Chapter 17 #2
I’ll ask him to move. Ellen raised her chin. I can do that. When she was a few yards away, she recognized the bowed head, the slumped shoulders.
“Mark?”
The figure paused, not even breathing. He didn’t lift his head. “Ellen.” His voice was hoarse from disuse. Weeping?
All anger at his desertion dropped out of her as she knelt by his side. “We didn’t know where you were. Gaye was going to send for the police.”
“I’m here,” came his gravelly voice.
Ellen bit her lip, thinking. “I didn’t know you came here.”
He finally raised his head to look at her. His eyes were bloodshot, his face pale with bags under his eyes and scruff growing along his jaw. He looked horrible.
“When did you get here?” she whispered.
Mark shrugged. “After I put you in the cab, I suppose.” That was seven, almost eight hours ago.
“It’s too cold to be sitting on the ground like this.” Ellen absently reached forward and pressed a palm to the headstone just above Constance’s name, like she always did. “You’ll catch your death out here.”
“She died, Ellen.” Mark watched her fingers trace the name carved into the stone.
“Yes.” Simple words, simple concept. But still devastating, world-changing, and irrevocable.
“I always thought you lost her,” Mark said, turning to stare at her profile. “But I did, too. I lost her. I wasn’t there. I lost her and I never even got to hold her.”
“I almost didn’t get to hold her, either.
” Ellen cleared her throat. “The doctor said I shouldn’t, it would upset me too much.
But my mother handed her to me while the doctor was cleaning up.
I’ll be forever grateful for that.” When she felt she could without breaking down into sobs, she looked at her husband. “We lost her.”
“It was always so distant,” Mark mused. “Even these past months, it still didn’t feel like my loss.
But, my God, the look on that father’s face last night cut me to my core.
It is burned forever in my mind. And I saw his...
his despair, I felt mine rise up and meet it.
” His voice cracked. “Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.’”
Ellen swallowed the lump in her throat. Part of her, perhaps a selfish part, wanted to tell Mark to go be sad with someone else.
That she'd spent so much time grieving and carrying only sorrow in her heart, that she’d fought so hard to remember Constance with joy rather than agony, and she wouldn’t let him drag her backward.
The other part was grateful that he saw—truly saw—the life they’d created and lost. And she loved him.
God help her, she loved this man, and she couldn’t bear to see him in pain. Not without sitting with him in it.
Carefully, she placed a hand on his scruffy cheek. He leaned into it, closing his eyes. The relief on his face at her touch was so poignant it was painful to look at. She blinked back tears as her thumb stroked his cheekbone. “Do you need more time, or are you ready to go home?”
His eyes fluttered, the lashes brushing against the tip of her thumb. “Please take me home.”
She stood first, brushing dirt and fallen leaves off the back of her bustle, then held out her hand to him.
Mark reached up after a great, soulful sigh, and grabbed her wrist. His hands were freezing and he wasn’t wearing gloves.
They grasped wrists and she pulled him up.
He was taller than her by a good three or four inches, but he seemed so small and sad.
Ellen wrapped her arms around him, sliding her hands into his unbuttoned greatcoat, and tucked in tight.
“It feels like the world’s ending, doesn’t it? Or that it should be ending.”
Mark’s heartbeat thumped against hers. “It feels like it ended seven years ago and I only just noticed.”
They walked out of the cemetery together. Both were too exhausted to walk home, so they hailed a cab. Ellen helped him up the stairs to the house, and Gaye answered the door with great relief. He opened his mouth, possibly to chastise them, but Ellen beat him to it.
“Please bring some tea and broth to the master’s room. He’s not feeling well and needs to rest.”
Gaye nodded, helping Ellen divest them of scarves and hats. Then Ellen, still with her arm around Mark’s waist, drew him upstairs and into his room. She hadn’t been in it since that day she’d stormed in and demanded to move in with him. How far they’d come.
Ellen helped him undress, then tucked him in bed.
His fingers were stiff with cold, and he shivered in the warmth of the room.
“Foolish man,” she muttered fondly, bringing his fingers up to her mouth to blow hot air on them.
“You could’ve gotten frostbite.” He was in bed, only wearing a fresh shirt and his smallclothes, the light meal arrived.
