“Please.” Shep held up a hand. “Do not speak that way about her.”
The dowager huffed. “Shep. I do not believe the marquis was speaking any particular way about my daughter.”
“Please, Lady Wembley,” Shep told the dowager. “Let us not pretend that he has not been inappropriate since his arrival.”
“Why, I never!” the marquis thundered.
“Do be quiet!” Shep shouted back.
Benjamin pulled him out of the room and said the both of them were due for a stiff drink and a game of billiards. “Are you going to tell me what is going on?” Ben asked after a few minutes where the only sound in the room was the balls clinking against one another.
“I do not know what you mean.” Shep turned away and squeezed his eyes shut. Here was the moment he had dreaded for so long, when Ben would find out, and the only real family he had left in the world would desert him.
“You should know that Cat spoke to Julia this morning, and Julia told her everything. And I do mean everything. You should also know that my wife and I do not keep secrets from each other,” Ben replied in what, to anyone else, would appear to be a mild tone, as he took his shot. “So I will ask you again. Are you going to tell me what is going on?” He paused to hit another ball. “Or do you need me to be more specific. Are you going to tell me what is going on in regards to you and my sister?” The ball missed the pocket, probably because he hit it much too hard.
“Ben,” Shep sighed. “I do not know how to tell you.”
“Because the lie goes back so many years? Were you ever going to tell me about your dalliance with my sister?” Ben’s words were cold, but Shep turned around sharply and had Ben by the collar of his jacket.
“It was never a dalliance,” he said angrily, defending Julia’s honor through clenched teeth. He did not want to hurt Ben, but he could not have him thinking that it was something cheap. “I loved her, and she loved me. It was completely honorable.”
“And now?” Ben asked quietly. He seemed a bit calmer, even though his friend was holding him by his dinner coat.
Shep let go of his friend’s clothing, his face downcast. “I do not know. I think I must have loved her all this time, only I did not want to love her. I wanted to love anyone but her, because it was so all consuming.”
Ben slapped him on the back in a friendly way. “Why did you not say that from the beginning?”
Understanding dawned on Shep. “You goaded me into that. You knew all along…”
Ben had the heart to look a bit sheepish. “My wife has been telling me since we married that there was something between the two of you, but I never believed it because I was sure you or Julia would have confided in me. I know you well enough that you would never have broken my sister’s heart without any feelings involved. And I certainly know that you would not have bungled your plan to… What was it? Rescue her?” Shep winced to hear his words repeated back to him as Ben went on, “…if you did not still have feelings for her. But I also know you and my sister well enough to know that you are stubborn and you would not admit that you loved her unless I conned you into it.”
“Some friend you are,” Shep complained, only a bit bitterly, considering the way Ben was handling the secret romance that had gone on behind his back.
“I am your best friend,” Ben said seriously. “And she is my sister. I want you both happy. I cannot say I know what that means at this moment, but that is what I want.”
“I do not know the answer either, Ben,” Shep replied and then continued passionately, “I only know she cannot marry that awful man. I would not be able to live with myself.”
“I am counting the minutes until he leaves. Of course, she cannot marry him,” Ben agreed. “But just a few moments ago you admitted that you love her, so I wonder what the problem is. What is keeping the two of you from marrying?”
“It might have had something to do with my delivery,” Shep admitted sheepishly.
Ben swallowed the rest of his drink. “I would tease you about it, but I know what it is like to bungle a proposal. Though when I spoke to Cat, she had no idea what your feelings were. Which means Jules does not know. Which means you failed to mention, while proposing marriage, that you are in love with her.”
“I am,” Shep cried. “I have always been! But do we make one another happy? I worry that we would be together in that tomb of a house and be desperately unhappy, arguing constantly.”
“I have always known the both of you to seek the company of the other,” Ben encouraged. “I think it is quite simple. The reason you are unhappy when you think of her is because you are apart.”
* * *
15
.
.
.
* * *
Her answer was silence, which could
only mean one thing. It was over. …
* * *
.
.
.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A New Letter
.
Cunningham, Kent
Cunningham Estate
Julia never did come down, and Shep was forced to admit that although he had hurt her very badly all those years ago, it was possible he had done much worse damage in his most recent visit. He knew that he had hurt her in the past but she never allowed him to see it and would never admit it. That was her payback, to appear unfazed by whatever took place between them. That was one of the thousand reasons he thought she was so strong and yet somehow, he had finally managed to do something so awful that even her impeccable composure could not stand up to it.
