He closed his eyes and fought panic. When he had answered the door tonight and had seen Gabriel, panting and panicked on his front porch, all Jeremy had heard was “Eleanor” and “hurt.” Jeremy had thought to never again know the searing agony as he had when Savannah had died less than two years ago. But, in that instant, he realized that any harm to Eleanor also injured him.
Holding his head in his hands, he battled against his instinctual need to protect himself from any more soul-shattering grief. He glanced up at the painting again, staring at the man he had been and knew that was the man he desired to be again. If only he had the courage to face his greatest fear. And to willingly accept the pain that could come.
Chapter 16
Geraldine woke to find Eleanor sleeping on a pallet in her room. Myrtle had long since risen to play with her brothers. Geraldine scrubbed at her eyes to make sure she was not imagining Eleanor’s presence and then slipped from her bed to peer at her. “Eleanor?” she whispered. When Eleanor turned her head, Geraldine gasped at the bruise forming around her right eye and cheek. “Climb into bed with me. We can whisper secrets to each other, and Billy won’t hear us as easily.”
Geraldine reached down and pulled on Eleanor’s hand, urging Eleanor to follow her to her bed. She climbed in and scooted over against the wall and on her side. She smiled with encouragement as Eleanor eased in. “There’s plenty of room.”
Frowning as she saw a tear trickle down Eleanor’s cheek, Geraldine reached out to grip her hand. “Did I upset you?”
“No,” Eleanor murmured. “I … I’m unaccustomed to such kindness.” She attempted to smile at Geraldine but grimaced in pain at the movement. “Ow,” she whispered, as she held a hand gently to the side of her face.
“We’ll see if Mama can find ice,” Geraldine said, and then her countenance sobered when she thought about her mother. “Or you can ask her. I promised her that I’d never speak to her again.”
Eleanor’s eyebrows rose in surprise at that declaration. “Never speak to Clarissa? What did she do to upset you?”
Geraldine rested her head against the pillow and studied Eleanor, as though determining if she could confide in her. After a long moment Geraldine said, “My mother read a letter that wasn’t hers. It was mine.” Her eyes lit with the indignation of one wronged, and she flushed with anger. “She isn’t capable of seeing that she was wrong.”
“Did she hurt you after she read it?” Eleanor asked. When Geraldine stared at her in confusion, Eleanor asked, “Did she yell at you? Call you names? Make you feel bad about yourself?”
“Of course not. That’s not Mama. Mama’s always kind and understanding. But she’s so protective! Can’t she see I’m seventeen? I have feelings too.”
Eleanor’s gaze softened as she looked at the beautiful young woman. “Of course you do. And I know your mother realizes that. However, try to understand her point of view. She worries about you being hurt, and she wants to protect you.”
Geraldine let out a huff of frustration. “She wants me to do what she never could. She wants me to go to university and study to become more than a teacher. To live an independent life. To wait years before I marry.” She curled her hand under her head. “Why can’t she understand I want everything?” Geraldine fidgeted as Eleanor gazed at her for a long moment. A gaze filled with comprehension, longing, and regret. “What is it, Eleanor?”
“What I would suggest, as someone who hopes she is your friend, is that you talk with your mother. Explain to her how you feel and what you want. I’ve only ever found your mother to be caring and considerate.” She shrugged. “Although I’m not her daughter, so I know that your relationship with her will be entirely different.”
Geraldine reached out a hand and traced a finger over the mark on Eleanor’s cheek. “Did my uncle hurt you?”
Eleanor gasped, and her eyes widened. “No! Of course not. Your uncle is kind. Why would you ever think that?” Her eyes shone with fear and concern.
The young woman shrugged. “He was always good to Aunt Savannah, and I never thought he’d harm anyone. But you left with him, and now you’re hurt.” Her blue eyes shone with concern. “Who hit you?”
“My mother,” Eleanor rasped.
