Chapter Sixteen #2
Cecil looked away. Lottie almost hugged the preacher for that. Almost.
She smoothed her gloves. “Then leave the record as it is. Mr. Peterson has made his position plain. I have heard him.”
“Lottie,” Cecil said.
She looked at him once more. The room blurred at the edges, but he remained painfully clear: tall, wounded, stubborn, trying to be good, and doing harm with both hands.
“I will not chase you today,” she said, ignoring the stricken look on his face.
“I will not stand in the schoolyard arguing my worth against your fear. I will not beg you to grant me the dignity of a choice you have already refused to honor.” Her voice trembled, but it held.
“If you need to leave, leave. If you need to call it noble, I suppose you may. Do not ask me to praise the knife because you polished the handle.”
Val drew a quiet breath. Cecil looked as though he had no shield left and no idea what to do without one.
Lottie walked to the door. Her hand was on the knob when he spoke.
“The library will be finished.”
She closed her eyes.
Of course.
Of course, he would offer her walls after taking himself away.
She looked back over her shoulder. “I never doubted the building, Cecil. It was the man I had hoped would stay.”
She opened the door and stepped into the July sun, making it as far as the churchyard before the first tear fell. By the time she reached the lakeshore, she had stopped trying to hold them back.
The water spread green and bright beneath the sky, indifferent to human misery in a way that felt almost rude. Lottie sat in the long grass and pressed both hands over her mouth so the sob would not carry.
He loved her.
He had refused her.
Both truths sat beside each other and would not make sense.
For a while, she cried the way she had not cried in the parsonage.
She wasn’t loud, crying with her skirt crushed beneath her, her bonnet ribbons loose, and her handkerchief clenched so tightly the lace edge dug into her palm.
She cried for the kiss behind the meeting hall, for the dance in the dark, for the name he had given her and taken no farther.
Her tears fell for the library rising beside the schoolhouse, for the little lending desk placed in the light, for the man who could build a future and refuse to step inside it.
Then, after a while, the tears quieted.
The hurt did not leave, but she felt calmer.
Lottie wiped her cheeks with Delly’s handkerchief, now creased, damp, and entirely unequal to the day. She looked across the lake until the shine on the water stopped blurring.
“No,” she whispered. “Get yourself together, Charlotte Bellamy.”
Cecil Peterson did not get to decide her heart in secret. He had been made to speak plainly, and he had. Now she would do the same.
She would not chase him or plead. She would not follow him up the mountain, begging him to change his mind. But neither would she let him surrender, disappear, and leave the whole town to believe she had quietly accepted his decision like a girl with no say in her own future.
If he wanted to be alone with his nobility, he could have it. She had a library to tend, a Jubilee to prepare, and a life that did not become smaller because a frightened man refused to stand in it.
She would not pretend.
On the Fourth of July, in the broad light of day, Charlotte Bellamy would stand beside the lending table, beside the books he had helped shelter and the library he had begun, and she would tell the truth if anyone asked about the match.
Mr. Peterson had released her.
She had not released her heart.
She loved him, choosing him with her eyes open. If Cecil Peterson truly meant to refuse that love, he would have to do it while looking at her, not from behind the preacher, not from behind his fear, and not from the safe distance of a noble-sounding goodbye.
Not to trap him.
Not to shame him.
Her heart was not a parcel to be returned quietly, and her love was not a secret he could bury for both of them.
Lottie rose from the grass and brushed off her skirt. Then she heard footsteps on the lakeshore path.
She turned.
Cecil stood beneath the pines at the edge of the grass.
For one breath, neither of them moved.
He should have looked out of place there, still holding his hat, his shirt sleeves rolled, his wrapped hand visible at his side. Instead, he looked as if every ache in her heart had taken human shape and followed her down to the water.
“I did not mean to follow you,” he said.
Lottie’s laugh came out broken. “You are remarkably poor at leaving for a man so determined to do it.”
His mouth tightened.
She wiped at her cheek with the heel of her hand, hating that he could see the tears and glad, horribly glad, he had come anyway.
