A Beauty So Rare

by Tamera Alexander

  For the first time, his confidence seemed to waver. “Shortly before our evening together in the conservatory.”

  “But that was well over a month ago. Why did you wait to say anything?”

  His hand tightened on her arm, not painfully, but more in a . . . possessive sort of way. “Because I know you, Eleanor. You’re a practical, levelheaded woman who knows what she wants in life and isn’t afraid to pursue it. I also know you’re scared.”

  He moved in, touching her face, the blue of his eyes deepening, and her heart squeezed tight with simultaneous pleasure and panic.

  “I can see the fear in your eyes right now. If you’d known for the past few weeks that I wasn’t engaged anymore, you wouldn’t have allowed me to show you how much I love you. And I do love you, Eleanor Braddock. I think I have since . . .” His eyes narrowed. “Since you mistook me for an under gardener.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh.

  “One more thing,” he whispered, trailing his hand from her face, down to the high collar of her shirtwaist. “I’d like your forthright response to this.”

  He took her in his arms and kissed her, like he’d done before, only slower this time, his arms holding her as though they were made to do just that. He drew back slightly, and she thought they were done. But she was wrong.

  He kissed her mouth again, then her cheek. With one arm, he held her, his hand spanning the small of her back, while the other explored the curve of her shoulder, her collarbone, then—her heart leapt to her throat—back up to her neckline again.

  “Eleanor,” he whispered against her mouth.

  Eyes still closed, her composure in a puddle at his feet, she took a breath. “Yes?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  In a blink, she was back. And looked up at him. “W-what did you say?”

  “You heard me.” He nuzzled her neck. “I want you to marry me. Soon. I don’t want to wait. I’ve already waited half of my life for you.”

  “But . . .” The strangest feeling—part wonder and excitement, part terror and dread—chased the desire coursing through her. “We don’t—”

  “We don’t what?”

  “We don’t . . . know each other well enough. Not . . . like that.”

  His hands on her shoulders, he looked her square on. “You and I know each other better than a lot of couples married for half their lives do.”

  Knowing he was right, yet feeling an inexplicable fear fanning out inside her, she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

  “I know you love me, Eleanor. Seven strudels? Seven?”

  She winced. “Thirteen. Still, none of them good.”

  He urged her chin upward, and she glimpsed a confidence in him she wanted to have but didn’t. Not when remembering how much it had hurt to learn of his initial plans to return to Austria. That had been hard enough. But growing even closer to him, allowing herself to love him like she knew she could—and would, if given the chance—then losing him . . . like so many of the women she knew who had lost their husbands . . . That would be too much.

  The sting of losing her mother, and then Teddy, was never far away. She’d witnessed the changes in her father, had seen what grief could do to a person. Then there was the soldier that night so long ago . . . the regret he’d borne, the pain in his eyes in those final moments.

  Loving someone came at too high a cost, a cost Eleanor didn’t think she could— No, she knew she couldn’t bear it.

  “Marry me,” Marcus whispered again, his voice husky.

  Already feeling a sense of loss, she shook her head. “I can’t.”

  The ardor in his gaze dimmed. “You’re afraid I’ll leave you. But I never will, Eleanor.”

  How did he know her so well? Her throat ached with love for him. “You won’t mean to. But you will . . . someday.”

  “Years from now, maybe,” he whispered. “After a full life lived together.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “And neither do you,” he countered softly, then kissed her again, gently, with a tenderness that belied his stature and strength, and that almost persuaded her.

  But in the end, the fear in her heart won out. “I can’t,” she whispered. Then, needing the reassurance of his arms even if she couldn’t say yes, she gave him a brief but tight hug before heading downstairs.

  Over the next weeks, as the remnant of March slipped into April, then April readied for May, the daylight hours lengthened. Yet the days themselves seemed to grow shorter. Everywhere Eleanor looked there was work to do for the home, for the open house, for the classes they would offer, for the skills they would teach the women and the children, and for Hazel, Mrs. Bennett’s niece, starting the café, which Marta and Elena were helping with as well.