“Your mother?” Geraldine gasped. She made a small moaning sound and scooted across the small space that separated them until she could wrap her arms around Eleanor. “Oh, how horrible. I can’t imagine Mama hitting me.” Geraldine held Eleanor close. “No one will hurt you here, Ellie.”
Crying softly, Eleanor allowed the young woman to soothe her.
“Remember what my mama always tells me,” Geraldine whispered as she held Eleanor. “No one ever has the right to hurt you or to make you do anything against your will. You are worthy of their love and respect just as you are. You never need to change.” She held her tighter as her words made Eleanor cry harder.
* * *
Jeremy sat in Gabriel and Clarissa’s kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee. The kitchen door was open so that he could see into the dining and living rooms for Eleanor’s eventual appearance. The windows in the kitchen were also open, allowing the soft morning breeze to enter, as well as the calls of the finches and robins. He breathed in deeply of the rich scent of coffee and prayed that he would find the strength to keep from barging into the Bouchard household to reprimand Ellie’s mother.
He stiffened as a soft hand gripped his shoulder and then relaxed as Clarissa squeezed his shoulder, easing a little of his tension. When she moved around the kitchen to clean up the dishes, he murmured, “Thank you.”
“For what?” she asked with a curious smile. She wore a blue linen dress that highlighted her beautiful eyes.
However, he realized the happiness that had become such an inherent part of her no longer inspired envy. He waited for guilt to wash over him, and all he felt was relief. “For your quiet companionship. Waiting for her to appear is hard.” He saw her smile in commiseration. “I want to race upstairs and barge into her room. But I know that’s not appropriate, with her sharing a room with Geraldine.”
Clarissa sighed at the mention of her eldest daughter’s name, the happiness in her gaze fading. “I fear Geraldine will hide out in her room for as long as possible today. My hope is that her love of a good meal will eventually force her from her room. She’ll be devastated to learn she’s already missed her favorite breakfast.”
Jeremy frowned as he saw Clarissa’s attempt at humor still failed to brighten her spirits. “What happened, Rissa? Everything was fine last night, wasn’t it?” He scratched at his head. “Or I thought it was. I was preoccupied with Ellie, even at dinner.”
Clarissa swiped her hands on a dish towel. “I never considered how difficult it was for my father to see me fall in love with Gabriel.” She looked at her wedding ring. “Or Cameron,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and waited a long moment for the memories from twenty years ago to fade. “I only ever thought of what I felt. As a young woman in love. Why would I think of my father? Why wouldn’t he be delighted for me?”
Jeremy sat back in his chair, stunned into silence. After a moment he whispered, “Geraldine is in love?”
Clarissa swiped at a stray piece of hair and poked it behind her ear in an absentminded gesture. She waved her arms around, as Geraldine liked to do when expounding on an issue that she was passionate about. “How could I want to thwart her one chance at love? Why should I want her to live out my dreams? Why can’t I be supportive?” Her voice broke. “Why must I be jealous of my own daughter?”
Jeremy jumped up from his chair and scooted around the kitchen table to pull Clarissa into his arms. “Surely that’s not how you feel. I know you, Rissa.”
She shook her head and hugged him. “No, it’s how Geraldine sees me. As a vindictive, spiteful, jealous woman, no longer in her prime. who wants to live through her daughter.” She shuddered. “Can’t she see I’m terrified for her? That I … I worry about what can happen?” Her voice broke as she lost her bat
tle with her memories.
“I’m certain the man she’s interested in isn’t like Cameron,” Jeremy soothed. “If he is, you know plenty of us will protect her.”
She rested her cheek against Jeremy’s chest and murmured, “I know he’s a good man, but I still can’t shake this fear. Does every mother have this terror?”
He kissed the top of her head. “Good mothers do,” he whispered. At a nearby sound, he looked to the doorway to see Geraldine standing there, transfixed at the sight of her mother crying in his arms. “Talk with your daughter, Rissa. Explain your fears.” He looked deeply into her eyes. “She has a right to know.” He squeezed her arm and slipped from the room to go upstairs to see Eleanor.