“You said you would not chase me,” he said.
“I am sitting in the grass.”
“I know.”
“That is the opposite of chasing.”
“I know.”
He took one step closer, then stopped. “I should not have come.”
“Yet here you are.”
The lake water lapped softly against the shore. Sunlight flashed along the water, too bright for a broken morning.
Cecil looked down at his bandaged hand. “I heard you crying.”
Lottie’s anger rose again, along with something more. Love rose with it, inconvenient and stubborn as ever.
“Did you come to comfort me,” she asked, “or to apologize for being the cause?”
His gaze lifted.
Both, his face seemed to say.
Neither his mouth refused to admit.
She brushed off the last bit of grass on her skirt. “You cannot release me and then follow me to make sure I break gently.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“No.” He exhaled, rough and low. “Not well enough.” Cecil took another step. “You were right.”
“About what?”
“About the doorway.”
Lottie could barely breathe.
He looked toward the lake rather than at her. “I heard you tell your sister to stand behind you. Then I went and stood in front of you myself.”
“Yes.”
“I thought if I took myself away, the road would be clear.”
“For whom?”
“For you.”
“It would only be emptier.”
His eyes closed briefly. When they opened, he looked at her at last.
“I do love you.”
The words struck her, clean and terrible.
She had known. Hearing it was different.
Lottie’s hand went to her throat. “Then why are you leaving me?”
“Because love does not make me less afraid.”
“No,” she whispered. “It only gives you something worth being brave for.”
He stared at her, and the fight in him looked thinner now. Worn down. Nearly gone. For one dangerous moment, Lottie thought he would cross the rest of the space and kiss her.
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
Her lips parted.
Cecil stepped close enough that the hem of her skirt brushed his boot. His left hand lifted toward her cheek, hesitated, then touched the damp place beneath her eye with the back of one finger.
The tenderness of it nearly broke her.
“Do not cry for me,” he said.
“I am not crying for you.” His thumb stilled. “I am crying because of you. There is a difference.”
A pained laugh, soft and unwilling, broke out of him. Then his hand slid to the side of her face, and he bent toward her.
Lottie did not step back.
She wanted the kiss. Wanted it with the foolish, aching, whole-hearted honesty he kept trying to save her from.
His mouth hovered above hers. Close enough she felt his breath.
Close enough every sensible thing in her simply gave up and sat down.
Then he stopped.
Not because a door banged open this time. Not because of Luke, or Jack, or the entire meddlesome town.
Because he chose to. Cecil rested his forehead against hers instead.
“I cannot kiss you again and still walk away,” he said.
“Then perhaps you should stop walking away.”
His hand tightened once on her cheek.
“I do not know how.”
It was the truest thing he had said all morning.
Lottie closed her eyes. “Then learn.”
He drew back slowly. The loss of his touch was immediate.
“I need time.”
“You have until the Fourth.”
His brow drew together. “What happens on the Fourth?”
“I tell the truth.”
“To whom?”
“To whoever needs to hear it.”
He searched her face. “Lottie.”
“No.” She stepped back before his nearness could turn her into pleading. “I am not asking you to answer today. You already have. I heard you.”
“That is not what I want.”
“I know.”
Lottie picked up her bonnet from the grass and tied the ribbons with fingers that only shook a little.
“Finish the library if you wish,” she said. “Or don’t. Attend the Jubilee if you can bear it. Stay away if you cannot. I will not be hidden inside your fear anymore, Cecil Peterson. I love you, and I’m sorry that isn’t enough.”
He stood on the lakeshore, tall and wounded and loving her badly. She loved him anyway. Lottie turned toward town.
This time, he did not follow.
At the edge of the path, she looked back once.
He remained by the water, his hat in one hand and the other pressed against his chest as if holding something together beneath the ribs.
Good, she thought, though tears burned again.
Let him feel what leaving costs before he calls it mercy.
Then she walked back to the meeting hall, where books waited, bunting needed straightening, and a blank space in the lending ledger still had no ending written in it.