Chapter 29
“But why couldn’t the knight marry the princess?” Emily’s voice carried through the partially open door, followed by the rustle of bedcovers as she presumably burrowed deeper into her pillows.
Aaron stood in the shadowed hallway, knowing he should move on but unable to resist the domestic intimacy of the scene.
“Because he was only a knight, and she was a princess.” Louise’s voice held infinite patience despite this being clearly the third or fourth such question. “Their worlds were too different.”
“That’s silly,” Emily pronounced judgment with six-year-old certainty. “If they love each other, nothing else should matter.”
Aaron pressed his palm against the doorframe, the wood cool beneath his touch. Through the gap, he could see Louise perched on the edge of Emily’s bed, her copper hair loose around her shoulders, catching the candlelight like spun gold.
“The world doesn’t always work that way, darling.” Louise smoothed the blankets with gentle fingers. “Sometimes love isn’t enough to overcome circumstances.”
“Then the world is wrong.” Emily sat up, her small face fierce with conviction. “When I grow up, I’m going to marry whoever I want, and if anyone says I can’t, I’ll tell them they’re being stupid.”
Louise laughed, the sound soft as summer rain. “I hope you do exactly that.”
“And I hope you marry someone you love, Louise,” Emily settled back against her pillows, but Aaron could see her fighting sleep, trying to extend this precious time with her sister.
Louise went still. When she spoke, her voice carried a weight that made Aaron’s chest tighten. “I don’t know if that’s in my future, sweetheart.”
“Why not? You’re pretty, and kind, and you smell nice. Any man would want to marry you.”
“You’re biased because you love me.”
“His Grace thinks you’re pretty too.” Emily yawned widely. “He watches you all the time when he thinks no one’s looking. Like Papa used to watch Mama’s portrait.”
Aaron felt the heat climb his neck. The child saw far too much.
“Shall we finish the story?” Louise’s voice had gone slightly breathless. “The princess is about to make her choice.”
“I bet she chooses love.” Emily’s words slurred with approaching sleep. “Smart princesses always choose love.”
Louise continued reading, her voice taking on the hypnotic rhythm designed to lull a child to sleep.
Aaron knew the story, remembered his mother reading it to him before everything changed. Before she died, before his father’s grief turned to poison, before love became synonymous with destruction in this household.
The princess in the story would indeed choose love and would abandon her crown for the knight who had saved her.
It was a lie, of course. Pretty words to help children sleep while the real world waited with its harsh truths about duty and station and the impossibility of crossing certain boundaries.
Emily’s breathing had evened into sleep. Aaron watched Louise carefully extricate herself from the bed, tucking the covers around the small form with practiced care. She bent to press a kiss to Emily’s forehead, and something inside Aaron’s chest cracked at the tenderness of the gesture.
He hastened down the hallway, not wanting to be caught lurking like some lovesick boy. His feet carried him to the library without conscious thought, seeking the sanctuary of books and silence to settle his disturbed thoughts.
The fire had burned low, casting more shadows than light across the leather spines.
Aaron searched for a particular volume, one he hadn’t touched in years. His mother’s poetry collection, words that she had annotated in her careful script.
He was reaching for it on the top shelf when the door opened behind him.
“Oh!” Louise stood frozen in the doorway, a book clutched to her chest. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You’re not disturbing anything.” Aaron turned to face her fully, drinking in the sight of her in the firelight. She still wore the simple blue dress from dinner, but her hair remained loose from reading to Emily, making her look younger, softer. “Returning the book?”
Louise held up the volume of fairy tales. “Emily insists it lives in here rather than the nursery. She says the books get lonely if they’re separated from their friends.”
“A romantic notion for a six-year-old.”
“She gets it from our mother.” Louise moved to the children’s section, carefully placing the book in its spot. “She believed everything had feelings, even inanimate objects. Used to apologize to furniture when she bumped into it.”
A faint smile tugged at Aaron’s mouth before he could stop it.
“My aunt told me mine was the same.” The words came quietly, surprising even him. “I never knew her, not truly, but Cecilia says she couldn’t bring herself to discard wilted flowers. She said it felt like abandoning something that had once brought joy into the world.”
Louise turned to face him, her expression soft with understanding. “You were looking for something of hers?”
Aaron gestured to the poetry section. “She loved poetry. Made notes in all the margins about what she thought the poet really meant versus what he wrote.”
“May I see?”
He reached up and pulled down the slim volume, its leather binding worn soft with handling, though not by him. His father must have read it countless times in private, hoarding even this piece of her.
Louise moved closer to see better in the dim light, close enough that Aaron caught her scent of lavender and something uniquely her. She opened the book carefully, reverently, finding a page at random.
“She walks in starlight, quiet as a whispered wish,’” Louise read his mother’s annotation aloud. “But true beauty isn’t in the walking, poet. It’s in standing still and letting wonder find you.”
Aaron smiled despite the ache in his chest. “She had opinions about everything.”
“She sounds wonderful.” Louise turned another page, then another, her fingers gentle on the aged paper. “These notes are like having a conversation with her.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
Louise looked up at him, and they were standing so close he could see the gold flecks in her brown eyes. “I’m sorry you never knew her.”
“Don’t be. How can you miss someone you never met?”
“The same way you can love someone you shouldn’t.” The words hung between them, heavy with meaning.
Aaron’s hand rose to cup her cheek. Louise leaned into the touch, her eyes fluttering closed. He bent his head, unable to resist the pull between them, and captured her mouth in a kiss that felt like coming home.
She responded immediately, the book sliding forgotten onto a side table as her arms wrapped around his neck.
