Chapter Seventeen #2
He had chosen this. Chosen the loneliness, the quiet misery, the slow unravelling of the fragile happiness he had only just begun to believe in.
He might have kept her. He might have fought for her.
He might have written to her father and defied the consequences, married her despite the scandal and let the world think what it pleased.
But he had not.
Because he was afraid. Because he had spent his entire life learning how to retreat, how to endure, how to surrender before hope could betray him.
“I am sorry,” he murmured to the empty room. “Fiona… I am so very sorry.”
But sorrow changed nothing. It never had.
Several days after her departure—or perhaps it was weeks; time had lost all proper shape—Christian ventured outside for the first time.
The day was grey, the sky low with clouds that threatened rain but never quite delivered it.
He walked the grounds of Thornwick without direction, his feet carrying him along paths he had trodden a hundred times before.
The gardens were bedraggled, the hedges overgrown.
The whole place seemed abandoned. Neglected. Dying.
Like him.
He found himself at the cliff’s edge before he realised where his feet were taking him.
The sea churned below, grey and restless, waves striking the rocks with a relentless force that echoed the turmoil within his chest. The wind tugged at his hair and coat, stinging his eyes until the tears that gathered there could not be distinguished from the salt air.
He stood at the very brink and looked down.
He felt nothing.
No fear. No vertigo. No instinctive impulse to step back from the precipice.
Only emptiness.
I could do it, he thought. One step forward, and it would be finished. The pain, the grief, the long procession of days without her. All of it—ended in an instant.
He had stood here before, on the night she followed him, the night they quarrelled and he drove her away. Even then, the thought had lingered somewhere at the edge of his mind—the dark, persuasive promise of oblivion.
It was louder now.
More insistent.
She is gone. She will not come back. What purpose is there in continuing?
He lifted one foot, hovering for a moment above the empty air.
The wind rose around him with a hollow cry, and somewhere within its restless voice he heard another.
Her voice.
The words she had spoken that night, fierce and unyielding and full of love.
You are worthy, Christian. You have always been worthy.
He stilled.
And I will spend the rest of my life regretting that I could not make you see it.
His foot hovered above empty air. One inch more and it would be too late. One inch more and the choice would be made.
I will never stop hoping that you’ll change your mind.
She was waiting.
Somewhere beyond the cliffs and fields and distant roads, Fiona Hart was waiting for him. She had said it herself—had promised it even as she walked away. Waiting. Hoping. Refusing to surrender her faith in him, even when he had surrendered it himself.
Could he truly betray that faith?
Could he step forward now, knowing she might spend the rest of her life wondering whether she had failed him—whether there had been something more she might have said or done?
I shall love you for the remainder of my days, he had written.
Had he meant it?
Or had it been nothing more than words—hollow promises scratched upon paper in a moment of weakness?
Christian stepped back from the edge.
The strength left his legs at once. He sank to the damp grass, breath tearing from his lungs as his heart hammered violently against his ribs. His hands trembled; his whole body shook with the terrible knowledge of what he had nearly done.
He had nearly ended it.
Nearly stepped into the void and let the sea claim him.
Nearly—
He bowed his head and pressed his brow to the cold earth.
And he wept.
He wept for Fiona, and for himself, and for the future he had so nearly cast away.
He wept for the lonely boy he had once been, taught too early to believe himself unworthy of kindness.
He wept for the man he had become—so shaped by that childhood that he could scarcely recognise love when it stood before him.
He wept until his throat burned and his body ached with the violence of it.
And when the storm of grief finally passed, something within him had changed.
He could not yet name it. He did not know whether it would prove strong enough.
But lying there upon the cliff, with the wind sweeping over the grass and the sea sounding far below, Christian Hale reached a quiet understanding.
He would not die here.
He would not surrender to despair.
He would find a way to mend what he had broken—to reclaim what he had thrown aside—to become, at last, the man Fiona had always believed him capable of being.
For the first time in his life, he would choose courage.
That night, Mrs Blackley found him in the kitchen.
He was sitting at the servants’ table, eating a bowl of stew with the single-minded focus of a man who had not had a proper meal in weeks.
His hair was still wild, his beard still unkempt, his clothes still dishevelled—but there was something different in his expression.
Something that looked almost like determination.
“Your Grace.” Mrs Blackley’s voice was carefully neutral. “You are eating.”
“I am.”
“May I enquire what prompted this sudden return of appetite?”
Christian set down his spoon and looked at her.
“I very nearly did something unforgivable today,” he said quietly. “Something that would have wounded every person who has ever cared for me. Something that would have confirmed, once and for all, that I am precisely what the world has always believed me to be.”
Mrs Blackley’s face lost what little colour it possessed. “Your Grace—”
“I did not do it.” He lifted a hand gently to forestall her. “I stopped myself. Because I remembered what she said. What she asked of me.” He drew in a steady breath. “She asked me to be brave. She asked me to fight. And I have been far too occupied with my own misery to do either.”
“And now?”
“Now…” He glanced down at the bowl before him—the plain, hearty stew the cook had prepared for the servants’ supper. “Now I shall finish this meal. Tomorrow I shall bathe, shave, and present myself as a civilised human being once more. And after that…”
He paused.
“After that, I shall discover how I might persuade her to forgive me.”
Mrs Blackley’s eyes shone faintly. “You truly mean it?”
“I do.” He met her gaze, and for the first time in many days, there was something steady and resolute in his expression.
“I have spent most of my life being afraid. Afraid of rejection, afraid of love, afraid of hope itself. But I find I am far more afraid of a life without her. Far more afraid of spending the rest of my days wondering what might have been.”
“And what will you do, Your Grace?”
Christian lifted his spoon again and resumed eating.
“I have not yet determined that,” he said between bites. “But I intend to find out.”