Chapter 15
Hester loved sleeping beside her husband, but lately it had been difficult because he wasn’t sleeping, and she didn’t know what to do. For once, she wished that Alabaster was with her, but the happy fellow now often chose to sleep in the nursery with all the children who adored him.
She could use the assurance of a purring cat. But things, if she were honest, were likely beyond even that.
She didn’t know how to help Calchas because he had seemed the sort to help everyone else and to never need assistance. She’d known that men like him, men like her first husband, felt the need to go out into the world and explore.
She’d been prepared for that, but this was something altogether different.
He almost vibrated. It reminded her of a piano when it was being tuned, and someone hit the string and it shook with taut force, producing a sound.
And if he did produce a sound, it would’ve been one of pure torture, and that tortured her in turn because the idea that she was causing him pain was so terrible.
She wanted to scream with it. He was being silent and stoic, neither of which she thought helped.
She knew that he did not want to hurt her. He was even holding her in his arms here in the night with the fire crackling in the hearth, as he struggled silently.
Their shared chamber in Heron House was so beautiful. He had everything. So did she, and yet he was not content. He was holding himself prisoner in his mind.
Or was she the one holding him prisoner?
Was she now his jailer? She swallowed; she could not take it anymore.
She could not allow him to live like this, and certainly not for her, because if she was quite honest, she couldn’t be the cause of such a life, nor could she allow the father of her future children to be in so much pain.
So, though it was terrifying and she didn’t even really know what to say, she placed her hand over his heart and whispered in the firelight, “Are you going to tell me what it is?”
His breathing changed, but he said nothing. Then all she could hear under her ear was the pounding of his heart, suddenly accelerating.
His already tense body seemed to tense anew. “Hester?” he queried.
“Yes, Calchas?” she said, praying he would confess his difficulties.
“You don’t need to worry about it.”
It was the last thing she wished to hear, so she could not stop her snort. “That is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Of course I need to worry about it. I worry about you.”
“You don’t need to,” he insisted. “I am capable. I am strong.”
“Good God,” she gritted, suddenly sitting up, staring down at him, unwilling to tolerate this standoff any longer. “Are you really going to act like this?”
He blinked. Astonished. “Like what?”
“Like I’m a fragile piece of porcelain. You know what I have been through.”
“Exactly,” he returned, staring up at her. “I know what you have been through, and I refuse to put you through anything similar.”
“Well, you are,” she returned honestly.
“What?” he gasped, his eyes widening. He shoved himself up onto his elbows, the covers spilling down his sculpted torso.
“You are putting me through a great deal because I know that you are not well,” she said quietly. “Something is amiss.”
For several painful minutes, he stared at her as a war unfolded inside him.
“I feel like I should have warned you,” he ground out finally. “My entire family should have warned you what could happen.”
“What?” she breathed as a wave of fear crashed over her. “Are you sick? Is something wrong? Have the doctors told you—”
“No, I don’t need doctors because if I saw a doctor, they might try to send me away.”
“Where?” she demanded. “The seaside for a bit of air? If you need to go, you should.”
He winced. “No, not like that. My father…” Calchas began slowly. “He always… I can’t explain it easily,” he lamented.
“Your father is the best of men.”
“My father is half madman,” he replied without any cruelty.
She smiled, refusing to let her own fear grow at the power and warning in his words. “And thank God for it. More people should be like him.”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” he protested.
“I know,” she whispered. “I’ve seen him. Anyone who has a brain knows that your father walks a line and that sometimes he is at ease and other times he is not. Even in these short months, Calchas, I have noticed your brother Nestor has it to some degree too. As do you,” she finished.
A muscle clenched in his jaw. “What? What do I have?”
She pressed her lips together, trying to decide how best to say it.
But there was no best way, so she rushed, “You try to control it so terribly, but it’s in your eyes.
There’s a glint there that sometimes suggests to me that you are close to some sort of edge.
You are like a teapot that longs to give out steam, and you’re not allowing yourself to, and that is a great danger.
You must cease that. Go to sea, if you have to.
