Chapter 20
All the Arabians in the world could not make Ruby happy. As she stood in the long stable just outside of London, where the Duke of Windbourne kept his Arabians, and tried to pick one, her heart sank to the floor.
Each one was more beautiful than last. One was feisty. Another regal. Each one was striking, but she really saw none of them. She hadn’t seen anything in days. She hadn’t felt anything in days.
She had become brutally numb.
Her mother had tried to rouse her, and her father too. Abigail had visited her several times, and she was deeply grateful for the company, but none of it really seemed to reach her.
The horses didn’t even reach her now. She was very grateful to the Duke of Windbourne for trying to cheer her up, but it wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t sure it would ever work again.
“Well, darling,” she said to one of the Arabian stallions, who was pawing at the stable door, eager to get out and run.
“Perhaps we can escape together.” she said.
“Will you come with me?” she asked as her heart ached.
“Come home with me,” she whispered, her eyes stinging with tears as the Arabian, who was clearly hot-blooded, sensed her distress and leaned his head towards her.
“And you and I can try to right all the ills of the world, because there are so many of them.”
As the stallion leaned towards her, tears slipped down her cheeks.
“I thought you and I were going to right all the ills in the world.”
She whipped around. “Go away,” she said, her voice rough as she spoke before she could think. He had to be an illusion. A dream. A cruel one. And she had dreamt of him almost every night.
But he stood firm.
“I want you to go,” she said again. “You’re good at making other people go. You’ve taught me well, so you should go.”
“I can’t,” he said simply, the sunlight in the stable hall bathing him in gold.
“Why?” she asked, hating the sorrow in her voice.
“Because,” he began, “I’m done with running and trying to escape, and I need you to understand,” he said softly.
“What happened to me all those years ago with my father, and when I found out the extent of what he had done to my siblings?” He took a step forward, crackling with intensity and a need to make her understand.
“I wanted to make everything right. I wanted to protect them, and I thought I could heal them and change everything, and somehow eradicate my father’s memory, one brother and sister at a time.
But I couldn’t, you see, and that scared me, the idea that my father still loomed large in this world and that there was nothing I could do to stop that.
It terrifies me. It’s something I can’t control.
Do you understand? But I can’t control most things, and I can’t be cruel. ”
He paused, a sentimental look crossing his face before he continued.
“A friend, someone who I now know to be a good friend, told me that I was being just like him by sending you away, that I was caring only about myself. I thought I was caring about you, but the moment he said those words, I knew he was right, and I cannot be like my father.”
Now, much to her shock, tears slipped down Peter’s chiseled cheeks, “Do you understand, my love, my darling? I cannot be like him, and I need your help. So please forgive me and stand by my side, hold my hand, and help me be the man that I long to be, the man I was born to be, the man I believe myself to be. Even though my father never believed.”
And somehow, she melted. How could she not? She was his. She had been his all this time. Just as he had been hers. And now, he wouldn’t allow a ghost to stand in their way.
She raced to him. Gently, she wiped his tears away, then she took his hands and kissed the backs of his knuckles.
Holding his powerful hands in hers, she stared up into his eyes.
“I will walk with you through fire, my love. I will walk with you through every hill and valley of this life. I will face every demon, every echo of your father. He shall never win. He shall never triumph. He is gone, and whatever he has left behind, we will meet, but more importantly, we will create something new together, step by step and day by day. What we create? It will be powerful and something your father could never understand. It will be love, a deep, powerful love. A love no man can destroy.”
“With each other,” he said. “I love you, Ruby,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to hers.
“And I, you,” she managed, even as her heart swelled.
“Shall we go to St. Paul’s?” he murmured, pulling her against him. “Or do you think a chapel might do? Because I have a little something from the Duke of Rivers.”
She blinked. “What?”
And he pulled out a piece of paper. “It’s a special license.”
“My parents,” she protested. “I don’t know if my father—”
“Already approved.”
“How?” she gasped.
He grinned. “The Duke of Windbourne is most persuasive. That man is the devil and what a delightful devil he is. For I think I owe him much,” he said. “And your father? He said he hopes that you will forgive him one day, and he wishes you all the joy in the world.”
She took the license in her fingers and stared at it, realizing that this was indeed the beginning of something new, a chance to go boldly into this life, not alone but with the man she loved.
This was a chance to understand that life was a journey of one step after the other, sometimes surviving one disaster after another.
But as she gazed up at her soon-to-be husband, she knew that, most of all, this was their chance to live and love with all their hearts, all their souls, and to never ever let the past rule either of them again.
For the future awaited. And oh, it was going to be beautiful!