by Nicole Locke
She clenched her eyes at the piercing memory.
‘He had peace inside him. He always knew his place in the world. This place was enough. And the more time we spent together the more he made me believe that I was enough...for him. Even as broken as I was, he wanted me. You left, and I was less than I was. I had less of myself—less of a heart. But...but my being less was what he wanted. How could I not want him, too?’
‘Matilda—
She raised her hand against his words, against what he wanted to say. She wanted to hold off his apologies, his sorrow. She heard both in just his saying her name.
‘There’s more. Let me tell you more.’
Maybe it was her words, or more likely the emotion she’d sunk into those words, but this giant of a man stood still to listen to her. The sun’s fading light played across the darkness of his hair, over the impenetrable light at the back of his gaze.
He wanted something from her. And she’d no longer avoid it. He had returned to Mei Solis wanting something from her. She’d been waiting.
Yet he’d held his frustration. Watched her...waited. She’d dined with him in the Great Hall, they’d made decisions during council meetings, he had held her hand when she gave birth to her daughter. All these months he’d stayed by her side.
And she’d started to fall in love with him again.
This time it hadn’t been easy at all. This time it hurt. And still Nicholas had watched and waited. He wanted something from her, and right now she would give it to him.
‘I loved Roger as a friend, and as a husband. It was easy to come home to him. He made it easy.’
‘Are you telling me everything we did together was hard?’
Everything in her life had been easy. The love of her family...falling in love with Nicholas. And then it hadn’t been easy any more. His father had worked, and Helena had come. Nicholas had accepted the challenge his life had become. He’d challenged her. He was challenging her now. Nothing had been hard between them until the day he’d left. Then every day had been a challenge.
He was demanding an answer now. She’d give him more than that. So much more. A dizzying giddiness overtook her. Like hysteria with an edge.
‘You want a confession, Nicholas?’ she mocked. ‘Is that why you chased me? Is that why you’ve been doggedly following me? Taking care of me, of Julianna, while Roger grows colder in his grave?’
His demeanour turned icy. He didn’t like that at all, and she fought the urge to laugh again.
‘I didn’t take care of you or Julianna to get a confession!’ he said. ‘I did it because I care for you!’
‘Care? I’m a woman full-grown. Do you think I can’t feel need and desire when it’s so close to me? You think I can’t recognise yours? It brushes against my skin and it takes my breath away. It always did. Your desire...mine. I recognise that all too well.’
‘I want to care for you. You need that care.’
‘You’ve shown that to me. Which makes this much easier to say. And you need to know the truth. It’s what you’ve been wanting from me.’
‘I don’t need words. You don’t have to tell me anything. This is enough.’
He didn’t have the right to make that choice. Only she knew what was enough. She’d lived with barely enough for years. Now ‘enough’ would mean everything.
‘I didn’t love Roger as a lover should. I never did.’
‘No...’ he whispered. ‘Don’t.’
She wanted to laugh as the sudden weight of the truth lifted from her chest.
‘You must hear the awful truth of it. Every time he held me I compared him to you. We barely kissed, barely held hands. But when you held me I was home and yet flying to far-off lands. There was a promise in your kisses. Of more...so much more.’
He closed his eye, as if the memory of those times pierced him as well.
‘There was no more with Roger,’ she whispered. ‘You want to know why we didn’t have a baby earlier? I’ll tell you truth. Because we were more friends than lovers. I shared his bed, but it wasn’t always a marriage bed. When the need got too great—and it did—he was there. And he was there when he asked me to marry him. Defending me, shielding me, protecting me. I knew I wasn’t enough for him. That a piece of my heart would never be his and that he couldn’t have all my body either. And even though I wasn’t all his, he still asked me.’
Nicholas didn’t look relieved by her words. He didn’t look anything except tortured. As if her words had taken the weight off her chest and dropped it on his. Why? Shouldn’t he be happy that Roger’s touch had been kind, but had never filled her with desire? But he looked as if he couldn’t stand it. Was his pain for her or for his dead friend?
‘The horses,’ he finally said. ‘You drew them everywhere.’
Was he avoiding the subject? Or perhaps finding another way of saying it? Because she knew what he meant. The horses were part of this confession too.
‘You guessed the truth. I realised it before I saddled that horse. Something in me was trying to get free again. So I let it. And then you...’ She exhaled, letting the pressure that was building up inside her be released. ‘You can’t stop me. No one can. And I won’t let it happen again.’
It was the truth. Swearing on her very soul, she meant it. She intended to be there for her father, her daughter, for her home. But she wouldn’t give herself away again. And that meant not to this man.
Matilda was standing like a light in the coming darkness. Her red-gold hair fluttered in the breeze, highlighted by the green trees behind her. The woods were tranquil—he was not.
Nicholas’s entire body still shuddered from wresting her from that horse. He’d had no saddle. Nothing to anchor him except the depth of his training and his strength.
