Chapter 24
THE WILL TO LIVE WHEN ONE’S FALLEN OVERBOARD, TO FLAIL and fight the stormy sea, is strong.
Annabel followed D’Evercy into his study.
Even if all was lost, even if he turned away from her for good, she couldn’t bear for him to believe she’d betrayed his trust. He stood stiffly behind his desk, ruffling papers.
A wave of cool detachment had descended over his face, belying any emotion at all.
It reminded her of the first time she’d seen him at the assembly room ball—he had the look of a man self-contained and separate from the world.
A man who needed nothing, from anyone, and need not give anything in return.
Now she knew more about him. That maybe he wanted nothing from the world because it had often let him down or never lived up to his keen hopes for it.
Henry Leighton D’Evercy had a very high bar, at least for himself.
Why shouldn’t he hold the world to it too?
And her. Annabel might be the tempest-tossed, drowning sailor, but there was one more fight left in her.
He barely looked up from beneath his heavy brow while she stood on the other side of his desk with the ink-stained page in her hand, trying to explain.
“. . . And when we returned to Kidlington House, after the second ball, we learned the very next morning that Bloomingdale’s was, well . . . lost to us.”
D’Evercy shuffled more papers, saying nothing.
“So, in a way, the Lackingtons are right.”
He finally looked up, his words clipped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t think I knew how. It was such a sudden, devastating change in circumstance.”
“You are entirely cut off?”
Annabel pressed the folded paper between her palms and held them to her lips, as if praying for the right thing to say.
She wanted to be truthful, but he could never understand the reality of how they’d found themselves shipwrecked, cast adrift, with no hope of returning home.
Not even the most modern man in Regency England would understand. She had to choose her words carefully.
“Certainly, we are without the resources with which we began our journey.”
He narrowed his eyes but was silent.
“But wanted to keep up appearances.”
Still nothing.
“That, I now regret. It was wrong. I suppose it was one thing to feel we were castaways, but in truth, I feared being cast out. So I didn’t tell you.” She touched the back of her neck. “I don’t care what the Lackingtons think of me, but I care what you think. Desperately so.”
“And I’m now to believe that what you’re telling me is the truth, the whole truth?” A direct challenge, gruff tone.
Annabel struggled against the cresting waves, sucking in water.
She looked out the window, searching for an answer.
Bit her lower lip and tried again. “The sea that drowns the sailor, in the poem we read last night—it’s what’s inside of us.
The storm is our own despair and remorse.
Everything we’ve ever lived, and felt, that could overwhelm us at any time.
Drag us down and bury us.” She looked down at the page in her hand, then looked up again.
“You can never know the all of me, Henry, and I, never know the all of you. We’re each of us alone, at sea, trying to stay afloat.
But what I’m telling you is, I hope, truth enough. ”
He didn’t argue the point, didn’t look at her.
“I’m so sorry if you feel I let you down in any way. And I know it’s too much to ask, but I hope that one day you can please, please forgive me.”
His coat sagged; he became very still. The fingers of his strong, elegant hands tented on the top of his desk, as if holding all his weight. He looked down, his silence excruciating. But she was done; there was nothing left to stay. Annabel turned to go.
“Miss Blake?”
She pivoted to the sound of his voice, still more severe than soft, cold than warm.
“This is a turn of events,” he said at last.
“The scope of which would be hard to convey.”
“Yet you did mislead me.”
“With no harm intended, I did.”
“About who you are?”
She thought about it. “Not really, no.”
“Or what you care about?”
“No.”
He walked around his desk, closer to where she now stood.
“Or for whom?”
She tipped her chin down, then raised it to meet his gaze. “That, most of all, I did not.”
He considered her but didn’t speak.
“But I couldn’t bear to leave Ellesmere knowing you might think ill of me.”
“Think ill of you?”
She nodded.
“But, Annabel, I’ve barely slept since we met, barely thought of anything else. Wishing for one chance in the world that I might win your heart.”
Chills bloomed at the back of her head and shivered down her back. “Win my heart?”
He stepped closer. “For mine was won from the first moment I saw you.”
Annabel looked into his glistening eyes.
“If my hopes are false, tell me.”
Tears glossed her own eyes. “Your hopes are the same as mine, and the truest thing I’ve ever known.”
All the pain and sorrow and disappointment disappeared from his face, and hers. They were breathless, both of them. An impossible joy pervaded their being, the room, the world inside and out.
D’Evercy looked down at the page still clutched in Annabel’s hand. He slipped it from her grasp. “Of course, it would never do for the mistress of Ellesmere to be a novelist.”
“The mistress of Ellesmere?”
He set the folded paper on his desk and took her hands in his. “If you would have me, Annabel.”
The storm in his eyes was gone, and in its place, a look of love she’d never known in all her years on earth, nor knew was possible. Her voice trembled.
“I would, Henry. I would.”