Chapter Seven #2
Somewhere behind the sound of falling rain and the pounding of Jones’s irons, Burke heard a voice. A small, distant voice, but a distinct one just the same. He turned back toward the doorway, straining to hear it better.
The voice was calling his name. Only a moment after that realization, he saw a figure, in the rain, running toward him. Who in heaven’s name would be out in this weather?
Enid! He recognized her.
He snatched his outer jacket from the hook where it was drying and rushed out to her, holding the garment above both of their heads. “Have you taken leave of your senses? Coming all this way in this downpour? You’ll catch your death.”
“Dafydd— the ghost said if I came after you, I would find you before you left. He brought the rain to slow you down.”
She’d come after him? Burke didn’t know whether to shake her or hug her. “If you’d wanted to say goodbye, you could have done so when I left your home.”
“I couldn’t bear it.” Her words shook with shivers as water ran in rivulets down her face.
“Come inside the smithy. It’s dry and warm.” He set his arm across her back, hurrying her toward shelter. He caught Jones’s eye as they stepped inside and received a nod of understanding.
“I had to come find you,” Enid said.
“We can hang your spencer nearer the forge. It’ll dry there.”
She worked at the buttons on the front of her jacket as he hung his on its previous hook.
Jones returned with a woolen blanket. “It smells of horse,” he warned.
Smell was the least of their concerns. Burke traded Enid the blanket for her jacket. She had wrapped herself up by the time he returned to her side.
“Now, what is it that was so urgent you had to come running after me in the rain?” His heart, he swore, sat paralyzed in his chest, waiting to hear words he feared she would not speak.
“We cannot take what is not ours.” Her words echoed those of the mysterious garden dweller. “You had to leave because you didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
She took a shaking breath, though whether from nervousness or the chill in the air, Burke couldn’t rightly say. “That you wouldn’t be taking something that didn’t belong to you. That it is yours for the claiming already.”
He didn’t dare trust his hopeful interpretation of her words. “That what was mine already?”
“You didn’t— couldn’t say anything because you thought that laying claim to my affections, to my heart, would be wrong because you did not believe it was yours, that you would be taking something that didn’t belong to you.
It was the very reason I couldn’t ask you to stay, because your time and your attention and your affections aren’t mine, at least I don’t know that they are.
He, the ghost, felt we needed to know that, that I ought to tell you. ”
“Enid.” He sighed her name, relief like he hadn’t known before sweeping over him. She loved him. She might not have said so directly, but the meaning was clear.
“My heart is yours, Burke. If you want it.”
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, kissing her soundly, fervently. In a gesture so suited to her buoyant and enthusiastic personality, Enid threw her arms about his neck and held fast to him, eagerly returning his kiss.
“Oh, my darling,” he whispered, keeping her in his embrace. “How close we came to throwing all of this away. If I’d left, not knowing your feelings, not telling you mine, I would have always regretted it. Always.”
“But you haven’t told me yours,” she pointed out. “Not really.”
“I am not terribly good at speeches, but when this rain lets up and I return you home, I promise to do my utmost to convince you that my heart is rightly yours.”
She pulled back enough to smile up at him. “Then may I keep it? I have vowed, you realize, not to take what is not mine.”
A vow not to take a heart that did not belong to oneself.
His mind began racing. That would be a regret indeed, if the one making the vow truly loved the person he’d promised not to pursue.
Unrequited, or perhaps simply impossible love was, indeed, a tremendous weight on a heart and soul. A regret of enormous proportions.
“Enid, that is it. You have stumbled upon the answer.”
“The answer to what?” She watched him with expectation.
“The ghost. We—” He motioned to Jones, a few paces away— “have been speaking of the things that tie a soul to this earth after life: weighty and crushing regrets. What if your ghost is trapped here because he never could claim the heart of the woman he loved?”
Her eyes grew wide. “Yes. That would explain his insistence that I not make the same mistake.”
The pieces were falling quickly into place. “And who would feel that weight more than someone who loved a woman who was promised to another, especially if she loved him in return but could not escape the other match.”
Enid pulled in a sharp breath. “You mean Mairwen and her squire.”
Burke nodded. “Does anyone know what his name was?”
“Mr. Jones might.”
But when they posed the question, they received a disappointing response. “I’m afraid his name’s been lost to history. He’s known only as Mairwen’s squire.”
“Do you think it would be enough?” Burke asked.
“It has to be,” Enid insisted. “We may not know his name, but we know who he is. We know whom he loved. We know why he is trapped. Surely that is enough. Surely it must be.”
“If there is any mercy in this world, it will be.”
Enid rested her head against his chest. “I hope you are right.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her, relishing the feel of her in his arms. He certainly hoped he was right about a great many things.