Right now he had no more strength. He’d thought she wanted to die, but she was telling him she wanted to live. Everything inside him exalted in that truth.
‘I don’t want to stop you. I don’t want to rein you in.’
She blinked. ‘What is it that you do want, Nicholas? I’ve told you everything now.’
No, she hadn’t. There had been no words of love or marriage or a future together. Even so, he wanted those. God, he wanted those. His heart thumped in his chest with the absolute need for it.
But he had to stop himself from grabbing her. Because there were words that needed to be said. Thank goodness they were simple words.
‘I want you.’
She shook her head and a frown began. ‘Didn’t you listen?’
He wasn’t saying it right. What could he say to make her believe? ‘I don’t want the woman you were. I want the woman you’ve become.’
‘Not a word. You have understood not a word of what I said.’
He reached out, grabbed her arm. His hold was gentle when truly he wanted to crush her to him. ‘Don’t ignore me or run away this time.’
She pulled free and he let her, but that was all he’d give her after what she’d told him.
‘You don’t have that privilege now. I did hear you, and now you must listen to me—though I’ll fumble the words.’
‘I don’t want to hear them.’
He scoffed. ‘You were begging to hear them.’
‘When have I ever begged?’
He pointed to the horses. ‘When you mounted that horse and risked your life. When you explained what you did. So you will listen to me and you will hear me this time.’
He took a moment, thought hard. This moment was important. She needed to understand matters he couldn’t fully grasp himself. Not after everything had been one way and now was another.
‘I want you. Now. So much more than before. You feel guilty because you didn’t love Roger enough, but you did love him. You lived—and I did, too. Whatever this is between us now, it’s because of our years apart. It’s because you married Rog
er and had Julianna. It’s because you longed for horses and carved them in stone. It’s because you found sensibility, and yet there’s mischief in you all the same.’
She shook her head.
‘I don’t want to rein you in, and I don’t want you as you were, but as you are now. That desire has only grown in my being in your company these last months.’
‘I have told you I gave only part of myself to another man.’
‘You told me you don’t need a man to make you whole.’ He gestured to the horses, now calmly eating. ‘You found it with them. With whatever you let loose that was locked inside you.’
Her eyes... Those hazel eyes were surprised. It was better than the look she’d had before. Defiance. Hurt...
‘I have been listening.’ He walked to her horse, but he was in no hurry to return home. There were more words to be said first—some understanding between them that he needed...that they needed.
‘Just because you don’t need me it doesn’t mean you don’t want me.’
He could only see her profile now, and he felt that loss, but he knew it would give her time to come to an understanding of what he was telling her.
‘You said the desire between us brushes against your skin. Know that what I feel for you isn’t so light as a brush. It’s like claws against my insides. Hot. Insistent. Relentless.’
‘Even now?’
He looked over his shoulder. ‘Do you doubt it?’
Her lips parted. He recognised that it wasn’t in surprise this time, but because she needed to catch her breath.
‘You want me though I have stretch marks and my belly will no longer be flat, though my nipples may never recover.’
Maybe the physical changes they’d both experienced were easier to talk about than the emotional. Even so, he still needed to say more words. Now, and quickly. His need for her would soon overwhelm any reasoning.
Matilda had confessed she wanted him. Still. He wanted to roar.
Words, he cautioned himself. Just a few more.
‘You being a mother...’ He took a breath, steadying himself even as his body tightened in readiness for her. ‘I’ve never seen a more beautiful thing in my life.’
‘And the fact that the baby is Roger’s?’
‘Seeing you together...it fills me somehow. The fact that I know she’s Roger’s means I overflow with emotions I can’t express. I was never good with words, and now I wish had the ability to tell you. Roger and I were in all true sense of the word brothers. I can’t blame you for falling in love with him. He was always easy like that. And it was wrong of me to think you should stay alone when I...I wasn’t here. When...’ He swallowed hard, but Matilda needed to know this truth as well. ‘When I also wasn’t alone. I was faithful at first, I promise you. But after I received the letter, and this eye had healed enough, there were women I shared a bed with.’
She made some sound he couldn’t interpret. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to be alone. You shouldn’t have been alone.’
He hadn’t been alone, but he had still been lonely. ‘None of them were you.’
‘I was married.’
‘You were happy.’
He could see them together. Roger quiet, Matilda assertive. Their marriage would have been good. But he couldn’t think of Roger kissing her, holding her. He couldn’t think of Matilda’s responses, Because despite what he felt about both of them, despite Matilda’s confession about their marriage, jealousy was still there. He envied their time together, but he could still see their happiness.
‘What is all this, Nicholas?’ she asked. ‘What are you telling me?’
‘I didn’t wish for his death. I had made peace with your being with him. I want you to understand that before—’ He needed to say this right. ‘I have a truth to tell as well, Matilda. I can’t be sorry. I can’t be completely filled with grief because a great man—a better man than I—is dead. I can’t.’
‘Why?’ she said.
