Gone, and he followed it with complete avoidance.
The first day it happened, Talia had told herself Fletch was being kind, giving her space to spend time with her sister to help her readjust after the horrors she had endured.
But on day two when her mother had arrived, it had become evident that he was avoiding Talia.
Avoiding her at all costs.
After her mother had settled in, Talia had been consumed with intervening between her and Louise. Their mother wanted Louise up and out of bed, ready to pay calls about town. She wanted to pretend nothing at all had happened to Louise. While Louise only wanted to stay in her room, buried deep within the bed covers.
Talia couldn’t blame Louise—she would want to hide from the world just the same. A fact their mother could not seem to understand.
She could clearly see Louise was deeply damaged from her ordeal. The only bright spot in the past few days were the visits from the physician Fletch had hired, Mr. Flemstone. He was kind and funny and did not mind that Louise couldn’t always conjure a laugh at his oddball jokes. But Louise did brighten around him—or at least she sat up in bed and attempted to carry on conversation.
It gave Talia hope. She liked the man, even if she was nervous about the laudanum he was giving Louise to calm her. But Talia was comforted by the fact that he worked at Lord Wotherfeld’s research hospital, which meant, unlike most physicians, he had a combination of the best traditional and surgical medical training.
The whole of it combined—curtailing her mother, worry on her sister, and Fletch’s avoidance—had turned her days into exhaustion. All Talia wanted was to curl up with Fletch at night. To be held warm in his thick arms.
His avoidance had become almost unbearable, mostly because Talia didn’t know why Fletch had disappeared. She had thought what they had done—what she had made him do, finish deep within her—would prove to him how much she wanted him—curse be damned. She knew he wasn’t going to die on her. And there had been no other way she could have shown him—she had needed him to feel how much he meant to her.
But something had undeniably shifted in that moment. He had removed himself from her life, from the townhouse, and Talia had begun to question every moment they had been together. He was avoiding her for a reason. Had she pushed him too far? Did he decide he did not care for her now that her sister was found—an obligation satisfied? Or was he so determined to meet death soon that he was hastening the event along?
Talia worried on it for days, worried on it every moment she wasn’t worried on her sister.
Her hand dropped from her face, and she stepped from her sister’s door only to have her head spin. She fell back against the door, taking deep breaths. Her dizziness was not helped by the fact that she could barely eat for the worry in her stomach, and her head had begun to spin far too often.
She apparently needed to eat some soup as well.
Walking down the stairs, she made her way quietly past the drawing room so her mother didn’t call her in, moving to the rear of the house to talk to Cook.
She paused at Fletch’s study to look in, unable to bridle her fool’s hope that he would be behind his desk and look up to see her. And he would smile. His warm, off-kilter smile that he reserved for her alone, as if she was a wonderment he was trying to decipher. That very smile had sparked a glow deep in her chest from the very first, and she never would have imagined how much she missed it.
No Fletch. Just cool air inside. Only a few stray coals glowed in the fireplace, nothing to heat the room. Fletch was gone during the day, gone during the evening. The staff had made little note of his absence, the household running the same without his presence.
Talia thought she had heard him once, late at night in his chambers. But he did not enter her rooms. And before she got out of her bed to investigate, she realized she had probably just dreamed the noise.
Talia turned from the study, aching for anything she could do to make him appear. But she didn’t even know where he was.
She stopped. What if it hadn’t been a dream? What if he had been in his rooms, and she had missed him?
Hope brewing, Talia realized she had been far too passive.
If her husband was going to appear, she was going to make sure she didn’t miss him.
~~~
Deep into the fifth night of Fletch’s absence, Talia woke from the rustle of the bed, the coverlet lifting and cool air invading the warmth of her cocoon.
She popped up, squinting in the glow of the low coals in the fireplace to see Fletch jumping back out of the bed.
“Fletch.”
“Blast it, Talia, I didn’t see you in there.” He jerked on his robe, hiding his bare skin. “Get a damn shift on.”
Surprised, Talia glanced down to see her naked breasts above the coverlet—she had forgotten she had decided naked in his bed would be best. She scampered out of his bed, following his path. “No. Fletch, stop.”
He spun from her, walking toward the door.
She grabbed his forearm, trying to stop his exit. “I need to talk to you, Fletch.”
He paused for a second, looking over his shoulder at her. “Is something amiss? Your sister?”
“No. Not Louise.” Talia tugged on his arm. “You. Where have you been sleeping?”
He exhaled a long sigh, turning to her. “It is late, Talia. Let us not do this now.”
“This is the only way I have cornered you, Fletch, so yes, now.” She could feel the muscles on his arm flex at her demand. She didn’t care. “Where have you been sleeping?”
His grey eyes settled on her, his gaze guarded. “The club.”
“You have been avoiding me, Fletch.”
“Have I?”
“Yes, dammit.” Her grip on his arm stiffened. “And I want to know why. Did I do something?”
“You did, Talia.”
“What?”
“You made me believe in what is not possible.” His look turned cool in the scant light. “Belief I cannot afford. Belief you cannot afford.”