Ellen took the tray from the maid and set it on Mark’s lap, then turned to go.
His fingers snagged her skirts. “Stay, please.” His voice was a mere whisper.
Heart thumping, Ellen nodded. “I’ll just ring for my writing tray.”
Mark closed his eyes and leaned against the plumped pillows, nodding.
Ellen spent most of the day in bed with him.
He dozed mostly, and she continuously put a hand to his forehead to check for fever.
She caught up on her observational reports, then finished writing a copy to send to Madame Henry.
By evening they were both calm, if a little solemn, and tender with one another.
They ate quietly in the dining room, and Ellen suggested they spend time in Mark’s study, as he probably had business to attend to. Instead they went up to Ellen’s room.
“The mattress is better,” Mark said with a sheepish smile. “And I like you too much to stay away.” As they changed into their night clothes, Mark said, “Don’t forget to take your tea.”
A jolt of alarm went through her. “Yes, thank you for reminding me.” Ellen pulled the bellpull near her bed for hot water and went to her vanity drawer to pull out the brown bag of herbs.
Mark had fallen asleep, with the fire and electric lights still on, by the time she’d gotten her tea and poured it.
Cringing at the bitter taste, Ellen held her breath and gulped the brew.
The alarm from earlier simmered just under her skin as anxiety.
She used her water closet and slipped into bed.
Mark murmured something in his sleep, scooting to make room for her.
She curled against him, finally safe and warm after a long, long day.
Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe she miscounted. Ellen stayed awake long into the night, counting and recounting. But the numbers stayed the same. Of the nine doses of tea she had to take, from the chaos of last night and today, she’d missed four in a row.
The next week was both hard and good. Wind whipped through the city, bitterly cold, keeping everyone who could stay indoors.
She still had plenty of work to do, visits to make, babies to care for, and Mark to worry about.
He was grieving still, if in a muted way, and instead of it clamming him up, as she’d expected it to, he was more demonstrative and closer than ever.
Both physically and emotionally. He talked to her constantly.
He met her at the dispensary at the end of every day, still overprotective after the confrontation with Seamus O’Malley.
A few days later, Ellen hurried into their townhouse, shivering as a gust of wind followed her in.
She flung her woolen muff on the side table and worked at the clasp of her cloak.
The door from the servants’ quarters creaked open, and she caught sight of the butler coming toward her, his craggy face pink that she’d slipped in before he’d answered the door.
The study door flung open down the hall, and Mark stuck his head out, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He grinned. “You’re back!”
Unaccountable joy rushed through her, making her toes curl. “I’m back.” Her cheeks ached, not from the blistering cold weather, but from the smiles he elicited.
Before she could finish removing her cloak, Mark strode to her and slipped it from her shoulders. He handed it to the butler behind him, a wicked grin flickering across his face. “I bought it.”
Ellen’s brows rose in surprise. “What?” It took a moment to remember what he was talking about. “No. Surely you didn’t.” A giggle escaped her lips.
He nodded. “Oh, I did. Want to see it?”
Ellen clapped a hand over her mouth. “Right now? Before dinner?”
He quirked a brow. “Aren’t you the least bit curious?” His voice dropped to a seductive, sultry tone. It stroked her core, awaking desires dormant since last night’s adventure.
“Maybe,” she admitted.
Grinning like a Cheshire cat, Mark grabbed her hand and tugged her up the stairs. “Come on.”
“Where did you even find a shop that sells this?” Ellen hissed, tripping up the stairs. Her hat bobbed on her head, the brim slanting across her vision. She glanced behind her to see Gaye shaking out her cloak and pretending not to notice them.
“Dryden gave me a suggestion, so I went and picked it up myself.”
“You didn’t send him?” Ellen marveled that her private husband would ever be found near one of those shops, let alone asking for…whatever he bought.
Mark bounded down the hall, and Ellen had to grab up her skirts to keep up with him.
“Wait up!” she laughed.
He paused at the door to her room, hair disheveled and eyes twinkling. “You don’t believe I did it, do you?”
“Not really,” she admitted, smiling back. She squeezed his hand.
“Oh ye of little faith.”
“I am prepared to be mistaken.” Impulsively, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him soundly on the lips.