Chapter Nine #3
Her weight against his side. The brush of her skirts against his legs.
The warmth of her body through the layers of fabric.
He had danced with her dozens of times, held her in the proper positions of the waltz and the cotillion, and none of it had ever felt like this this enforced intimacy, this necessity of closeness.
"There." He eased her down onto the seat. "Is that better?"
"Much. Thank you." She arranged her skirts around her, her movements careful and precise. When she looked up at him, there was something in her expression he could not quite read something cautious and questioning and perhaps a little afraid. "You are being very kind."
"Anyone would do the same."
"No. They would not." She held his gaze steadily. "Most gentlemen would have sent for help immediately. They would not have…" She stopped, colour rising in her cheeks.
"Would not have what?"
"Examined my ankle themselves." The words came out in a rush, as though she were confessing to something shameful. "Touched me as you did."
"I was concerned for your welfare."
"Were you?"
The question hung between them, weighted with implications neither of them was prepared to voice. Martin knew he should deflect, should make some witty remark that would restore the comfortable distance between them. It was what he had always done. What he had trained himself to do.
But the words would not come.
Instead, he lowered himself onto the bench beside her, not close enough to touch, but close enough that he could smell the rosewater in her hair, could see the faint dusting of freckles across her nose that the sun had brought out.
The groom had been dispatched to fetch a carriage; they were, for the moment, quite alone.
"You asked me earlier what had changed," he said slowly. "I told you nothing had. That was not... entirely true."
Vanessa went very still. "Oh?"
"Something has changed. I cannot tell you what, not yet, perhaps not ever, but something has shifted, and I find myself... unsettled."
"Unsettled by what?"
By you. By the knowledge of what you feel for me. By the impossibility of my situation.
"By circumstances beyond my control," he said. "By truths I was not meant to know."
Her breath caught. For a moment something flickered in her eyes. Fear, perhaps. Or recognition. Or some complicated mixture of both that he did not know how to interpret.
"What truths?"
He should not have said anything. He was walking too close to the edge, risking everything on words that revealed too much.
But there was something about this moment, the quiet of the park around them, the intimacy of their shared solitude, the lingering electricity of their earlier contact that made him reckless.
"Merely that the world is more complicated than I had believed," he said, retreating into vagueness. "And that certain... certainties... have proven less certain than I thought."
"You are speaking in riddles."
"I know. Forgive me. I do not mean to be obscure." He turned to face her, struck again by her nearness, by the intelligence in her eyes, by everything about her that had fascinated him for six years. "May I ask you something?"
"You may ask. I cannot promise to answer."
"Do you ever feel that there are things you wish to say things that press against your lips, demanding utterance, but you cannot speak them? Because speaking them would change everything, and you are not certain the change would be for the better?"
Vanessa was silent for a long moment. Her hands were folded in her lap, her fingers twisting together in a gesture he had seen before, a nervous habit she had never quite managed to break. When she spoke, her voice was soft.
"Every day."
"Then you understand my predicament."
"Perhaps." She looked down at her hands, stilling their restless movement. "Or perhaps I simply have my own predicament, and recognise a fellow sufferer."
"What is your predicament?"
She laughed…a small, sad sound that seemed to catch in her throat. "That, Lord Montehood, I am not at liberty to say."
His own words, turned back upon him and he did indeed deserve that.
"Then we are both keeping secrets," he said.
"It would appear so."
"Is that not exhausting? Carrying the weight of unspoken things?"
"Dreadfully exhausting." She met his eyes, and there was something raw in her gaze, a vulnerability he had rarely seen from her. "But the alternative is worse."
"Is it?"
"You tell me. Would you have your secrets exposed? All the things you keep hidden, laid bare for the world to see?"
The letters flashed through his mind. Her secrets, already exposed…at least to him. The thought made him feel sick with guilt. He knew things about her that she had never meant anyone to know. He had read her private thoughts, her deepest yearnings and her most intimate confessions.
And she had no idea.
