Chapter 21
Victor had never known terror until he met Ernestine Foxley. He had never known what true fear felt like. Sorrow, yes, and even sadness akin to despair. But fear? White, cold fear that caused one to sweat and feel sick and be certain that all was lost? He’d never known it.
After the storm, fear had shuddered through him, but it had dissipated. And once she had been in his arms, he had been certain that such terror would never happen again.
How mistaken he was.
He’d thought that perhaps because she’d been surrounded by the bosom of her friends, and that he had embraced her, that they had survived, all would be well.
What a fool he was. No, that storm seemed to be the catalyst for something else entirely.
It woke something in her that had been asleep for a very long time and neither of them knew what to do about it.
Because as she suddenly stood from her seat beside him as the opera went on before them, he knew again that something was wrong, something terrible, something unfathomable, and something he could not defeat on his own.
She darted out from the seats, trying to be as discreet as she possibly could. But her brittle emotion was seething from her, spilling out onto him, and dread, something he’d never known, washed over him again.
She headed out into the night, away from the lanterns, heading for trees that lined the lawn.
Not only could he not let her go alone because it was dangerous, but he also had to follow her to help her, to salve her wounds, to manage her emotions, to make her understand that she was safe, that she would always be safe.
He darted after her, his boots eating up the perfectly manicured grass, until he was in the forest with its branches twining overhead.
The silver moonlight tried to spill through them, but it barely pierced the wood, tracing over the mossy ground in dappled shadowy patterns.
The strange light turned the forest into another world, a ghost world, a place of memory and a place that had nothing in common with summer or the grand opera taking place in front of the duke’s house.
Heart pounding into his throat, Victor spotted her standing, facing a great oak tree. Her hands pressed into the bark. Her shoulders were shaking.
“What is it?” he asked softly. He longed to go to her and so he tried to, but she whipped around and her face was tense with pain.
He stopped in his tracks.
“I don’t want you to embrace me,” she declared, her cheeks stained with tears, the tracks silver in the bare light.
“But it will make you feel better,” he insisted.
“No,” she returned. “It will make you feel better, and that’s a very different thing, Victor, and I’m sorry.”
“What?” he whispered. “Do you mean to say that my embrace does not make you feel better?” he asked, the words feeling like the worst blow he’d ever known. No gentleman’s punch could ever match it.
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “I need you to understand something and to understand it well.” She licked her lips and balled her hands into fists.
“I am not like you. I am nothing like you. You are grand and beautiful and wonderful, and wherever you go, people adore you and want you to be in their presence.” Her face twisted with pain, and she looked away. “I’m not like that, Victor.”
“I don’t need you to be,” he countered, his soul aching to soothe her. “I don’t want you to be. I want you to be you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she protested, her voice ragged. “You need someone like you to live your life with. I cannot be that person. I am too afraid. My whole life has been dictated by fear and it always will be,” she breathed out.
“A coward,” she said flatly. “I tried to do as Nancy said. I tried to show I wasn’t a coward. But I am. Deep in my core, I am.”
“That’s not true,” he growled. “You are incredibly brave. Look at what you did with Allworthy. Look at how you handled the storm!”
Her eyes closed and the suffering that traveled over her face was agonizing.
“I am still shaking with it,” she whispered. “The fear. And now it is worse because you have done something to me. That storm has done something to me. It has unleashed a storm inside, a storm that I have kept at bay for years, and I need to keep it at bay still.”
He was silent. What could he say? Something was unfolding he couldn’t understand, but it filled him with a growing sense that he was about to have all his hopes seized and crushed.
“Don’t you understand why I want to go to Italy?” she demanded.
“Because it’s beautiful,” he said, “and you love Italian things.”
She let out a soft laugh, but there was no humor to it.
“Oh, my darling Victor. Yes, I adore Italy and I long for the sun. But all of that is a fantasy, don’t you know? I am running away because I hate this place, and I have not known love in years, and I will not be able to give you love, and you deserve it.”
“I will not let you do this to yourself,” he vowed. “I can help you.”
He started to reach out for her, but she yanked her hand back.
“Who was it?” she asked suddenly.
“What?” he asked, startled.
She pressed her lips together, tears gleaming in her eyes, her face as pale as the moonlight. “Who did you lose to make you so determined to save me?”
He started to shake his head, feeling a hot warmth creep up his cheeks. Embarrassment. Fear again. God, was he to be always afraid now?
“No,” he rasped, “it’s not like that.”
Her eyes widened. “I was right. Who was it? Who was she?”
“Are you jealous?” he asked.