  And . . . there was Marcus.

  He’d asked her twice again to marry him. And twice again she’d said no. She sensed his impatience with her growing and almost wished he’d stop asking. But then, she also didn’t. Because she wished she had the courage to say yes.

  He’d argued she could keep her position as director if they married, telling her they would work something out regarding the living accommodations, understanding that a man couldn’t exactly live in the home. He shared about his own struggle to forge a path for the life he wanted, instead of the life chosen for him. He’d told her about his father’s last letter, and she was glad he’d burned it instead of reading those words again and again.

  Every argument she put forth, he’d thought of and solved before she could scarcely give it voice.

  After dinner one night, she looked at him across the gathering room working on the special reading corner she’d requested he design. His crews had built it to his specifications, and it was perfect—a slightly raised platform with bookcases behind it where volumes already lined the shelves. Rebecca Malloy was working with some of the women to make cushions upon which the children would sit.

  As though feeling her thinking about him, Marcus turned and looked back, but his smile lacked its usual enthusiasm.

  “Miss Braddock,” Naomi said behind her. “A quick question for you.”

  Telling herself she was making the right choice, Eleanor joined Naomi and several other ladies at a table, their young daughters sitting nearby.

  Marta leaned over, excited. “Rebecca is sewing us new dresses for the open house! Fancier even than the ones she has made before.”

  Eleanor looked across the table. “You are far too generous, Mrs. Malloy. Aren’t you busy enough with everything else?”

  Rebecca made a sweet grimace. “I have an ulterior motive, Miss Braddock. I’m hoping that when some of the women from the league see my work, they might be interested in using my services.”

  “Very good thinking.” Eleanor grinned, then saw Marcus gesturing for her to join him. “I’ll be sure to list your name in the program.” She stood.

  “But you need to choose your dress, Miss Braddock,” Naomi said, welcoming little Maggie, who climbed up in her lap.

  “Anything is fine, honestly,” Eleanor said, seeing Marcus waiting.

  “Can I choose your dress?” Maggie piped up.

  Eleanor placed a kiss on Maggie’s head. “You certainly may. You and Mrs. Malloy together.” She winked in Rebecca’s direction.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked Marcus, seeing an emotion in his expression she couldn’t define.

  “Would you walk outside with me?”

  “Of course.”

  He led her through the kitchen and out back, and she got excited.

  “Are you going to show me the building?”

  He laughed softly. “Yes, at the open house, like I’ve always said.”

  She threw him a playful frown. Less than a month until the open house. In one sense, it felt like a blink, there was so much left to do. But in terms of finally seeing what was inside his secret building, it felt like an eternity.

  “I need to go away for a few days,”
he said quietly. “And I need to ask you a special favor.”

  Her frown came genuinely this time. “Where are you going?”

  “That’s not the point.” He smiled. “The point is . . . I need you to water the potato plants while I’m gone. Every day, just like I showed you.”

  “Oh, Marcus, what if I—”

  “I don’t want Gray or any of the other gardeners doing it. They always overwater. And I don’t want to take any chances.”

  She nodded. “I’ll do it, but please don’t blame me if anything happens to them.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. Other than in the next two weeks you and I are going to be digging up some potatoes. And no peeking at either the potatoes or the building while I’m gone.”

  “You know I wouldn’t.”

  “I know. Or . . . I think I do.”

  He drew her into an embrace, and she slipped her arms about his waist, loving the solid feel of his chest and the strong, steady drum of his heart.

  He kissed the crown of her head. “I love you, Eleanor.”

  She tightened her hold on him, the words I love you too on the tip of her tongue, begging to be said. But if she said them, that would take her one step closer to losing her heart to him completely.

  And she couldn’t go there. Not yet. If ever.

  Eleanor picked up the card lying by the half dozen purple peonies in a vase in the kitchen of the home.