I shall be perfectly well. I have the tea shop. Nothing will bother me.”
“Don’t say that,” he said, his voice hollow as if he was losing himself. “You need me.”
“Of course I need you,” she assured, longing to hold onto him, but fearing he needed to be set free more than anything else. “But I need you well. So if you have to go, then go.”
He stared at her. “You want me to leave?”
Her throat tightened. “I want you to be happy.”
“You make me happy, Hester.”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
She hated to admit the truth, but there it was. “I don’t think anything can make you happy, Calchas, except for what you need to do.”
He looked away as if he was ashamed. “I thought… I thought…”
The horror of it hit her. Finally. All the pieces came together and she understood. Somehow she managed to rasp, “You thought marrying me was going to fix you.”
His silence spoke volumes.
Her heart wrenched. “And it hasn’t,” she said softly.
“No, it hasn’t,” he replied. “But I love you,” he declared with a ferocity that was on the verge of being frightening. “There’s no question.”
“And I love you,” she said, knowing it was true, because only love could cause her so much pain, so much need to help him. Tears, silly, silly tears, filled her eyes. How she wished in many ways that she could go back to being untouchable by emotion, but she could not. There was no going back.
Though it nearly killed her, she licked her lips and said, “No one can fix another person. Not really. All I can do is give you the same things that you have given me.”
He turned and looked back at her. “What do you mean?”
“You have given me my dreams, Calchas, and more.” Every word was painful.
Every word was forced out, but Hester had to say them.
There was no choice, not if she was going to help the man she loved.
“I have nothing to complain about and everything to celebrate. Allow me to do the same for you. Go after your dreams. Sail the world. I will be waiting for you here. It is what a sailor’s wife does.
I am no fool. I knew that it could happen when you asked me to wed. ”
Though she had prayed it never would.
He sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side, burying his head in his hands. “I hate myself for this.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “You can’t do that.”
“But I can,” he lamented. “I’m a disappointment to myself. This should be enough. It should be more than enough. You are enough.”
She grabbed his hands and pulled them from his face, forcing him to see her. “I know I am enough.”
“Then why do I feel this way?” he bit out. “Why am I tormented by this?”
His breath was coming sharp and fast. He pulled his hand from hers, stood, and hauled on his breeches and boots.
He began to pace before the fire. “I’m afraid of where this is going.
I know how my father can barely control himself sometimes.
I thought I had made it past all this. I did not think this could come for me in the same sort of storms that it comes for him. ”
“Calchas,” she breathed, drawing on her own robe, suddenly vulnerable with him in a way she had never felt. Her own fear ratcheted up as she watched him cross back and forth, like a building hurricane, his hair wild and his eyes haunted. “You will be all right. Everything will be all right.”
But he did not look all right. He looked like a tiger in a small cage, like the one she had read about at the Tower of London, and she wanted to free him, but in freeing him, would he turn on her?
Tigers did turn.
There was no question about that.
He stared at her for a long moment. “I hope you can forgive me for this. I hope you can forgive me for being so selfish, for marrying you when this is how I am.”
She stood and crossed to him, not caring, not caring anymore, and she tried to grab his hands. “Do not be ridiculous,” she said. “You have given me everything, and I love you, and this is the life that I have chosen. I will never retreat from you.”
He kept out of her grasp and began to back away from her slowly.
“I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I didn’t know this would happen to me when I left the war.
” A look of unmitigated horror flashed over his face.
“I think the war was keeping me in check, and that’s gone now, and now I don’t know what to do. I thought…”
“I know,” she whispered. “You thought that I would keep you in check, like your mother does your father. We will find the answer, Calchas, I promise.”
“What if there is no answer?” he asked frantically. Then he shook his head, continuing to back away. “I can’t. I can’t,” he whispered.
And then, like the tiger, he did turn, but not on her. He turned on himself, and he raced from the room. Leaving her alone, leaving her to decide what to do next.
But in this family, she had learned, there was only one thing to do when feeling alone and afraid. And she was going to do it.
She was going to get help.
“Hit me,” Calchas all but roared, striding into one of the long rooms they used for boxing.