Chapter Thirty-Six #2
She’d never seen Clara so angry, and Della felt mired in guilt that it was on her behalf.
She looked at each of their faces, some tightened in anger and others in discomfort.
She’d brought all of this on all of them, and once again, Della couldn’t help but feel that to know her was a burden in and of itself.
“I must say”—Della set down her own fork and lay her napkin on the table next to her plate—“to all of you, I am truly sorry for all of this. I had no intention of . . . upending everything for everyone. I’m sure Clara has discussed this with each of you, but you are more than welcome to come to Kinloss with me.
I certainly hope that you do, as I would be lost without you. ”
She tried to laugh, to inject some humor into an increasingly tense moment. There was nothing for it, though. Each face looked back at her with a shocked expression, as if they hadn’t expected her to speak to them directly about this.
“But if you would like to stay in my parents’ employ, I would not blame you.
They are . . . unpredictable, and I would hate to see any of you suffer because of their ire toward me.
If you’d like to seek positions elsewhere, please know you will receive a superb reference from me.
” Della heaved in a deep breath. She’d been talking so fast she’d forgotten to take in the adequate air to continue speaking. Or living, almost.
“You have nothing to apologize for, my dear.” Mrs. Goldsmith reached across the table to clasp Della’s hand. “I am so glad for your mother, because this gift of hers is the first show of any affection I’ve seen from your family since you fell ill.”
Della’s head dropped low, as if in shame. She couldn’t meet Mrs. Goldsmith’s eyes. They were too forgiving, so much more than she deserved.
“Gwendoline and I have discussed it, and we’d love to come with you to Kinloss.” She squeezed Della’s hand once more. “As long as you don’t expect Scottish food. I’m afraid I’ve no idea what that is.”
Della laughed, as did everyone else at the table.
“You know that I am coming with you,” Clara said. Her grin was smug. “Even if you did not want me to join you, someone would have to pry me off the top of the carriage.”
“I would, unfortunately, be the poor fool peeling her off the top of the carriage,” Harry said, raising a hand in salute. It was a historic moment, Harold Stanton making a joke. Della hadn’t known he was capable of such a thing. “So I’d really rather we just go along with everyone else.”
Della smiled. Her eyes were becoming misty again, and she couldn’t stand it. She’d cried enough for this life and the next. Even if these were particularly happy tears, she did not want to waste any more time crying.
“I would love to join you as well,” said Silas, their quiet, overly formal jack-of-all-trades.
“You know,” Della told him, “we may very well need to hire more people. I don’t see a need for you to do the work of three men. You decide which position you’d best like to keep, and it’s yours.”
“Thank you, my lady,” Silas said, ducking his head in a seated version of a bow.
“Oh, none of that.” Della waved him away. “I am the same person I was when I last left this place, and I would hope you’d treat me as such.”
As Della spoke those words, she realized they couldn’t be further from the truth. The person who had returned to Westfield Manor was someone else. Not because of her title, those were just words. She was a different person because of Andrew.
The Della of weeks ago had been infatuated with him, nearly obsessed with his words and fascinated with extrapolating hazy childhood memories. She was in love with an idea. A very specific potential future.
Now, Della knew exactly how that future could feel, what it could look like.
She knew the sensation of waking up next to him, of his lips on hers.
She knew what it was to love him, and she thought she knew what it was to have him love her, too.
No one had ever risked so much for her. No one had ever put her first.
Andrew was no longer a potentiality or an idea born from memory. For a fortnight, he’d been her reality. And then she’d left him. Guilt and regret and fear swam around in her chest, drowning her lungs and agitating her heart.
“Della seems . . . overwrought,” she heard Clara say. “Let’s give her a moment alone.”
Around her, everyone began gathering dishes and discussing plans for packing up the rest of the kitchens and renting carriages for the impending journey.
They were talking about important details that Della ought to know, but she couldn’t speak.
She couldn’t think properly anymore. Della sat for long moments, trapped in her own thoughts.
“What happened?” Clara asked, coming to sit in the chair next to her at the table.
Della had no idea how long she’d been sitting there since everyone else had vacated the room.
It was possible they’d packed up the remainder of the house around her.
Perhaps the dining table and chairs were all that remained.
“I left,” Della admitted. It was a confession, an admission of but a small percentage of the guilt she felt.