“Jealous.” She laughed through her tears. “I wish it was that easy,” she said. “I understand you and why you’ve picked me.”
“I’ve picked you because I love you,” he retorted.
“No, you love me because I need saving. And Victor, that is no reason to marry and that is no reason to fall in love.”
He shook his head, desperate not to give her words credence. “She was my friend,” he said at last, his voice so low he wondered if he had even spoke. “My dearest friend. We’d known each other since we were small. We played together in the country, and I could tell her anything.”
The words ripped from his throat, each one like a nail ripping out of wood, leaving him splintered and raw.
“Tell me more,” she said gently, kindly.
“You really want to hear it, when apparently it is the reason we cannot love each other?” he challenged.
“Yes,” she said, lifting her chin.
He gave a tight nod of his head, flexing and unfurling his hands as he let the past in.
“Well, then she was beautiful, very beautiful. It wasn’t just her spirit that was beautiful.
Her face was too, but I did not have any affection for her in that way because we had grown up as brother and sister.
We waded through streams together, climbed dales together, and picked flowers.
I made chains for her hair so she could be a fairy queen and I could be a fairy king.
We ruled over the dominions of the wild.
I read her poetry, and she sang to me because she was not allowed to go and study the great poets like I was.
We never drifted apart, but I had to go.
It is the lot of a man to go and for a woman to stay, though it seems that you wish to leave me.
” He closed his eyes for a moment, his chest twisting tight, hating the feeling of the memories as they came cascading up.
He could see Jenny’s beautiful face, her soft blonde hair, her pink cheeks, her glowing blue eyes, her dancing air.
“When I was gone to school, she met a soldier,” he hissed. “She was not a grand lady at all. She was actually the daughter of the local teacher. My father permitted our friendship because he was rather forward-thinking. The soldier was not.”
He opened his eyes and looked into the dark woods.
“He convinced her that they should marry and they did, or at least so she thought. It was not a real wedding. He convinced her that some man was a priest. There was no real license,” he spat out.
“There were no real vows. He had her and he used her in ways that I cannot tell you because they were too cruel, and I honestly don’t want to remember.
She was left broken. She was left half of herself and she could not bear it. ”
Ernestine listened intently, standing across from him, her pale gown making her seem like a spirit of the woods.
He had not spoken of this in so long. Of Jenny.
“I did not come back in time,” he whispered.
“She had written me a single letter telling me she was in despair, but I didn’t understand.
” He winced. “And, of course, I had my exams and I was living my life at Oxford as a foolish young man does, surrounded by revelry, and I did have my duty to my father to fulfill my degree. So when I came home and she was but a ghost of herself, I could not see how to help her, how to save her and…I could not.”
He held Ernestine’s gaze as his sorrow swam to the surface. “She threw herself off a cliff. Her body was found on the rocks below, and I vowed then that I would never ever abandon a lady who needed help. That I would always be their friend and that I would never not be in time.”
More tears filled her eyes and slipped down her cheeks, and she crossed to him. Gently, she wound her arms about him, like the ivy does the tree. “You are such a good man, Victor. But you cannot rescue her by rescuing me. Your love in me? It is misplaced.”
“Don’t say that,” he gritted, pressing his face into her soft hair, savoring the scent of soap and lilac. “I have just shared the most important story of my life with you. Do not push me away.”
“And I am grateful that you have done it,” she said quietly, her face resting against his shoulder as her hands wound about his neck.
“And my heart bleeds for Jenny, or at least it would if it could, but I, a long time ago, walled my heart up. I do not know how to take that wall down without breaking myself again. Without coming completely undone. Since the storm, I have felt how it would feel if I did, and I am not willing to risk that. Do you understand? I am not willing to stay in this country and be your wife and try to be something that I can never be. Happy,” she said softly.
“I will never ever be the sort of wife you deserve. And I will certainly never ever be well if I stay here.”
“Then let me go with you,” he growled against her hair, holding her tight.
“You would give everything up for me?” she asked.
“Yes, damn it,” he said. “I would give everything up and then some. I will go with you to Italy. We will roam the hills. We will go to my own villa, a place that is beautiful and will make your spirit soar. I will take you to Mount Vesuvius. You can see the volcano. I will take you to every sight—”
“Because you want to fix me,” she put in, resigned. “Because you want to heal me?”
She drew back, and the look on her face was like a stab in his heart.
“Because you don’t actually want me, Victor. You want the woman that you hope that I can be. You want a second chance at your friend’s life.”
He stumbled back because the power of her words was far too painful to bear. Perhaps because they were partly true.