rest of them stood in the small kitchen, exchanging confused glances with each other as he prepared to settle in for a long, well-earned nap.
‘Shall I…’ Maeve trailed off. She turned, opening a cupboard at random. Glass cups sat in a neat row, covered in a faint sheen of dust. ‘Right.’
Jude watched her stilted movements, a lump of uncertainty forming in his throat.
She’d been… off on the walk here. Felix had asked them both their plans now that they were free from the Abbey, with Maeve replying that she’d like to find her family as soon as she could.
Immediately, if she could help it. There was a finality in her tone; a stress on her singularity that he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined.
He’d turned her words over in his head again and again, nudging them like a sore tooth.
He wanted them to stay together. More than anything.
But he needed her to choose – choose him.
To stay or to go or anything in between.
He was hers entirely. He’d felt what it was like to be nearly ripped apart, and he’d come out the other side a changed man.
She’d taken someone broken beyond repair and would leave behind someone…
not quite whole, but getting there. It was more than he could have asked for when he’d considered what his recovery might look like.
No more running, no more hiding. Jude wanted her. In every way she would have him. And so, when Felix had asked him what his plans were, he’d replied in the simplest way he could. He wanted to go home.
Home was ánhaga; home was Maeve.
If she wished to hear him beg her to stay or to allow him to go with her to find her family, he would. He would gladly get down on his knees and give her anything she asked for.
She just needed to look at him first.
‘There should be something to eat around here somewhere.’ Elden pushed back to his feet with a grunt. ‘I’ll go to the village tomorrow and get something that hasn’t been preserved.’
He disappeared through the back door. The sound of clanging jars and muted muttering followed. Maeve busied herself filling the kettle with water, making tea with short, jerky movements. Felix caught his eye after she closed a cupboard with startling force, raising an eyebrow.
Before he could muster a response, Elden returned with his arms full.
Soon, they were gulping down bowls of sticky porridge and chewing on hunks of dried salted cod.
The porridge was virtually tasteless without sugar or milk, but it eased the ache in their bellies.
After their dishes were cleaned, Elden pulled blankets from a cupboard under the narrow, rickety set of stairs leading up to the loft.
‘Here,’ he shoved a quilt into Jude’s hands, eyes jumping between him and Maeve. ‘I have a bedroom, there’s the sofa and my grandmother’s old room—’ he jerked his chin up the stairs ‘—up there.’
‘I’ll sleep down here,’ Felix said quickly. His eyes danced with a faint amusement at the staunch distance between Jude and Maeve. She shifted, gaze moving to the floor.
‘I’ll be in my room down the hall,’ Elden said. ‘You two…’
Jude swallowed down the nervousness that had begun to collect somewhere behind his breastbone.
Did Maeve even want to be alone with him?
He risked a glance in her direction. She hadn’t looked up from the ground.
Redness had begun to trace its way down her neck, disappearing down the front of her soot-stained habit.
‘There’s a bath upstairs, should you like to use it,’ Elden continued, breaking the fraught silence. With that, he spun on his heel and disappeared down the hall, clearly wanting to escape the palpable tension. Maeve startled at the faint snick of the door that followed.
He turned to her. ‘I can sleep here on the floor if you’d rather be alone.’
Dark eyes met his, faintly glassy in the candlelight. ‘Why would I want that?’
Jude shrugged helplessly.
The candle between her clenched fingers cast the stairs in a honey glow as they ascended.
He was reminded of their first night together.
A night full of storms, inside and out. How she’d stood in her shift made sheer by rainwater with fire in her eyes.
How he’d known, from that moment onward, that he was completely and irrevocably fucked.
Maeve eased open the door. The bedroom was larger than he’d expected. Its roof was peaked in the middle, the slatted wood a faded white. A window looked out towards the sea beyond. Just under it, lit by a shaft of moonlight, was a single large bed.
Through a door on the left, he glimpsed a bathroom fitted with a sink, a mirror rusted around the edges, and a copper tub placed under a round window. It was a luxurious contraption for a sea cottage, big enough that he reckoned he could lie flat along the bottom.
He knelt beside the tub and flicked on one of the taps. After a heaving groan and a concerning amount of gurgling, water thundered down to hit the base of the tub. He tested it with his fingers, adjusting the taps until the mixture coming out was a comfortable temperature.