"No," he admitted. "I would not."
"Then you understand why some things must remain unsaid."
He did understand. That was precisely the problem.
They sat in silence for a moment, the weight of unspoken things pressing down upon them both.
A bird sang somewhere in the branches above, its melody bright and oblivious to the tension below.
The morning sun had climbed higher, burning off the last of the mist, and the park was beginning to stir with other riders, other walkers and the ordinary business of the day intruding upon their private interlude.
"May I ask you something else?" Martin said at last.
"You may."
"Do you believe that some truths are better left unspoken? Even if the speaking of them might bring about a... a desirable outcome?"
Vanessa considered the question carefully. "I believe," she said slowly, "that truth is a double-edged sword. It can heal, but it can also wound. And sometimes the wound is not worth the healing."
"And if the healing might be worth the wound? If the truth, painful as it might be, could lead to something... better?"
"Then I suppose one must weigh the risks." She turned to look at him fully, her green eyes searching his face. "Why do you ask? Is there some truth you are contemplating to reveal?"
Yes, he thought. I am contemplating telling you that I read your letters. That I know what you feel for me. That I feel it too, and have felt it for six years, and the knowledge that you share my affliction has made it impossible to maintain the careful distance I have cultivated for so long.
"Perhaps," he said. "I have not yet decided."
"Then I shall offer you this advice, for what it is worth.
" She paused, her expression growing serious.
"If you speak your truth and are rejected, you will have lost nothing but a hope that was perhaps false to begin with.
But if you remain silent, you will never know what might have been.
And that, I believe is a heavier burden to carry than any rejection. "
The words struck him with unexpected force. Was that what she believed? That the pain of not knowing was worse than the pain of being refused?
He thought of her letters, of the years she had spent hoping and doubting and never daring to speak. She had chosen silence, and it had brought her nothing but suffering.
Perhaps she was right. Perhaps silence was the heavier burden after all.
***
The carriage arrived within the half hour, as promised.
Martin saw it approaching along the path and felt a curious mix of relief and disappointment.
Relief, because the tension between them had grown nearly unbearable, and he did not trust himself to maintain his composure much longer.
Disappointment, because once the carriage bore her away, this strange interlude would be over, and he would be left alone with his thoughts and his guilt and the letters that waited in his desk.
He helped Vanessa to her feet, supporting her weight as she limped toward the vehicle.
Her groom hovered nearby, clearly uncertain how to assist without overstepping, and Martin found himself reluctant to cede his position.
This was his task. He had been the one to help her.
He was not ready to hand her off to someone else.
The possessiveness of the thought startled him.
"I can manage from here," Vanessa said as they reached the carriage door. Her voice was carefully controlled, betraying nothing of whatever she might be feeling.
"Nonsense. Your ankle is injured. Please allow me to assist you inside."
She hesitated, her eyes searching his face for something he could not identify. Then she nodded. "Very well."
He handed her up into the carriage, his palm pressed against hers, his other hand steadying her elbow. She was light in his grasp, lighter than he had expected and he found himself lifting her more than guiding her, taking more of her weight than was strictly necessary.
The contact was brief, entirely proper and yet it sent a jolt of awareness through him that he felt in his very bones. Her fingers curled around his for just a moment longer than required, and when she released him, he felt the absence.
"Thank you," she said once she was settled against the squabs. Her injured ankle was propped on the opposite seat, her skirts arranged carefully around it. "For everything. The rescue, the examination, the... conversation."
"It was my pleasure."
"Was it?" She tilted her head, studying him with those sharp green eyes. "You seemed rather tormented throughout."
"Did I? I thought I was being admirably composed."
"You were composed. That is not the same as untormented.
" She paused, something flickering in her expression, something that might have been sympathy, or understanding, or perhaps simply curiosity.
"Whatever is troubling you, Martin, whatever truth you have learned that you were not meant to know… I hope you find some peace with it."
"And I hope your ankle heals swiftly."
"That is not what I meant."