Chapter Thirty-Five
Della awoke in the pitch dark of night. The act of waking up in the middle of the night wasn’t unusual for her.
The pain and stiffness she dealt with on a daily basis meant that she often had to interrupt her sleep to stand up and stretch.
On particularly bad nights, she’d have to pace several laps about the room.
She’d turned away from Andrew in her sleep, but his legs were still tangled with hers.
She could still feel the heat of him against her back, and she so desperately wanted to remain where she was, her pain be damned.
She couldn’t, though, and she knew it. It was a sense of foreboding, like an opposite reaction to the sixth sense she’d always had about him.
She was leaving at first light, but something about this felt more urgent.
Della stood up, loosening her limbs and rocking back and forth on her toes to pull her muscles back into place.
She hoped her joints didn’t make some awful, inhuman sound loud enough to wake Andrew.
She didn’t know what she’d say. She didn’t think she’d be able to give the thoughts swimming in her head a voice. It was easier to let them drown her.
She pressed a hand to the center of her chest. Though the beat of her heart was strong and steady, all of the buoyant hope she felt just hours ago had turned to heavy dread.
A horrible thought flashed through her mind, bright and vivid and unavoidable.
This was going to end, and it was going to hurt.
This couldn’t last forever, no matter how much she wanted it to.
Andrew had never offered such a thing, and she wouldn’t dare assume.
But she could picture it, him with her forever.
He’d be there by her side, loyal and caring and maybe even loving.
He’d feel obligated to stay with her, because no one else had, and because he was that uniquely kind.
And he’d grow to resent her and their quiet life in Scotland.
He’d miss London and his mother and everything he’d worked so hard for.
Della could see it so clearly in her mind’s eye.
She’d be happy, and he’d lose himself in caring for her.
Just as her mother had. Andrew wouldn’t become so frigid and heartless, and he wouldn’t abandon her or send her away.
He’d stay and silently resent her, letting her be the source of his unhappiness as they lived out the rest of their days.
She thought of how her mother had looked at her just last night. The disdain in her gaze, the way she was only ever callous with people, how she valued wealth over all else. All of that was Della’s fault, and she couldn’t bear to harm Andrew the same way.
On her bare feet, Della took slow steps across the room.
The farther she led herself from the bed, the easier she could breathe.
Her pace quickened as her thoughts did, and she found herself chewing on her thumbnail.
It was an old nervous habit, and she hadn’t done it in years.
She looked at Andrew’s sleeping form. He lay on his stomach, sprawled over his half of the bed and part of hers.
One of his hands was splayed out over the mattress, as if reaching for her.
Della stopped in her tracks.
She couldn’t do this. That was why she’d woken up, it wasn’t about her pain at all.
It was a protective instinct. For them both, it seemed.
Della cursed her own affection for him. It had gotten her in trouble again, even so many years after the first time.
She should’ve stopped this before she was in too deep, before she was standing at the foot of the bed watching his back rise and fall as he breathed.
That rhythm of his subtle movement was soothing, and Della’s chest clenched with a fierce desire to protect the peace she saw in him.
He’d done so much for her. He’d tried to fix everything, and he’d stood with her to fight the most difficult battles she’d ever fought.
She couldn’t ask him to leave everything to be with her.
He was so bloody selfless, he’d probably volunteer to stick around Kinloss just to keep fixing things for her. Della wouldn’t let him. She couldn’t.
Della paced another lap. She chewed on more of her fingernails. Eventually, she came to a decision. She walked one more turn about the room, just to be sure.
She could offer them a way forward, but it had to be his choice to take it.
Della wouldn’t allow her heart to be something else he had to fix.
She had to be something he wanted. There was almost no way he would want a forever-ill Scottish baroness who had a penchant for getting herself into incredible messes, not truly.
He might want to help her, but he wouldn’t want to keep her.
Della slipped from the room with remarkable stealth for someone with such usually inoperable limbs.
She wasn’t a particularly religious person, but she sent up a silent prayer as she hugged the wall and walked down the short hallway toward the front of the home.
There was so much that could go wrong. She could wake Andrew or Alice.
She could stub her toe. Of all options, that one was the most likely.
Della reached the small writing desk in the great room. She fiddled around for a match and lit a slow-burning candle. With a fresh sheet of paper in front of her and a quill in hand, she took a deep, cleansing breath. That sense of foreboding settled over her again, and her stomach churned.
This was the right thing to do, she told herself. It was the only way to save him from a life he’d come to sorely regret.
My dearest, Andrew, she wrote. Already, the page was stained with tears. Della sniffled, trying to rein in her frantic emotions.
I hope you don’t despise me for leaving without a proper goodbye.
It was just something I couldn’t say to you.
There are many things I haven’t been able to say, and I am so sorry for that.
I want you to know that you are always welcome at Kinloss.
Nothing would make me happier than if you were there by my side every day.
Images of that hypothetical future filled Della’s mind and ruined all progress she’d made in trying to stop her tears. It was beyond a futile effort.
But I cannot ask that of you, to leave everything you know and the life you’ve built, just for me. You have already done more than enough, more than anyone else in the world has ever done for me. If this is all we ever have, I will be forever grateful.
I want so much more. I’ve never been able to tell you that, because I’ve been so desperately afraid you might not feel the same.
Now, what I fear is that I am too late. There was a time, when I was nearing eighteen and my world was on the edge of falling apart, that I wanted nothing more than to be your wife.
For years, I mourned the loss of that future.
Now, my world has just been put back together, reshaped into something entirely new.
I don’t know how you fit into it anymore, but I know that I want you to.
However you’d like. I hope that you’ll still write me letters.
I hope that you’ll visit, if you don’t think too ill of me after all of this.
I hope I get to kiss you one more time. I don’t even dare to hope for anything more than that.
Della sniffled again, but she was no match for the power of her own tears.
The sheer force of her emotion was staggering, and she didn’t know if she had the strength to finish writing.
Her bags were packed, and transportation had been arranged.
The morning light would come, but she didn’t know if she had the strength to leave.
I love you so dearly, Andrew. That is my deepest hope, that you know that. I pray this isn’t goodbye.
Yours always,
Della
She folded up the letter and blew out the candle.