He felt sick to his stomach to consider the pain she described as a young woman and how ignorant he had been to her true feelings. Now, when he remembered that night in the garden, the ache in his chest nearly brought him to his knees. How had he been so foolish not to see that Julia was loving and kind and good, but that she could never show him those things when he had pledged his life to another, though her heart still belonged to him? Her tough attitude was nothing more than a mask and now that it was gone, she had not come down from her room. It was as if she could not face him this way, now that he knew the truth. She had no defenses left, and he had made her feel as if she needed them. He had no one to blame but himself.
Shep knew it was his presence that kept her in her room and to be completely accurate, it was his presence that had, for the second time in her life, crushed her spirits. Was it possible to break the same person’s heart twice? He should not have come to Pritchford Place. He had thought only of himself and the pain he had felt in the moment. He had even thought some verbal sparring with Julia might cheer him up. It could not go on.
So he made plans to leave, while the marquis watched with a calculating eye, as if he was trying to figure out exactly what had happened. Keep trying, old man, no one knows my mistakes but Julia.
Ben begged him to stay, to try and work it out between the two of them, so maybe Julia and Shep could still part as friends. His best friend’s persuasive skills were quite good and that, combined with the fact that he truly did not want to leave things as they were, almost had him agreeing to stay.
But it had been Cat who surprised everyone. Good and kind Cat, who disagreed with her husband. It stunned both men at first. They were used to her extending mercy to anyone and believing in second chances. In this case, however, she felt that boundaries were important and that the lack of them was what allowed Shep and Julia to continually hurt one another.
Cat had shaken her head and told both of the men that perhaps Julia and Shep never really were friends and if they could not find a way to embark on a life together then it was best to part. “That does not mean I think you should go or that I want you to,” she told Shep. “It means I think you should stay and if you love her and want to marry her, you should ask her to marry you again. Ben had to ask me dozens of times!” she added in desperation.
Ben rolled his eyes, although he touched her shoulder lovingly. “Four, darling. Four
times.”
“It is not so simple,” Shep concluded regretfully. “I promised myself after Rosemary died that I would not marry again, that I would never put someone through risk of childbirth. And my home… I cannot be there without hearing Rosemary’s screams of pain.”
Subconsciously, Cat laid a hand on her belly where a baby grew. “You know, I once proclaimed the same thing to Ben, that it was not simple, but in the end it was. It truly was. Because we loved one another.”
“And for you, that was the answer,” Shep told her with a sad smile. “But I do not see how… I do not see that in the future with Julia.”
Cat’s eyes were kind before she took a deep breath to offer one last piece of advice. “It just appears to me that you two are both very unhappy apart.”
In the end, Shep did not have an answer for her. He thought that she could be correct but everything was twisted up inside him, the feelings he had as a young boy and those of the man he was now. But Shep could not see how things could be made right with so much history and hurt between them. He had made so many assumptions about her and her feelings. If only he would have spoken to her clearly and articulately, and if only she had been willing to open up to him. In the end, neither of them had been willing to fight for any type of relationship, which had just led to plain old fighting.
So he was back at home at Cunningham. As soon as the door was opened for him from his coach, and he stepped inside the house, he expected to be hit with a deluge of memories. Previously he would have seen his father’s grave face as he told Shep that Reg had been killed in battle as his mother screamed at her husband and the servants tried to pretend they saw none of it. But as the day went on, he saw none of those old specters.
It only infuriated him more, because he now knew for a fact that one reason he had ended things with Julia so many years ago was the fear that he would end up in a marriage like his parents had. They had been the ghosts in his life long before they died.
Later as he went to bed, he expected to hear echoes of Rosemary’s screams or even the loud ticking of the clock in the silence that should have held a baby’s cry. But he did not remember the horror as clearly as he once could, which was strange. When he thought of Rosemary now, it was with fondness and regret that he was never able to love her the way she deserved to be loved. But he had tried to be a good husband to her, and he had fulfilled his vows. He would have to be content with that as he rifled through memories of his wife and her character. He had to believe she would understand how he had tried to act honorably.
But the vast majority of his thoughts were full of Julia. He remembered what she had looked like in her nightgown and robe in the library, with her hair braided down her back. He had never imagined it so long. Now he wondered what it would be like if she was reclining beside him, smiling at him unguardedly, raising her brow in amusement. He could not help but imagine what it would be like if hers was the last face he saw before sleep, if her heartbeat and breaths filled his ears in the middle of the night. He did not realize that his arms were aching to hold this invisible Julia he had created in his mind until he looked down and saw that his hands were fisted.
“I do not want to be rescued. I want to be loved,” she had proclaimed. He closed his eyes now in frustration because he could see how it must have looked to her and what his proposition must have sounded like to her as well. He had not spoken of love or even wanting or desiring to marry her.