Aaron pulled her closer, backing her against the bookshelf as the kiss deepened.
When her fingers tangled in his hair, he moved his mouth to her throat, finding that spot below her ear that always made her gasp.
“Aaron.” His name emerged as a breathless plea. “The servants …”
“Are abed.” But he pulled back slightly, resting his forehead against hers while they both struggled to breathe normally. “Though you’re right. Cecilia has an uncanny ability to appear at inconvenient moments.”
Louise laughed softly, her fingers still playing with the hair at his nape. “She means well.”
“She wants us together.” Aaron pulled back enough to see Louise’s face. “She’s about as subtle as Buttercup with a beef bone.”
“Would that be so terrible?” Louise asked quietly. “Us, together?”
The question pierced him. Aaron stepped back, needing distance to think clearly. “You know why it’s impossible.”
“Because of your father?” Louise retrieved the poetry book, holding it like armor. “Because you’re terrified of becoming him?”
“Because I am him.” The words emerged harsh, bitter. “I have his blood, his temper, his capacity for obsession.”
“You have his eyes, too. Does that make you see the world the way he did?”
Aaron turned toward the dying fire, unable to face her while he spoke the words that haunted him. “He destroyed them. Every woman who trusted him. He collected them, used them, discarded them when they no longer amused him.”
“You’re not him.”
“You don’t know what he was capable of.” Aaron gripped the mantel, knuckles white with tension. “There was a woman. She was his mistress for two years. Beautiful, accomplished, from a wonderful family that had fallen on hard times.”
Louise remained silent, but he felt her attention like a physical touch.
“She became pregnant.” The words scraped his throat raw. “And my father was furious. He had been careful, or thought he had, at least. He accused her of infidelity, of trying to trap him, of every vile thing he could imagine.”
“Aaron …”
“He threw her out. In January. In a snowstorm. With nothing but the clothes she wore.” Aaron’s voice had gone flat, emotionless, the only way he could tell this story. “She lost the child. The hemorrhaging killed her three days later.”
The silence stretched between them, broken only by the pop of dying embers.
“How old were you?” Louise’s voice came gently as spring rain.
“Sixteen. Old enough to understand what had happened. Too young and powerless to do anything about it.” Aaron turned to face her, needing her to understand. “I stood in his study while he read the letter informing him of her death, and do you know what he said?”
Louise shook her head.
“‘Well, that’s tidily resolved then.’ As if she were a problem to be solved, rather than a person who had loved him.”
Louise crossed to him, her hands finding his face, forcing him to meet her eyes. “You are not him. Do you understand me? You are not him.”
“I have his blood.”
“You have your mother’s, too. The woman who cried over dead flowers and wrote poetry in margins and loved you before you were born.
” Her thumbs stroked his cheekbones with devastating gentleness.
“You think your father’s cruelty defines you, but I see your mother’s tenderness every time you’re with Emily.
Every time you gentle your voice for her, every time you protect us even at cost to yourself. ”
“Louise …”
“You could have taken me that first night. I threw myself at you, remember? A desperate woman in a vulnerable position. Your father wouldn’t have hesitated.
” She moved closer, her body nearly touching his.
“But you protected my virtue, even when I didn’t want protecting.
You’ve given me pleasure while expecting nothing in return.
You’ve created boundaries to keep me safe, even though it’s killing us both. ”
Aaron closed his eyes, overwhelmed by her words, her nearness, the truth she offered like absolution.
“A man like your father would have bedded me, ruined me, and discarded me by now.” Louise’s voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “You’ve done nothing but cherish me. Even when you’re trying to push me away.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then stop pushing me away.” She pressed her lips to his in a kiss so gentle it nearly broke him. “I know what you’re thinking. That you’ll become him. That loving someone will somehow poison you. But you’ve already proven you’re nothing like him.”
Aaron pulled her against him, burying his face in her hair. She was right. Their time was limited, borrowed, stolen from circumstances that would eventually reclaim them. But perhaps that made it more precious, not less.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted against her hair.
“Neither do I.” She pulled back to look at him, and her smile held both sadness and hope. “But maybe we can learn together.”
A sound from the hallway made them spring apart. The door opened to reveal Cecilia in her wrapper, Buttercup padding beside her.
“Oh, good, you’re both here.” She seemed unsurprised to find them together. “Buttercup had a nightmare. At least, I assume that’s why he was whimpering. He needs comfort.”
The massive dog padded over to Louise, resting his head against her hip with a pathetic whine that was clearly manufactured for sympathy.
“You fraud,” Louise said fondly, scratching behind his ears.
“I’ll leave him in your capable hands then.” Cecilia turned to go, then paused. “Oh, and tomorrow we’re visiting the orphanage. Both of you. Emily insists, and I’ve learned not to argue with six-year-olds or giant dogs.”
She swept out, leaving Aaron and Louise standing in the library with a dog who had clearly been deployed as a chaperone.
“Your aunt is not subtle,” Louise observed.
“Not even slightly.” Aaron moved to bank the fire properly. “You should get some rest. Tomorrow will undoubtedly involve chaos if Emily and Cecilia are planning it together.”
Louise shelved the book of fairy tales Emily had insisted on returning. At the door, she paused, looking back at him with an expression that made his chest tight.
“Your mother would be proud of who you’ve become,” she said quietly. “The notes in that poetry book show a woman who understood love’s complexities. She would understand yours, too.”
She left before he could respond, taking Buttercup with her. Aaron stood alone in the library, his mother’s poetry book in his hands, thinking about love and loss and the precious, temporary gift of Louise’s presence in his life.