“What do you mean?” Clara leaned in further, crossing her legs and leaning forward, her chin resting on an elbow she’d placed on her knee. “I know that you left, because you’re here now, but—”
“No,” Della huffed. Her anger at her own behavior began to boil over. She picked up her napkin, the only thing left on the table, and threw it to the floor. “I didn’t just leave London, Clara, I left him.”
“Why?” Clara asked. Her voice was a shocked whisper, and Della didn’t want to answer. There wasn’t an explanation that would make any sense. She’d felt how she felt, and she’d reacted how she reacted. She’d never regretted anything more, but she didn’t know how to tell anyone that.
“I was scared,” Della admitted. Once her anger faded, she was left with a mortifying sadness.
She’d had the only thing she’d ever wanted in this life, and she’d left him behind.
“But what was I supposed to do, Clara?” Her voice was exasperated, weighed down by sleep deprivation and complete emotional depletion.
“I could not ask him to leave everything for me. He is selfless enough to do just that.”
Della rolled her eyes at that, like she was cursing her own words. Her own feelings.
“I had a problem, and he fixed it for me.” She sighed again, looking down at the fingernails she’d picked to death along the ride back from London.
“And he cannot do it anymore. I won’t allow him to.
He would do anything for anyone, and I cannot let him exhaust himself and .
. .” She heaved an angry breath. “I cannot let him become another person who only cares for me out of obligation.”
Tears streamed down her face just as they had in the carriage, and Della gave in to the rush of feeling that poured out of her. She didn’t think she had anymore to give, but she should never have doubted her own ability to feel.
“I would so much rather be alone than have him tether himself to me out of a sense of duty. Or honor, or something. Because it’s the right thing to do. He would lose himself in caring for me.”
Clara picked up Della’s napkin off the floor and handed it back to her.
Della knew she needed it. She could feel tears and snot creating a disgusting trail down her face.
She wiped her nose and dabbed at her eyes, awaiting Clara’s response.
She was waiting but a few more moments, though that response was not even remotely what she was expecting.
“My God, that’s bloody ridiculous.” Clara rolled her eyes. “Complete rubbish, everything you just said.”
“Clara!” Della almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, of pouring out her heart and voicing her deepest fears and getting rubbish in return. She wouldn’t, because she was mortally offended, but she did want to. “Have you no compassion?”
“I wasn’t finished.” Clara rolled those eyes again, but then her expression turned uncharacteristically serious.
“Della, I need you to listen to me.” She removed the napkin from her clenched fist, unfolding that hand and covering it with hers.
“Are you listening?” she asked, one brow arched in mock gravity.
“Of course I’m listening. What else am I to do?” Della really was far too bone weary for a conversation of this magnitude, but she didn’t appear to have been given a choice.
“Good.” Clara patted the hand she still held, sandwiching it between both of hers. “No one could ever lose themselves in caring for you.”
“But—” Della started to refute. Her parents had, she thought immediately. Her mother especially. Caring for Della had made her cold, and it had broken her heart so fully that there was simply nothing left of it anymore.
“No.” Clara’s voice was stern, authoritative in a way Della hadn’t known she was capable of.
“Listen to me,” she demanded. “I know you are thinking of your stepmother, the wretch. She made you feel as if you are unlovable, as if caring for you is some exhausting chore. But I have been here with you for nearly eight years. Each and every day. In truth, we’ve grown up together.
Have you once seen me lose myself, as you say Andrew is doomed to? ”
Clara didn’t give her time to answer. She wasn’t planning to, anyway. She wasn’t going to argue a moot point.
“And this sense of obligation! Whatever that means. Nonsense. What obligation would Andrew have to you, anyway? You played in the garden together as children. Do you know where the people I played with as children are now? I certainly do not. I don’t remember their names, let alone have some duty to care for them. ”
“I understand what you’re saying, but—” Della tried to interject on her own behalf, but Clara was having none of it.
“I am not finished.” Clara arched a pointed brow. “Everyone who lives here has an obligation to you in some way, because you are the lady of the house in which we work. But you gave each of us a more than fair choice—to be freed of that obligation or to stay with you.”
Della’s eyes teared up again. She had to be defying the limits of her body’s natural capabilities at this point, she’d cried so many tears.
“All of us chose you.” Clara spoke so plainly, so simply. As if she weren’t changing Della’s entire perspective on herself. “Just because your parents weren’t capable of loving you properly does not mean the rest of us suffer the same affliction. Andrew certainly has no such problem.”
Della sniffled once. “Only time will tell, I suppose.”