He was protecting her.
The realization swirled in her mind. A fool, she had not considered that very thing. Why wouldn’t Fletch try to protect her from what he believed was his impending death—he had spent the entire time they had been together protecting her at every turn.
She grabbed his other arm, looking up at him. “You did not marry a weak woman, Fletch. I want all of you, for as long as I have you. You think that will be a short time, but I think it will be a very long time.”
She drew a long breath, searching for words as her fingernails dug into his muscles through his robe. “But I cannot have you if you are not here. And you are wrong—this belief I have—I can afford it because I know, to the bottom of my soul, you are going to be at my side until we are old and wrinkled and grandchildren are crowding our feet.”
“And if your soul is wrong?”
His grey eyes pierced her.
She suddenly felt every wisp of the cool air on her naked skin, making her vulnerable, wishing she had put on her robe. She steadied herself against his look, pulling her spine straight. She was not weak. She had said it, and now she had to mean it.
She met his stare. “Then my soul will take solace in the fact that every single day we had together I gave you everything of me, and you gave me everything of you. That we did not waste a moment that we were destined to be together.”
His glare did not falter. “What if there is a babe?”
“That babe will be loved just the same, every single day of his or her life.”
His jawline tightened as his head gave a slight shake.
He was not about to concede this battle.
Neither was she.
Her chest heaved as her hands moved up, gripping his upper arms. Fletch had never had a day of hope in his whole life. He had been given this death sentence the day he was born. He didn’t even know what hope was.
She wasn’t just fighting him. She was fighting decades
of cruel fate. Generations that believed they were cursed because it was the only explanation. She needed to move him from a lifetime of that one constant. She couldn’t lose him.
She closed the distance between them, her breasts touching his chest. He looked to the side, refusing to watch her.
“Fletch, I believed for years that only bad things were destined to happen for me. But it didn’t start that way—even leaving Rosevin, I had boundless hope. But then day after day, I lost a little piece of it, until one day, I had no hope left. None.”
She shook his arms. “Ask me what happened.”
His tongue jutted into the side of his cheek as he exhaled, still refusing to look at her.
Silence pounded in the heavy heartbeats between them, neither moving.
Fletch opened his mouth. “What happened?”
“Your feet. Your boots appeared before me, buried in dung behind that brothel.” She reached up, grabbing his jaw in her hands and forcing him to look down at her. “Everything changed in that one moment, Fletch. Everything. You gave me hope. Let me do the same for you.”
“Hope will not change the future, Talia.”
“Dammit, Fletch.” Her voice spiked. “Then you leave me my hope—you do not get to tear that away from me. But I want you. I want you now. Here, while you are alive, and it is not fair that you remove yourself from me.”
“Why is that not fair, Talia? It is what you will live with the rest of your life after I die, so what does it matter if I hasten my absence along?”
She slapped him, the sting still vibrating through her palm as she captured his face between her hands in her next motion, her voice cracking. “You are alive, that is why. Here and now. You may not want your life to mean anything, Fletch, but you cannot ask me to deny how very much you mean to me. That you are alive. That your life, that you, are important to me. You mean something. Do not dare to insist that I deny that.”
She went to her toes, dragging his face down to hers, kissing him. Her lips met his with brutal force—anger, frustration, need—driving her mouth on his, forging through his resistance and drawing him open to her.
For a long moment, he could not refuse her.
Then he growled, ripping himself away.
He yanked her hands from his face.
Turning, he left. The door slammed behind him.
Talia stood, naked, staring at the door, her lips still pulsating from the kiss. Slowly, her arms curled around her stomach, holding in the waves of nausea starting to twist her belly.
She hadn’t given him hope.
Nothing of the sort.
She had only driven him away.
Further.
{Chapter 14 }
Talia woke up with one thought in her mind.
One thought that did not falter even as she noticed the neatly folded letter on the pillow next to her. One thought that did not falter even as she realized what would be inside the letter.
One thought.
She was in love with her husband.
She had spent the night pacing her room, tossing and turning in bed, trying to talk herself out of that very fact. But it was no use. She was in love with Fletch, and his leaving had only made that fact painfully clear to her.
Her husband had made her fall in love with him.
And now he intended to die.
Without lifting her head from the pillow, Talia reached out, ignoring how her fingers trembled as she opened the note. She rolled onto her back, holding the crisp vellum above her face.
Talia,
I cannot do this to you. Cannot let us go further. Hope is not the salvation you think it is. Hope, in this instance, is only cruel. I refuse to encourage it.
So I must leave. This home, all of my homes and land that will not return to the crown, are now yours. You can visit my solicitor, Mr. Gleeson, for details, as he is steward of all the holdings.
Know that, above all, I wish I could offer you all of the things you want from me, Talia. A child. Hope. A lifetime together.
But I cannot give you those things. While at the very same time, I have discovered that I cannot deny you, Talia. So I must remove myself from you. There is not another option. We cannot move forth in ways one, or both of us, will regret. I cannot do that to you—create more pain in your life only to appease my own selfish desires.