Clothing rustled behind him. Moonlight turned the stream to silver.
‘Jude.’
Maeve’s voice was little more than a whisper, but he flinched all the same.
He thought he knew her by now. Knew her mannerisms, her habits. How her voice sounded when she was nervous or angry or joyful. But now… he had no idea what to expect from her.
‘Jude,’ she repeated louder. Her footsteps came closer. He remained with both hands braced on the side of the tub, his head bowed in the space between them. He closed his eyes when her fingers brushed the back of his neck.
‘I want you to come with me to find my family. And then I want to go home with you.’ Her exhale sent shivers up and down his back. ‘If that’s what you want, too.’
Relief flooded him. ‘You do?’
‘I don’t want to go anywhere without you,’ she admitted.
The heat of her body brushed against his side, and Jude wanted to look, he did, but the vicious lump in his throat held him in place. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but the thought of looking into her eyes while he did so terrified him more than anything else.
But he had to say something. He had to access that hidden well of bravery – for her.
‘Maeve,’ he began. He kept his eyes cinched shut, even when her hand drifted up to palm the back of his skull, her fingernails raking through the short strands. She was the only one he’d let touch him there. ‘About the inn.’
‘No, please, wait,’ she interrupted. ‘I want to apologize. I pushed you far more than I should have that night. I shouldn’t have just mauled you—’
‘I did want… I do want that with you,’ Jude said. ‘I want everything. I was just afraid. Overwhelmed. I wasn’t sure how to handle it. And—’ he hesitated, huffing out a short breath. ‘I haven’t before. Ever.’
Though he desperately wanted to see her face, the weight of her silence kept his eyes closed.
The air shifted as Maeve knelt beside him. He finally allowed himself to look at her. Her eyes were wide, mouth parted. The depth of feeling on her face was enough to take his breath away.
‘Do you have any idea what you mean to me?’ she murmured. ‘Even if you never wanted to go further than holding hands—’ Jude snorted, shaking his head, but she pressed on ‘—it would be enough. You are enough.’
He kissed the back of her hand, resting next to his. Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks. ‘I don’t want to disappoint you,’ he whispered. It hurt to admit, but he didn’t want anything between them, even something as uncomfortable as his insecurities.
‘Not possible.’ Her mouth was only a breath away.
‘Trust me. I’ve never… never cared for someone like I do you.
Never wanted someone more than I want you.
It scares me too, you know.’ He raised an eyebrow, and she nodded.
‘It’s a frightening thing, opening yourself up to that kind of vulnerability with another person. But it’s also a gift.’
‘I want that,’ Jude whispered.
Maeve stood. She’d shed her habit back in the bedroom, wrapping a quilt around her shoulders in its stead.
She held it together with a hand clamped between her breasts.
Candlelight gilded her pale skin, sliding into every hollow, every smooth plane in the same way Jude wanted to. With his hands, his mouth.
The light was golden, but this was a different kind of magic.
She smiled. ‘Do you remember how we used to sneak into the kitchens every Thursday and steal the honey biscuits? I was always nervous we’d get caught, and that time we did—’ she laughed, covering her mouth with her palm.
‘You told the cook you thought you heard mice in your room. You wanted mint leaves to get rid of them because they hated the smell. Mint leaves, Jude. Of all the things.’
‘It worked though, didn’t it?’ he replied, grinning. ‘We didn’t get in trouble. And, if I remember correctly—’ he pushed to his feet and moved towards her. Her breath hitched as he neared. ‘You got your biscuits anyway, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. And the whole Abbey was checked for mice.’
‘Sounds like everything worked out perfectly, then.’
Her smile widened. ‘Yes, it did.’
He took another step closer. Let himself fully sink into the moment, into the reality of her.
Everything he dreamed of and everything he would finally let himself have.
Without guilt, or fear, or insecurity – any of those cloying emotions that had festered at the bottom of the lightless well alongside him.
He’d lived so many years in the dark. No more.
He brought his hands to his collar. Every movement felt fluid, dreamlike as he pulled off the habit Ezra had forced him into and let it fall to his feet. Beneath, he wore a simple white shirt and the same trousers he’d left his home in.
Maeve picked up the candle and blew it out. Their eyes met and held; a thousand promises and whispered words filling the space between them.
She let the quilt drop to the floor.