Chapter Thirty-Two
P
Arabella sat on a rough-hewn stone bench a few yards from the road, resting after hours spent walking.
She’d doubled back on her path a few times, chosen narrow footpaths, sometimes walking alongside the larger roads.
This had always been her escape, her way to breathe.
Her troubles never magically disappeared or resolved themselves simply because she’d been away, but being out of reach of those people and circumstances with the power and ability to hurt her was a welcome gift.
So she walked. Sometimes all day, and she pretended there was no pain to return to.
The strategy was not proving as effective this time. Her worries were not coming at her from without but from within. Her heart and her mind were at war, and she hadn’t the first idea how to reconcile the very strong arguments they both made.
She loved Linus Lancaster and had reason to believe he might feel the same. Again and again her heart insisted upon that.
Then her mind interrupted with an equally inarguable fact: she had loved a gentleman before, though not at all in the same way as Linus, and what she had needed most from him he hadn’t, in the end, been able to give her. Family stays with family.
The earl had had a family of his own to look after, an estate to run, obligations in London and at his many holdings. That he had made time for her was both a kindness and a sacrifice.
But I needed so much more than his time.
She had prayed for an escape more permanent than her daily walks.
She’d needed to be able to leave and not return to a home where she was neglected on the best of days, made miserable on the rest. She had been too young and too powerless to save herself.
She’d looked to him. But he hadn’t been able to help.
She wondered in all the years since then how much she dared trust the people she cared about, how much to lean on them in her difficulties.
If even her beloved earl, who had loved her as no else had, hadn’t helped her when she’d needed him most, however unavoidable that disappointment had been, then whom could she possibly rely upon?
She wiped away the moisture on her cheeks, forcing herself to take a deep breath. These were insecurities she had struggled with all her life. How did one go about shaking free of them? She needed to be able to trust her own judgment but didn’t know how.
She took a long breath, deep enough to lift her shoulders.
She straightened her spine. A bit of courage and determination ought not be impossible to come by.
The past weeks had seen her face any number of unexpected situations, none of which she’d proven truly disastrous at facing.
She could confront her current uncertainties as well.
Yet when she considered the possibility of ending her walk for the day and returning to Linus’s home, her stomach clenched.
It seems I am not as brave as I’d like to believe.
Nearby, a twig snapped. Footsteps crunched the first of the autumn leaves scattered about.
Frustration bubbled. It was, no doubt, Dr. Scorseby.
He had run her to ground the day before, waxing long and insistent about the inadvisability of her long excursions.
He had insisted she cut her walk short. No amount of persistence on her part had been sufficient.
In the end, she had done as he’d bade simply to stop the debate.
She was not, however, ready to return yet today.
Dr. Scorseby was not the one who stepped into view.
“Linus.” Only his name emerged in her surprise.
“You are a difficult lady to track down.” Without preamble, he sat beside her on the bench. “I have had report of you passing by nearly every home, cottage, shop, and barn throughout the area. You’ve covered miles and miles.”
Her fingers clutched at one another. Her heart hammered against her ribs. “I like to walk.”
He set his hand atop hers, wrapping his fingers around hers, halting their nervous movement. “I know why you walk,” he said quietly. “That is why I have been trying to find you this past three-quarters of an hour.”
“You have been looking for me?”
His gaze held hers for a long moment. “Why does that surprise you?”
“Because . . . because few people ever have.”
He moved his hand enough to intertwine his fingers with hers, and every bit of her melted. “Did the earl?”
She shook her head. “He was always welcoming. If I happened upon him along the river or sought him out after services, he was unfailingly kind and attentive. But I don’t remember him searching me out.
” Oh, it hurt to admit it out loud. “It was not a matter of unkindness on his part,” she was quick to specify.
“I am simply not the sort of person one thinks of when I am not present.”
“I can assure you that is not the case.”
She wanted to believe him. How did one stop wondering about one’s value when life itself had infused that doubt into nearly every moment?
“Why have you begun walking again?” Linus asked. “The dowager said you had not undertaken such long outings lately.”
“I am attempting to sort through some things.”
