Chapter Eighteen #2
“You are very kind, Lord Weston. But some burdens cannot easily be shared.”
He inclined his head, accepting the rebuff with graceful good humour.
“Then I shall simply endeavour to provide agreeable distraction. Might I have the pleasure of driving with you in the park tomorrow afternoon?”
She should refuse.
She knew she should refuse.
Every moment spent in Lord Weston’s company was a small deception, a performance of possibility she did not truly feel.
But Lady Ashworth’s words echoed faintly in her thoughts.
Protect yourself. Leave the door open to happiness.
“I should be delighted,” she heard herself say.
Lord Weston smiled, and Fiona returned the smile, though neither of them spoke of the shadow that lingered between them—the ghost of a man who was not there, who might never be there, yet whose presence Fiona felt in every hour of every day.
That night, unable to sleep, Fiona sat at the small writing desk in her chamber and did what had become her habit on restless evenings since arriving in London.
She drew.
The sketchbook had been a gift from Lady Ashworth, presented with a knowing look and no explanation. Fiona had accepted it without comment and had since filled its pages with images she seemed unable to stop producing.
Thornwick Castle rising from the cliffs like something half-remembered from a dream.
The yellow parlour, rendered in careful detail from memory.
The library, with its towering shelves and deep leather chairs.
The ruined chapel in the mist, wildflowers threading through the ancient stones.
And Christian.
Always, eventually, Christian.
She drew him as she had first seen him—a towering silhouette in the storm, hair whipped by the wind, his coat streaming behind him.
She drew him in the training hall, shirt open, the birthmark visible across his chest, fierce and magnificent and utterly unaware of it.
She drew him sleeping, his face softened in rest, one arm reaching instinctively toward the empty space beside him.
Sometimes she drew only the birthmark itself, again and again, filling page after page with that wine-dark shape. She knew its contours as intimately as she knew her own hands—had traced it with her fingers, her lips, her tongue. It was a map of him, she thought. The geography of the man she loved.
She was adding shading to a sketch of his profile when she realised she was crying.
The tears fell silently, dripping onto the paper and blurring the careful lines she had drawn.
She watched them fall without attempting to stop them.
What did it matter? There was no one to see.
No one to comfort her. No one to hold her in the quiet darkness and promise that everything would somehow be well.
I shall love you for the remainder of my days.
His words, written on a single sheet of paper now tucked carefully into her reticule beside the handkerchief that still faintly carried his scent. She had read the letter so often she could recite it from memory, could hear his voice shaping the words as clearly as if he stood beside her.
But he was not beside her.
He was hundreds of miles away in his crumbling castle, perhaps persuading himself even now that he had done the right thing. Perhaps drinking too much and sleeping too little, allowing the old loneliness to reclaim him—just as it had before she came.
She wanted to save him. Wanted to return to Thornwick and throw open every door he had closed, to drag him into the light whether he wished it or not.
But courage could not be forced upon another person.
She could not make him choose love over fear.
She could only wait—and hope—and trust that somewhere within him the man she loved was fighting his way free.
Please, she thought, closing the sketchbook and pressing it against her chest. Please, Christian. Find your courage. Come back to me.
The night gave no answer.
At last, exhausted, Fiona slipped into bed and surrendered to sleep.
She dreamt of Thornwick. Of Christian. Of a future that might never come to pass.
And when she woke the next morning, her pillow was damp with tears she did not remember shedding.
***
The days continued to pass.
Fiona attended balls and soirées. She danced with Lord Weston and half a dozen other eligible gentlemen. She smiled, curtsied, and exchanged the required pleasantries, and no one seemed to notice that her heart was absent from all of it.
Lady Ashworth noticed, of course. But she possessed the tact not to comment, merely observing Fiona with those keen, knowing eyes and occasionally sighing when she believed herself unobserved.
Her mother noticed as well—and was considerably less discreet.
“You must make more of an effort,” Helena Hart declared during one of her increasingly frequent visits. “Lord Weston is clearly interested, and his family appears willing to overlook your… indiscretion… in light of your other advantages. You cannot afford to squander such an opportunity.”
“I am not squandering anything, Mother.”
“You are,” her mother insisted. “You drift through these events like a ghost, Fiona. No spirit, no animation, no enthusiasm. How do you expect to secure a proposal when you appear as though you would rather be anywhere else?”
Because I would, Fiona thought. Because there is only one place I wish to be, and one man I wish to be with—and neither of them are here.
But she did not say it.
In these weeks of exile, she had learned to keep her true feelings carefully concealed—to present the world with a pleasant, empty composure while her heart quietly fractured beneath it.
“I will try harder,” she said instead. “I promise.”
Her mother appeared unconvinced but allowed the matter to drop.
That night, Fiona took out the handkerchief again.
She pressed it to her face, breathing deeply, searching for the scent that had once clung so strongly to the linen.
It was almost gone now.
The sandalwood. The soap. The indefinable trace that was simply Christian.
In another few weeks, it would be nothing more than cloth—a square of linen embroidered with a birthmark that meant nothing to anyone but her.
And then what would remain?
Memories. Sketches. A letter whose folds had begun to wear thin from constant reading.
It was not enough.
It would never be enough.
But it was all she had.
***
One month after her departure from Thornwick, a letter arrived.
It was not from Christian—she would have known his handwriting instantly—but from Mrs Blackley, written in a careful, deliberate hand that suggested the housekeeper was not accustomed to personal correspondence.