I wish you nothing but a long life filled with happiness, Talia.
—Fletch
Tears slid down her face, rivers along her temples that pooled in her ears. Damn him. She had known exactly what she would read in the note, but the reality of the words written in Fletch’s own hand stung her chest, constricted her air.
She loved him. Yet he was gone.
She crumpled the note, pride hardening her. Bastard. He was not going to let her love him. No matter what she wanted.
Pride sent her spine straight, stretching in her bed.
She needed to break from this as well. Not love him.
He was going to die soon, be lost to her forever. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was better for them to part ways before the pain would become too unbearable at his passing.
Except what if he didn’t pass? What if his death wasn’t imminent? What if the curse was just a string of unfortunate accidents that spanned generations? What if they both lived until eighty, bitter and alone for decades because of this very moment?
Her hope could not be squelched.
Fletch had shown her how to live with hope again, and she was finding it very hard to now curb the hope he had kindled.
But he had rejected her.
And he would again. And again. And again.
The raw humiliation of that one moment—naked, the door slamming in her face—swept her, curdling her stomach. Her pride could not stomach that again.
Wiping the wetness from her face, she sat up and smoothed the note to flatness on the bed next to her. She didn’t care for the crumples she had put in his words. Words she would have to read again and again in order to believe the truth of them.
Fletch wished her happiness.
Now she just needed to find out how to achieve that without him.
~~~
Four days later, Talia walked in the front door of the townhouse only to be greeted by a din escaping from the very active lower drawing room off the foyer. Without stopping to remove her cloak, she rushed forward, her heart speeding, palpitating out of control before she turned the corner into the drawing room.
A blur of faces turned to her. Chattering stopped.
“Talia, come in.” Her mother stood, waving Talia into the room. “Had I known you were stepping out, I would have set the time for our guests to be later.”
Talia’s eyes swung about the room. Six—seven of her mother’s old acquaintances sat around the room. Friends—friends that had denied them help years ago. Cut her mother when they had been in the position to help. Friends that had deemed her mother tainted with poverty. Deemed Talia and Louise unmarriageable.
No. Not in her home.
Her breathing sped, her chest hurting with the pounding of her heart. Talia gulped air through clenched lips—air that refused to stay in her lungs, every quick exhale forcing the next gasp.
Just when Talia was about to spin to run from the room, she spied Louise sitting on a side chair, partly hidden behind two plump ladies that had angled their chairs right in front of her.
In the richest dress Talia had seen in the past five years, Louise shook, her face ashen as tears brimmed in her eyes. The dress could withstand the busybodies. Louise could not.
Talia’s panic twisted, spiraling into rage. Across the room in an instant, she wedged herself between the two ladies that held Louise captive and grabbed her sister’s wrist, pulling her to her feet.
Without a word, she dragged Louise out of the drawing room, not stopping until she had her sister up the stairs and into her room. She sent a passing maid to fetch the nurse and Mr. Flemstone.
The door closing, Louise crumpled onto
her bed, her tears streaming. Talia rushed across the room, drew her into her arms, holding her sister as Louise both shook in sobs and tried to jerk from Talia’s touch.
“She made me go down and I could not fight her, Talia.” Hiccups sent Louise’s words wobbling as she stopped trying to escape and leaned into Talia. “I could not be in there and I did not know what to do or say and I just sat there and tried not to cry. I could not speak and Mama is so mad.”
“Shhhh. Do not think on that. Mother should not have put you in that situation below.” Talia stroked her back, noting the elaborate upsweep in her sister’s hair that must have taken an hour to concoct. A fresh wave of fury scurried down her spine at how long her sister had been forced to sit, preparing for the event below. “Come. Let us strip you out of this dress and get you into bed.”
Louise had only just pulled the bed covers over her legs when the door flung open, their mother bursting into the room with the rabid anger of a bull defending its territory.
“Unacceptable, Natalia. Completely unacceptable.” Her mother went straight to Talia, hand waving hysterically. “Do you know how much cajoling and begging I had to do to get the lot of those ladies gathered down below? It has been impossible and you have ruined it beyond compare. Right now they are teetering with gossip.”
Talia returned her mother’s glare with full force. “I do not care in the slightest what those women down below think on me. Or you.”
“You need to change your attitude, Natalia.”
“I cannot believe you would have the gall to invite these women into Fletch’s home, Mother.” Talia’s voice hissed. “Women who turned their backs upon us the instant we were tossed from Rosevin. Have you no pride?”
“No. I cannot afford pride, daughter. Pride disappeared as an option for me long ago. Pride rarely delivers results. Pride has no place when happiness is at stake. Pride does not find a suitable husband for my youngest daughter. So do not dare to be high-handed about the matter, Natalia.” Her mother’s hands went to her hips. “You may not care about yourself, or me, but you do need to care about what those women below think of your sister, Natalia. She is unmarried and she has already lost precious years in the marriage mart. We have no time to waste if she is to find a suitable husband.”
Promise: A Lords of Action Novel Page 16