Chapter 16
Calchas was shaking.
The experience with his uncles and his cousins and his father had left him exhausted. And before that, he had been on the verge with what had been said between himself and Hester.
Despite the love of his family, and how they were lifting him up when he was low, he felt horrible, guilty, and wounded.
And yet, strangely, he also felt hope. And now he had to hope that she would understand. If any anyone would, it was Hester.
He slipped back into their bedroom. She was now pacing before the fire, a mirror of his own frantic energy from before. She turned to face him.
“You’re very brave,” he said.
“Am I?” she queried, but then she squared her shoulders and gave a firm nod, proud of herself. “Yes, I think I am. I think I always have been.”
He studied his beautiful, strong wife, marveling at her. “I’m glad you at last know your worth.”
“Do you?” she countered gently.
“What?” he asked, still shaking and confused.
“Do you know your worth?” she breathed.
He swallowed. “I thought I was going to save you, but it’s you who is saving me,” he whispered harshly.
“And that… I never thought that I was going to need to be saved,” he admitted, though it was so painful to do so.
He had to do it. If he was going to survive this.
If they were going to survive this, he had to be honest.
“And that’s hard for you?” she whispered.
He swallowed back a wave of raw emotion. “I am supposed to be the captain. I am supposed to be the leader. I’m a Briarwood. I’m supposed to help others. I don’t want to need help.”
“But you do,” she said, her eyes soft with love and fear that he might slip away again. “Just like everyone else. You helped me. Now, let me help you.”
“You already did,” he said ruefully. “You went and got my whole family.”
“I felt like they might be the only people to help you see reason, and I was worried, Calchas,” she said, winding her hands before her. “I was worried you might go out into the night, frantic and wild and…”
He swallowed. “You weren’t wrong. I’ve been lost, and you have been my only North Star, keeping me from unraveling or going off without any thought for safety or self. I was simply going to barrel out to sea with no purpose, alone. But I have an idea now.”
Her brows rose and some of her fears seemed to fade. “Tell me. Tell me whatever it is.”
“You said I should go, and my family also said I should go.”
Her shoulders sagged, but she looked resolved, ready to stand by him no matter what. And she nodded. “Yes, you must. That ship, the one you’ve spoken of at the docks, supply it. Supply it today. Go as soon as you can.”
“No,” he said, “because I need to get it ready for something else.”
“What?” she asked warily.
“For you to come with me,” he whispered, “if you are willing.”
She stared at him, stunned. “Go with you?” she whispered.
He had to do this. He had to ask, even though he hated it. “I cannot believe that I’m asking it of you. Your dream is the tea shop. You have worked for it and made it a success, and yet here I am asking you to give up your dreams.”
“Oh, Calchas,” she said, “it was a dream, but it was a dream born out of necessity. I had no other opportunities. It was the only skill I had, baking, and you believed in me and invested in me and trusted me and gave me an opportunity. You. You were the one who made my dream a reality. I don’t think I could have done it any other way. ”
“That’s not true,” he said. “You are so capable. You would have found a way.”
She considered this, tilting her head to the side, sending her curls cascading over her shoulder.
“If I had done it some other way, it would’ve been brutal and harsh.
And the price I might’ve had to pay for it would have been…
” She looked away. “I don’t want to think about what might’ve had to happen for me to make that possible.
So let me help you make your dream possible now too, because I never knew I could go. ”
He cocked his head to the side. “What?”
“No one ever told me that I could go with you,” she replied, lifting her chin, the firelight catching her gaze. “No one ever told me that I could go with my first husband. He was a captain of war. I wasn’t welcome on his ships.”
Her mouth pressed into a firm line. “Women don’t usually go, Calchas.” She paused and took a step towards him. “But you say that I can come with you? You say I can explore the world with you?”
“Yes,” he ventured, his hope growing with every word she spoke.
“Then let us go,” she cried passionately.
“You want to go?” he asked, stunned.
“Yes,” she rushed. “What kind of fool would not want to go and explore the world? You have to understand, as a woman, I wasn’t raised to think that I was allowed to do this. Don’t you think I’m ready for the adventure of it?”
She laughed, tears filling her eyes.
“I don’t want to be the one to make you cry,” he whispered.
“Oh, you all make me cry, you terrible, notorious Briarwoods. But in the best possible way,” she insisted.
“I left my parents’ house because I didn’t want to live the way that I was told I should live.
I thought there could be something more, Calchas.
I dared to believe there was more than the life my parents had planned for me.
And then when my husband died, I dared still, even more so, to believe that there could be more, and I came to you.
I did not accept my fate. I fought for something new, for something different, a dream that I could hold onto that would give me a chance. And now I get to dare again.
“Just because I have one dream, Calchas, doesn’t mean that it has to be my only one, or that it’ll be the dream I have my whole life.
I have already changed and grown so many times, and now you are offering me the world.
The tea shop will be here. Ellen can run it while I’m away, and it will be here when I return.
Our life will be here when we return. Our family will be here when we return.
But I will happily go with you if you will have me. ”
“Have you?” he whispered, his heart nearly exploding with the power of her offer and the reality of the fact that his need wouldn’t be a burden to her.
“I want that more than anything in the world. But it is not always easy,” he said.
“It can be rough. Life at sea is difficult. I do know captains who have had their wives with them and—”
She lifted her hand and gestured to herself. “Do I look like I need things to be easy?”
He stilled. “No,” he said honestly, admiring her even more.
She arched a brow. “Do you remember where I was living when I first came here?”
“Yes,” he said.
She folded her arms just under her breasts, her robe swaying. “Will it be a great deal more difficult than that?”
“No, I don’t think it will,” he returned honestly. She had faced so much and she wasn’t easily daunted, his wife.
“Perhaps,” she said cheekily, “I can bake for your sailors.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then despite the tension in his body, despite the driving force that had made this conversation almost impossible, he started to laugh, and it was a full, rich, booming laugh, full of relief.
“Trust you, Hester,” he began as his love for her deepened, though he had not thought such a thing possible, “to find the merriment in all of this.”
She waggled her brows at him. “Don’t you think they’d like to have a nice hot scone every now and then?”
His lips twitched as he thought of the big man he’d approved to be the one to feed his crew. “I can only imagine you and the ship’s cook in the galley together.”
“Oh, I’m sure I shall manage,” she said brightly.
“No doubt you’ll have him wrapped around your little finger in no time.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” she exclaimed. “The world awaits.”
She ran to him and threw her arms about him.
“I know this doesn’t fix everything,” he began roughly, circling his arms about her waist.
“It doesn’t need to,” she put in, meeting his eyes with a quite serious look now.
“You don’t need to be fixed, Calchas. I was never going to fix you.
Nothing and no one ever could or can, because you’re not broken, just like I am not broken.
And thank God you are the way you are, because if you were any different, the world would suffer for it so greatly, and so would I.
I cannot imagine the suffering I would have gone through if you were anyone other than who you are. ”
He sucked in a shuddering breath, in awe of the woman who was his beloved wife.
“How did I come to find you?” he whispered.
She smiled. “I don’t know, but your family would have me believe it was fate.”
“So they do, and I do too,” he said softly. “I choose to believe you were always coming into my life. You were always going to come and visit me that day.”
“Then,” she whispered, stroking his thick hair back from his face, “let it also be true that we were always meant to go out and explore the world together. You don’t ever have to face this alone again,” she vowed.
“Never. Because what makes you who you are is what makes me love you. And no one could ever take that away.”
She pulled his head down, and Calchas kissed his wife. Kissed her knowing that no matter how much the wild part of him might fight, he had finally found peace. Peace that she would be by his side, wherever they might roam.