He looked straight ahead, though she did not think he was truly focused on anything. “Do those things involve me? Because I have a terrible suspicion that they do.”
“They mostly involve me,” she said.
“Will you come back home, Arabella? The dowager is worried. I am worried.”
Her heart dropped to her feet. “I am causing trouble, aren’t I?”
“Not at all.” He turned and faced her. “We care about you, Arabella. Sometimes caring means worrying. Sometimes caring means chasing after someone when they run away.”
“I’d like to keep walking.”
“You’ve been walking for hours,” he said.
She stood, pacing away from the bench, her hand pulling free of his. “Dr. Scorseby already scolded me for this. Please don’t you do so as well.”
“I wasn’t scolding.” He rose but did not close the distance between them. “I simply don’t wish for you to walk so long and so far that you are too exhausted to return home.”
Home. What home did she truly have? The Park had not proven the place of refuge she had expected. The dower house did not entirely feel like home either. Linus spoke of his home, but it was not hers.
“Arabella?”
As always, her emotions betrayed her. Why was it she could never seem to keep her thoughts and feelings hidden?
“I am going to walk a little more.” She didn’t wait for a response but took up her trek again.
To her great surprise, Linus walked alongside her.
She eyed him sidelong, unsure what to make of his continued presence. “Are you walking with me?”
“If that is acceptable to you.”
Though solitude had always been an integral part of her daily walks, she found herself perfectly content with this unusual arrangement. “I don’t mind.”
“I am glad.” He smiled at her. “So long as I am out here, I can ignore the ledger that is awaiting me at the house. Balancing the books is not at all my idea of an enjoyable pastime.”
“You will likely think me the strangest creature in all the world, but I do enjoy balancing ledgers.” She glanced at him long enough to catch his look of shock, which brought a laugh bubbling to the surface.
“Mine was not an extensive education, but I was taught to keep household accounts. I quite unexpectedly discovered that I liked the undertaking.”
“It seems you and Charlie are cut from the same cloth. That boy is enamored of mathematics.”
“And you are enamored of the sea.” She sighed as if it were a great tragedy. “We all have our oddities.”
“Oddities?” He chuckled low. “A love of the sea is not a quirk; it is an inevitability.”
“I would not know,” she said. “I have never seen the sea.”
Again, his gaze turned surprised, only this time without the theatricality.
“Oh, Arabella, you simply must see the ocean. To stand on the shore and look out over the vast expanse of water. There is something both humbling and exhilarating about it. While I was always anxious to board and launch, Evander loved to stand on the shore and simply breathe it all in.”
She knew how difficult speaking of his brother was for him, not unlike her struggle to reflect on the earl and all he’d meant to her. Not wishing for him to be disheartened, she slipped her arm through his as they continued to walk. The physical connection proved comforting to her as well.
“What was it Evander liked most about watching the sea?” she asked.
“The sound of the waves crashing against the shore.” His smile was a fond one, though a little sad.
“‘It is as if the ocean is announcing its long-awaited arrival home,’ he would say. I imagine that is why he liked the sound so much. It was a promise that those things that sail out to sea can and will return again.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder, not knowing what she could say to counter the heartache she heard in his voice. His brother, after all, had not come home. “Does the ocean make that same crashing sound when one is out in the midst of it?”
“During storms, it is quite loud,” he said. “But, no, the sound is not the same as it is on shore.”
“The sound of home.”
“No.” The single syllable emerged with almost no volume. “The sound of home was always my family’s voices. It filled my mind and my heart during long voyages. It was what I dreamed of hearing again. But those voices are gone now.”
“Home, for me, was always the sight and sound of the Jonquil brothers larking about on the back lawn of the Park while the earl joined in their fun.” She pushed down the lump in her throat. “Even more so when they invited me to be part of it.”
“If you had lived in this neighborhood, I would have made certain you were part of every bit of mischief my siblings and I undertook.”
Oh, how she adored him. He soothed her worries without being suffocating, knew what she needed to hear without being patronizing. Returning to Nottinghamshire meant likely never seeing him again. The idea pained her deeply.
“And would you have walked with me?” she asked.