* * *
Eleanor dozed in Geraldine’s bed, hungry but filled with such lassitude that she had no desire to rise. She pulled up her arms and covered her head in shame as she remembered she had no other clothes except the ones she’d worn the previous day. She was a pauper. An unwanted daughter.
Although she had a job, she knew she would not survive on the pittance she earned at the library. The meager salary had never bothered her before, when she felt secure in her living arrangement with her parents. However, now that she needed to live off what she earned, she feared for what she’d have to do. She curled farther into herself and made a silent vow that she would not return to her mother’s house. She would not beg her mother to take her in.
She sighed with regret that her father was not a stronger man. The only time he had ever countermanded her mother was when he had thrown Cameron from the house, after he found them in the parlor together without a chaperone. She squeezed her eyes more firmly shut at that memory.
A soft tap at the door caused her to jerk, and she ignored it. The tapping started again, and she stared at the door in confusion. In the home she was raised in, if someone wanted to talk with her, they just barged in. “Yes?” she called out. She shivered at how weak her voice was.
“Ellie? May I come in?”
She shivered again but, this time, from the pleasure of hearing Jeremy’s voice, from the unaccustomed comfort of hearing concern for her in another’s voice. “Yes,” she whispered. When the door remained closed, she said in a louder voice, “Yes.”
Jeremy poked his head in and frowned at the sight of her burrowed under the covers in Geraldine’s bed. He took a step into the room but left the door ajar. “I know it isn’t proper for me to be in your bedroom.” He paused and flushed, running a hand through his hair. “I needed to reassure myself that you were all right.”
When he saw tears coursing down her cheeks, any hesitancy at approaching her disappeared. “My darling,” he whispered. “What’s the matter? Do you need a doctor?” He crouched by her side at the bed, coming to kneel beside her. His hands stroked her in a soft caress, soothing away hurts.
“No,” she wailed, then reached for him. She scooted back in the bed, patting it, and he kicked off his boots and climbed in beside her, atop the bedding. “Hold me.”
Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her tightly into his embrace and breathed in her soft scent of peonies and soap. He ran his hands over her back and head and whispered into her ear. “You’ll be fine, darling. No one will hurt you again. You’re one of us now.”
She levered herself up on his chest and shook her head in confusion. “What do you mean, I’m one of you now?”
He smiled tenderly. “Even if you decide you want nothing to do with me, my beauty”—he frowned when the endearment caused two more tears to roll down her cheeks—“my brother and his family have taken you into their hearts. You are family now. They will do everything in their power to help you.”
She stared deeply into his gaze. “And you?”
“As will I.” He took a deep breath. “If you want me to.” He frowned as he saw fear and doubt in her gaze. “Do you doubt me?”
She dropped her head so that her forehead rested against his chest. After taking a few restorative breaths, the tension seeped from her, and she rubbed her face against his shirt before kissing him, eliciting a groan. “No,” she murmured, tilting her head up again to meet his gaze. “I’ve doubted myself for too long. I … battle a horrible fear that this will all be taken away from me, and I will end up alone and devastated after knowing such joy, such elation.” She shook her head in frustration. “No words created can describe what I feel.”
Jeremy nodded. “Now you understand part of what I fear. For I know what it is to have it all and then to lose it.” He kissed her. “But I realized last night, after Gabe summoned me, when I thought you harmed, when I imagined for one moment that I had lost you …” His eyes filled, and his hold on her tightened. “I realized I will already suffer because my heart is yours.”
“Mine?” Her incredulous whisper filled the intimate space between them.
“Yes.” He took a deep breath. “I dream of a future again. I no longer am haunted by the past. I no longer resent the happy, contented man I was because I have hope that I can be that man again.” He cupped her cheek with one palm. “I will not lie to you. I will always love Savannah. But I promise I will not allow her ghost to sully what we have.”
“What did you feel when Gabriel knocked on your door?” she whispered.
“Panic and anguish.” His eyes filled with a wild terror. “Regret that I’d never told you how I felt. And infinite relief to realize that, although you were hurt, you lived.”