  “Dearest Eleanor,

  Though you have all of my love, there are only half a dozen peonies, because I only know you half as well as I’d like. Marcus.”

  Her heart melting a little more, she glanced out the window toward the building, so grateful to discover he was back. She smelled the peonies. Her favorite. But the new apron beside the flowers made her suspicious.

  She looked over at Naomi, remembering her comment to Naomi last week about needing a new one. “How did Marcus know to get me an apron?”

  Naomi never looked up from scrubbing potatoes. “Austrian men. Very insightful.”

  Eleanor heard the faintest grin in her friend’s voice. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  Naomi lifted her gaze, a smile ghosting her face. “And who says I am not?”

  Looking out the window, Eleanor saw Marcus come from the building and hurried to meet him.

  “Welcome home!” she said and hugged him.

  He didn’t let her go. “I missed you,” he whispered against her hair.

  “I missed you too.” She drew back slightly. “Where did you say you went again?”

  He shook his head. “Nice try, Madam Director.”

  He kissed her on the mouth—a sweet, chaste kiss—and she sensed his restraint, which only served to stir up whatever it was that had already been stirring inside her in his absence. She also sensed something else in him. Hesitance? Or disappointment, maybe?

  “Will you come by the propagating room later?”

  She nodded, eager to check the potatoes, but right now, trying to sort out his kiss, and his mood. “I need to stop by Mrs. Malloy’s first, but I’ll come by right afterward. Are you still hopeful about what we’ll find?”

  “Hope is such a tenuous word.” His gaze held hers. “But yes, I still am.”

  A short while later, Eleanor welcomed the opportunity to walk, the smell of spring in the air, the flowers and trees having awakened from their slumber. Yet her emotions still felt tender when she opened the door to the dress shop, the bell jingling overhead.

  She did love Marcus. That wasn’t it. And she wanted to be with him. But the thought of giving herself so completely to him frightened her more than she could put into words. But the way he’d kissed her upon his return . . .

  She closed her eyes, feeling the sting of tears. He hadn’t kissed her the way he’d wanted to, which—for some reason she couldn’t fathom—had made her desire him all the more.

  While he’d been gone, she’d imagined her life without him, and had never felt so empty and alone.

  “Miss Braddock, I heard the bell. I’m so glad you’re—” Rebecca Malloy paused in the curtained doorway. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  Eleanor nodded, brushing her cheeks. “I’m fine. Just . . . emotional today, I think.”

  Embarrassed, she attempted to set aside the turmoil within her. But when Rebecca placed a hand on her shoulder, the caring gesture only encouraged Eleanor’s tears.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Malloy.” Eleanor pulled the handkerchief from her pocket. “I suppose I have more on my mind than I thought.” She dabbed her cheeks, then refolded the handkerchief. “What with all the goings on at the home and then—”

  Rebecca drew in a quick breath. “W-wh—” Her voice faltered. Her face went pale. “Where did you get that?” she whispered.

  Eleanor looked at the handkerchief clutched in her own hand, then back at her friend. “From a soldier,” she whispered. “In the war.”

  Rebecca reached for it, her hand shaking. “This was mine”—she ran her fingers over the embroidered flowers—“another lifetime ago.”

  52

  Watching Rebecca’s expression, seeing her fingers tremble as she held the handkerchief, Eleanor felt the weight of years—from that one in the field hospital so long ago, to this—fall away. She couldn’t stem the tears, and didn’t even try.

  “I gave this to Patrick,” Rebecca cried, “before he left for the war.”

  Eleanor covered her hand. “And he carried it with him . . . until the day he died.”

  “You were there?” she asked in a broken whisper.

  Eleanor nodded, seeing the soldier—Patrick—so clearly in her memory. “I worked in a surgical tent. Your husband was brave, Rebecca, up to the very end.”

  Rebecca took a shuttered breath. “All I’ve ever known is that he died . . . at the Battle of Nashville.”