And suddenly it became easier, because the words were simple. ‘Because I love you.’
Chapter Thirteen
Matilda turned away from his words, from the look in his gaze. The one that could see her very soul if she let it.
He loved her.
Her heart leaped at the words, but they weren’t right. They couldn’t be...
‘What did you say?’
‘You heard me.’
Nicholas’s voice was almost touching her—an indication of how close he had stepped. His hands suddenly rested on her shoulders, his long fingers lightly clenching them in their grip. His body was so much larger than hers, so much more lethal than hers. Immense. Formidable. Powerful. Nicholas was at her back. His legs were directly behind hers, along with the heat of him, the strength of him, the resistance of him.
What was this? A moment in time?
She looked away. ‘Even after...?’
‘Even after, before and for ever. I tried not to. I wanted to hate you. Your letter hurt me more than my physical wounds. However, no deed or word could kill my love for you. Nothing. I returned here hoping that merely seeing you with Roger would make it the truth for me. Allow the stubborn part of my heart to truly let go of the past.’
‘But Roger wasn’t here.’
‘He wasn’t. And at first I thought that would change everything. That my anger towards you both would fall on you.’
What had held him back? ‘Perhaps you couldn’t be angry with a woman carrying a child.’
‘I couldn’t be angry with you carrying a child without a husband by your side. I couldn’t stop loving everything about you...’
She couldn’t see him, but felt he spoke the truth. It was there in the steady emphasis of each word so she could hear him. It was there in the unsteadiness of his breath, as if his heart beat too fast.
She couldn’t take this. It was too much. All her feelings were pouring out of her all too suddenly, after the recklessness of the horse ride, the fear as she’d realised she wouldn’t make the jump, his turning the horse in another direction.
She felt as if he was turning her in another direction. That incredulous moment when he’d pulled her off the saddle, wrapped her in his arms and held her. She was held by him now. Secure. And yet vaulting through her was every feeling she’d ever had with him. Joy. Pride. Longing. Anguish. Resolve.
And now she had this new emotion: a realisation that both stung and freed her. Their separation had never been about him, but her. She had broken her own heart.
‘I didn’t know I loved you, but I should have.’
He kept his hands on her shoulders but he didn’t turn her, and she didn’t turn around either. It was as if whatever words they needed to say to each other needed to be felt in their touch as well as in their sounds.
‘Don’t apologise.’
‘You must have hated me.’
‘I hated you when I received that letter. And I hated you all the years since. But all that’s changed.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She tried to turn, but his right hand slipped across her collarbone to her other shoulder as his left hand trailed down to her waist. He swamped her with his body, blanketed her with comfort. He didn’t want to face her now, but whatever he wanted to say he needed her to hear it, and he pulled her against him, to ensure she heard every word.
‘It wasn’t right for me,’ he said. ‘However, it was right for you. How could I doubt it was right for you? Seeing you happy. Seeing Julianna being born. It was right for you, and I’m grateful you did it.’
That was why he held her like this. When his words sank in and she lost the strength in her legs he held her so he could pull her closer.
‘I wouldn’t have done it had I known,’ she whispered.
His head bowed. His cheek rested against hers. She felt his breath against her neck. Felt h
is words vibrate against her back and inside her heart.
‘I’m grateful you did it,’ he repeated, his arms gently squeezing her tighter. ‘Do you understand me? For you, for him. For the baby.’
She didn’t understand. Couldn’t. It was too much of a turnaround. She’d fled on that horse to escape one truth, only to realise her understanding was a lie. This was the truth.
‘Because you love me,’ she said.
‘Because you deserve it. All of you deserved it. My loving you is something...more.’
Not enough support. Her hand went to his wrist, resting on her collarbone. Her arm wrapped around him. Back to front. Drawn into him as tightly as she could. The movement lifted her up until she fitted against him perfectly.
A quick change to his breath, but it soon evened out again. Her own breath was not quite there. He loved her. Showed her in all the ways that counted. Her breath was not evening out at all. It was becoming deeper under the weight of his arm. Against the heat of his body.
Say it.
Though the danger of what would happen shook through her body, the enormity of his confession pounded through her very soul.
Say it.
But something held her back from confessing that she loved him, too.
It would be too easy to say it—as if the words had always been there, beating under the surface. Those words to Nicholas shouldn’t be easy. Her love for him should have been gone after she’d married Roger.
Guilt held her back. Shame for not loving her husband enough. Yet there was joy, too, because she believed every word Nicholas had said. It was the way he held her. This new tension between them that clutched him tightly to her. It needed no words.
Need. Want. Desire. This time not a confession of the heart but of the body. That was there. That had never gone away. She’d always wanted him.
As much as she’d loved her husband, whatever had been between her and Nicholas had never died. His touch, his look, the way he smelled and felt. But never had they gone too far. Always waited. But their need for each other... That she’d remembered over the years. That she had never forgotten even as another man claimed her.