“I wanted to come to you, but I feared you would think me too forward.” She flushed at her whispered admission.
Jeremy smiled tenderly at her and shook his head. “Never.” He kissed her forehead. “I admit I was confused and a little hurt that you had gone to Gabe, but this allows you the time to decide what you want. Who you want to be.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, as she ran her fingers over his face.
He took a deep breath. “I’m not proud of things from my past,” he whispered. “When you learn about them, you might be thankful you had the time to decide not to bind yourself to me.”
The confusion in her gaze grew. “You are a good, honorable man, who is dedicated to his family. You’ve never scared me or made me feel less. You’ve made me feel more.” She shook her head, as though frustrated with her feeble words. “I’m not explaining myself well.”
Jeremy leaned forward, kissing her softly. At her exhalation filled with pleasure, he deepened the kiss, sinking his hands in her thick raven hair. He dropped one hand to caress the curves of her hip and groaned with pleasure as she kissed him back. After another deep kiss, he backed away.
“You’re passionate, and you share your passion with me.” He smiled as he saw the pleasure their kiss had wrought in her. “Thank you.”
She rested her head on his chest and sighed. “I was taught a woman shouldn’t feel pleasure at a man’s touch,” she whispered.
“I’d try to forget all the things your mother taught you, love,” Jeremy said. “At least with regard to relationships.”
She turned a curious gaze to Jeremy. “So you’re saying you don’t want a meal on the table the minute you get home from work? Or your clothes perfectly starched? Or for me to sit and listen to you talk about your day?”
His frown turned into a glower as she asked more questions. “I’d far prefer for us to make dinner together, as we talked about our days together. And I’m not a fan of starch. It irritates my skin terribly.” He kissed her nose as she stared at him in shocked silence. “I want a partner, Ellie. A woman who will look to me for support and love, as I look to her for the same. Our house might not be the cleanest, and we might not eat at the appropriate hour, but I’ve never much cared about those things.”
He cupped her face. “I want laughter and storytelling and passion and love.” His eyes glowed with hope. “Is that what you want?”
She nodded, then leaned forward to kiss him. “Yes. Although I fear I might make mistakes. I’ve not had as much practice as those in your family.”
His adoring smile sparked hope in her gaze. “We all have demons to face, Ellie.” After a moment, he sobered. “I have Breandan. I see how you are with him, but …” He paused. “I hope he has a woman in his life who can love him like a mother.”
She kissed him again. “I want to be that woman.”
His eyes sparkled with delight. “You do?” At her smile, he leaned forward to kiss her again. “I give thanks, every day, that I ran into you outside my shop. And that you had the good sense to work at the library. I don’t know what I would have done had we never met.”
She shivered as she pushed forward to rest in his arms. “Nor do I.”
* * *
Clarissa swiped at her eyes and moved away from the kitchen table to face the sink, away from her daughter. She busied herself with washing dishes and then wiping down the sink. “Food is in the icebox,” she murmured. “You’ve missed breakfast.”
“Mama,” Geraldine whispered. “Mama, look at me.”
Clarissa gripped the edge of the sink and bowed her head as she fought a sob. “I don’t have it in me to fight you right now, Geraldine.” She sniffled and kept her back to her daughter. “Perhaps later today.”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” Geraldine whispered.
Clarissa spun to stare at her daughter.
Geraldine stood, her black hair in disarray, as though she hadn’t touched a brush in weeks, and her blue eyes filled with remorse. She had donned an old dress she liked to wear to gallivant about in the parks, and her feet were bare.
“What are you sorry for?” Clarissa asked, as she allowed her daughter to see her grief and the pain their fight had provoked.
“I never thought my words could hurt you,” she said in a low voice, as she took a step in her mother’s direction. She flushed with indignation. “I’m still upset you read my letter. That you would ever think he’d act in a dishonorable fashion.”
Triumphant Love: Banished Saga, Book Nine Page 25