  Eleanor told her about seeing her husband for the first time and how he’d been wounded. “There was nothing the doctor could do, Rebecca. I . . .” She hesitated, remembering what she’d done in the absence of medicine. “I made him as comfortable as I could, and then stayed with him. He spoke of you.”

  Rebecca smiled through her tears.

  “He told me he’d been carrying the handkerchief just like you’d asked him to. And he said he couldn’t believe you were his or that you’d said yes ‘to the likes of him.’ ”

  “Oh . . .” Rebecca held the handkerchief to her chest. “That sounds just like him. He always used to say that to me.”

  “Close to the end,” Eleanor continued, her voice shaky, “as I held his hand, I knew it wasn’t me he was seeing anymore. He was seeing you, Rebecca. He thought he was talking to you.”

  Rebecca squeezed her hand tight.

  “So I leaned down, and I told him . . .” Eleanor closed her eyes, and she was back in that tent, cannon fire blasting, the earth shaking beneath her feet. “I said ‘I’m proud to be yours and always have been.’ ”

  Rebecca’s sobs came softly. “So many times I’ve wished I could have told him that, just once more. That I was so grateful he chose me.”

  They hugged each other, Eleanor just letting her cry. Finally, Rebecca straightened and wiped her face.

  “There’s one more thing,” Eleanor said, hoping this wouldn’t bring Rebecca pain. “He kept repeating how he wished he’d done something for you. Before he left. He said he knew it was too late, but if he’d had another chance, he would have done it. But . . . he never said what it was.”

  A smile so sweet and tender bloomed in Rebecca’s expression. “Come with me.”

  Eleanor followed her through the curtained doorway to her sewing room, then beyond to the private quarters in the back, and then outside, to a tiny patch of yard shaded by a dogwood tree. But there, in the sliver of sun-drenched earth off to the side, was a flower bed—full of gorgeous red roses.

  “Patrick always promised he would plant me roses where I could see them from the kitchen window.” Rebecca pointed behind her to an open
window. “It’s just as he promised.”

  Minutes later, as they walked back inside, Rebecca paused. “Miss Braddock, would you like a cup of tea?”

  “I would love one.” Eleanor smiled. “But please, no more Miss Braddock. Call me Eleanor.”

  They talked for the next hour, Rebecca sharing memories of her husband and their seven years of marriage, and Eleanor telling her about all the times she’d gained strength from carrying the handkerchief with her, and of what she’d done to try and find the soldier’s widow through the years.

  “But Patrick kept calling you his Mary girl. So for all these years, I’ve been looking for a woman named Mary.”

  Memory warmed Rebecca’s expression. “Patrick was from Ireland. His family came over when he was just a boy. When he first started courting me, he called me his American girl.” She touched a picture of him in a frame on the table for two in the tiny kitchen. “Over the years, it simply became Mary girl.”

  When they rose from the table, Eleanor looked again at the picture of Patrick—so handsome and full of health—and felt such grief.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Rebecca. And for all you’ve endured.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wonder. . . . Might it be better never to have loved at all.”

  Rebecca’s expression turned pain-stricken. “If I’ve given you the impression, Eleanor, that if I could I would turn back the clock and never have met Patrick, then please forgive me. That could not be more wrong. Yes, I miss him dearly. Not a day goes by that I don’t want him back with me. But the years we had together were the happiest of my life. And even now the memory of that happiness—what I learned from Patrick, the way his love changed me, changed how I look at life, at how I’ve lived my life since then—all of those things sustain me. The memories give me strength I’d never have had without him.”

  Tears Eleanor thought she’d put away threatened to return.

  Rebecca studied her. “Is there someone in your life? Someone you love? And . . . who loves you?”

  Eleanor looked away, then nodded.

  “Take my advice for what it is, Eleanor. My advice only. Don’t let fear rob you of life. If my sweet Patrick were here, he wou—” Her voice caught. “He would tell you that’s partly what he fought for. For you—and me—to have the freedom to live life to its fullest. Patrick didn’t let his fear keep him from fighting. So I determined, after his death, not to let fear keep me from living.”