Chapter 2 #2
“I’ve spent the last days at Farrow Cottage just…
thinking. About grief and anger and all the ways it has warped us.
We’ll never be who we were before the accident, our hearts unsullied by the deeds of others.
We can’t go back there, to that time when Thomas was healthy and my parents were alive and you lived right across the way, coming over every night for dinner.
“And I think I blamed you for taking that unblemished version of the past away from me. But you hadn’t.
It was illness that did that. That’s still doing it.
Along with fate and bad luck and lightning storms and unscrupulous arseholes that we trusted when we shouldn’t.
But Fred”—here she lifted her head to gaze into his intense blue eyes—“We shouldn’t want to go back there.
We should treasure who we are here and now. ”
“Should we?”
“Yes.” She felt the tears slipping down her face. “Because this life is beautiful too. Or it can be, if we let it. If we choose to embrace what we have instead of longing for what we don’t.”
“You can’t…Jules, you shouldn’t just forgive me. I lied to you. And I kept secrets even after you asked me to stop—because I was afraid of telling you the truth. So I pretended like my secrets wouldn’t affect you when of course they did. And then I became angry when you very rightly acted hurt.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Yes. That’s all true. But I can forgive you if I’d like to. And I can be sorry for pushing you to speak before you were ready. I always seem to be doing that.”
“You wouldn’t have to if I were honest with you.”
“None of us is perfect. And I do understand your reasoning.” She rose and went to him, cupping his face in her hands so she could let her finger trace that small, white scar.
The one that she could only see when she was this close to him.
“Fred, you can’t tell me not to care for you in the same way you care for others.
Has anyone ever? Have you ever let them? ”
He stilled beneath her touch. And for a moment he looked as if he might turn his eyes from her, get up perhaps and make his way alone into his room beyond that closed door. But he didn’t. He closed his eyes and tipped his face into her hand, letting her soothe him.
“No,” he said.
She nodded, trailing her finger across his skin. “And if I told you that you deserve that care, that love, and so much more, what would you say?”
He made some kind of gurgling noise, so she continued on steadily. “What if I even said that my sole condition for this marriage is that you let me love you, could you accept that?”
Her thumb brushed lightly along his cheekbone and then traced the cupid’s bow of his lips. No man should have lips like his, or tousled curls that glinted gold in the evening light. Or a heart as big and wide as the Thames. But he did, her Fred.
“That is not—” he began, but the protest died on his lips when she pressed her thumb there, harder. And then he said, “It cannot be a condition of the marriage we have now. But it could…Jules, it could be a condition of another one.”
He slipped down to the floor and knelt before her. She found herself caressing the back of his stubborn, knuckle-headed skull with her hands. The longer she touched him the more relief welled up inside her.
The last days of solitude had been important to her, and so rare in a life spent as a care-giver and lately, as a wife. That time had given her space to think and to feel and they’d given her an opportunity to miss him. And she had, desperately.
Her Fred, with all his many layers. His impossibly beautiful face and the sneer he wore as armor.
His careful wit and tender heart. A man who was, against all odds and certainly against reputation, one of the humblest men she knew.
A man who could hem a dress and was not afraid to kneel to do it.
A man who admitted when he was wrong. Who gave and gave, until there was nothing left of him but that armor—and even that, she saw now, he was finally willing to set aside.
And then when she spoke, the words were unbidden. “I love you, Fred.”
He gave a soft, startled laugh and then leaned back against his heels so he could look up at her. Ten years, she thought. How could they have let ten years pass them by?
But she’d resolved to let regret go. All she could do—all she wanted to do—was live out the future from where they stood. Right now, here, today. They must move forward. As imperfectly perfect as they were.
She felt relief to have him here with her. Joy, at seeing him smile. And there was love. So much of it.
“Stand up, Fred,” was what she finally said into the silence.
“Not yet. I have—I’ve been thinking too.
” He cleared his throat and she saw another hint of color sweep across his cheekbones.
“Will you marry me, Jules? Not Chester but me, because you wish to spend your life with me? I love you, more than I’ve ever loved anything and I want to spend my life with you. ”
“Stand up, Fred,” she said again.
He pushed himself up to his feet and stood before her. She could see in his face how uncomfortable this was for him, to be here and seen. Vulnerable and raw, waiting on her answer.
She reached out her hands and grasped his. “I need you to understand something,” she said as his blue eyes fastened onto hers. “I can see how much you wanted and grieved and feared. And I…I can understand why you made those promises to protect yourself. And why you never told me about them.”
She drew in a breath before she closed the small space between them.
And then, when she stood close enough to his beautiful face to trace every line of it with her finger if she wanted to, she said, “They say that bravery is being afraid and doing a thing anyway. But I think that is probably what love is too. It is pushing past the risk of being seen. It’s knowing your own flaws and another person’s, and loving anyway.
Despite deviations from perfect behavior.
What I’m trying to say, Fred, is that I don’t want perfection.
Not from you nor from myself. I don’t want an Adonis.
I definitely do not want Chester, although I will tolerate him when I need to. I just want you. Exactly as you are.”
His fingers tightened around her hand. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes,” she murmured. “I do love you, Fred. I do.”
“I love you, too. And I believe we can make this right, what is between us, if we begin again on a better foundation. I believe we can make it beautiful, dearheart.”
He fished around in his coat pocket and pulled out a velvet jeweler’s box, large enough to hold any number of expensive necklaces or bracelets. But when he flipped it open, there was only a stack of little paper packets inside.
“What are these?”
“Seeds. I’ve been collecting them since London. I thought they suited you better than jewelry, although I can get you jewels too. You can have anything you’d like. Live anywhere you want. Spend your time in any way you please.”
She placed the box on the little table and then threw her arms around him, pulling him near. “They’re perfect. I cannot wait to be covered in dirt. And to get you dirty too.”
“You say that like a threat but I believe it to be a promise.”
“I meant in the garden.”
He laughed. “I know what you meant. Julianna Sedgewick, Countess of Chester, would you do me the great honor of marrying me again?”
“I already said yes.”
“Say it again.”
“Yes, Fred. Yes.”