This was because he had not allowed himself to think of how much he loved her or what it would actually be like to marry her in many years. It seemed they were both worried about being hurt again and the idea of loving her again hurt. But he had come to realize, the idea of not loving her, of not having her in his life, hurt a great deal more. That had been the part that had been missing from his logic when he was still at Oxford.
For the first time in a long time, he imagined what marriage would look like. He would always have someone to laugh with, to talk of politics and literature and spar intellectually with. She would never make his life easy, but she would make it interesting.
Without meaning to, his brain imagined the dark heads of the children they might have. He saw her in a rocking chair, like she’d been with George, only it was their baby in her arms. This version of Julia smiled at him as she once had when they were young and in love, before he ruined it all. She held out a hand for him and when he put his arms around her and their child, it was as if he held the whole world. He knew that he would never feel as complete as he could in that moment.
Would they argue? Of course they would. But they were not his parents. She was unfailingly loyal and her kindness was bone deep. Besides, at the end of the day, they respected one another. What if the whole problem all along was as Cat had said, that they were apart?
He hated himself for what he had done to her, to them. Throwing off the blankets and pushing back the counterpane, he lit a candle and went to his desk.
16 August 1821 Cunningham
Dear Julia,
I write this knowing you have every reason to refuse to ever read another word that comes from my hand. I have no right to ask you to read my words and yet I hope you do. I pray you do. And I pray that, maybe for the first time, I have the right words to properly explain my feelings.
Tonight I returned to Cunningham. I thought I was doing what was best for you and for us. It seemed like quite the noble decision, not altogether different from when I ended things years ago. As the coach drew nearer to Cunningham, I tried to prepare myself for what would await me. After all, it had been the memories here and the pain–of my parents, of Reg, of Rosemary and the baby–that drove me away from it in the first place. I expected my past here to eat me alive as it always does, but for the first time, it seems as if I have finally done the thing I have longed to do since I was a child.
I have brought Pritchford Place back with me. If not Pritchford Place itself, then the very heart of it… That is, you.
For many people, words are easy. But you and I have both hidden behind our words. And so here on this parchment, I endeavor to be as honest as I can be, no matter how pathetic I may seem to you, knowing you may have stopped reading long ago.
I am ashamed of my behavior the last time we spoke. But I must go back before that. First, I must apologize for what happened all those years ago and explain. Did I love you then? You must know that I did. Or at least I always thought that you knew. I know we never spoke the words aloud to one another since for us, such an admission would be dutifully followed by a proposal and we were very young when I first knew I loved you.
But now I see it from your point of view, probably for the first time, and see how it must have looked, how suddenly I dropped things between us. It was never because I did not love you, but because I was afraid of repeating mistakes that were never mine to begin with. Now, I see how you paid the price for the actions of others. I was unfair and I am sorry.
How have I been blind for so many years? I wanted to think you callous, but I know and have always known how devoted and loving you are to those who mean something to you. You did what you had to do to protect yourself. I cannot fault you for that since I did the same. I cannot fault you for that at all, especially because it was I who made all the decisions and you who had to live in the wreckage of all the repercussions.
I wonder now, when I am sure it is too late, what would have happened if I had confided in you. If we had spoken about my fears about my parents’ marriage and our potential one, would we have worked things out between us? Perhaps not. But at the very least, I believe it would have lessened your pain because you might have understood why we were not meant to be.
As for my recent proposal, I now see that it was not much of a proposal at all. I understand why you rejected it. I do not deserve your forgiveness and I do not expect it. And yet now, I also feel as if the very heart of you has been revealed to me and I know that you will forgive me because inside, you are as good and kind and gracious as anyone I h
ave ever known.
I am not worthy of such a woman as you. I think I never was.
If there is anything I can do to ease your present suffering, please write to me and tell me.
Yours,
S.
He did not write of love because he did not want to hurt her further. He had to first apologize for his past behavior. He hoped that she would write him back and that somehow they could begin again. He prayed and asked God for the second chance he knew he did not deserve.
But in the end, he was very glad he never wrote of his current feelings, because she never wrote him back. Her answer was silence, which could only mean one thing. It was over.
* * *
16
.
.
.
* * *
She would rescue herself. …
* * *
.
.
.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Farewells
.
Eventually, Julia rose from bed, though it was not a coincidence that it was after she was certain Shep left. She knew it would be impossible to wait out the marquis leaving as well, especially with her mother’s point of view. So one day she rose, and with the help of Smith, dressed to face her future. She could not put it off any longer.
Regency Romance: The Duke’s Ever Burning Passion (Fire and Smoke: CLEAN Historical Romance) Page 10