Broken Angel

by Nona Mae King

  As before, Robert responded to that movement, making it easy to ignore the harsh reminder of independence that rang in her mind. Then another grouping of caresses upon her lips tenderly coaxed herself past the wall that had served her so well…

  “Rachel…”

  And the softness of his spoken whisper of her name moved her to a deeper response of her lips with his, feeding the fear at the emotion she felt and the terror that she risked a possible rejection at the display of it.

  Yet the thrill… to feel.

  Then his lips released hers to move along her cheek to her ear, placing small kisses along their journey as his arms tightened gently around her.

  “…Rachel…”

  Rachel’s eyelids fluttered, his breath caressing the skin of her throat--

  “…I love you.”

  Her entire body tensed, eyes snapping open moments before panic flared the suspicion and forced her to push back. Robert didn’t resist the almost desperate movement of hands pressing against his chest. He released her, moving slightly back from her as he watched her reaction with a wary gaze.

  “Don’t say that,” Rachel told him, voice clearly implying the fear that she so desperately fought. She pressed her lips together and looked away. “I understand the presence of desire, for you’re a virile and attractive man, but don’t label it ‘love’ to rationalize your responses.”

  His silence surprised her, and it even caused her to tighten her hold on her fan. Then he released a deep and slow breath. “Would it be easier to accept my attentions if I only ‘desired’ you and didn’t ‘love’ you?” he asked, his tone exuding an unexpected ring of caution.

  The tensing within heightened, causing her to snap open her fan and almost tenaciously stir the air around her face. “Either ‘truth’ has no bearing on my acceptance of the attraction.”

  That comment caused Robert to move very close, capturing her attention with the intensity of his gaze. “Rachel, I spoke the truth of my attraction. I have always spoken the truth to you.”

  “Love?” Rachel repeated, and the continued press at the subject incited a continued growth to the fear and caused the word to sound very near a sneer. Her fan snapped closed, the end being gripped by her opposite hand. “After barely a week of acquaintance?” She scoffed and looked away, again opening her fan. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “It’s absurd to love you?”

  She twitched without meaning to, the secondary confession of the word unexpected. Clenching her jaw, her hold on the fan tightened as she said, “I find it hard to believe that you would think otherwise,” in a cold tone of detached calm.

  Again the silence descended, making Rachel’s insides twist and her jaw muscle twitch as he regarded her reactions. It was the first time the scrutiny had been unwelcome.

  “In that you don’t believe you’re deserving of it?”

  Rachel sharply closed the fan and slapped his face.

  Robert didn’t lean back or even respond to the slap with a raised hand. He simply held her gaze with the same understanding and compassionate look from days previous, making the panic roar within as his presence remained within her personal space.

  “Why?” he asked.

  Rachel didn’t respond. She couldn’t. It would have meant admitting a truth she had never spoken to anyone.

  “Yes, I might have spoken it at an inappropriate time,” he confessed gently, “but as we’re engaged and to be wed in three months, why not confess my feelings? It’s the truth. It has been the truth. On the train that first time met? I know there was an attraction and an interest, but love? I couldn’t say. At the orphanage after the day with the children, viewing another ‘Rachel’ that is as enticing as the one known before? Quite possibly. But not with any certainty. Not until now.”

  Rachel scoffed again, forcing her eyes from his as her fan again moved at a somewhat frantic pace, her hands trembling the same as her insides. The wall tipping. The calm and cold lost as the numbness began to dissipate. Love. She forced a sneer at the word she’d come to despise. A myth spoken to manipulate…

  Yet Robert had never been anything but honest and true…

  Robert reached out and enfolded her hands between his, ceasing the rapid pace of the fan and again causing a sharp tensing within. She didn’t look toward him. She only tightened her grip on the fan until she heard the loud crack of the soft wood.

  “I love you, Rachel.”

  She twitched, but it closely resembled a cringe. “Don’t.” Her father had claimed to love her, moments before ushering her aboard the train that took her away from the life she’d come to see as safe.

  “Don’t love you?” He forced her hands down to her lap, her hold on the fan not lessening as he continued to watch her. “Why not? You’re an intensely profound woman whom intrigues on so many different levels. You’re attractive and desirable in person and bea–”

  “Don’t,” she hissed as she finally met his gaze, brown eyes full of compassion and care and the expression of love that she had previously been unable to categorize. “Please.”

  “Rachel.”

  She very slightly shook her head, not caring now that desperation likely glowed in her eyes. She couldn’t let him say it. Couldn’t let him feel it. Those whom loved her went away. They changed. She couldn’t bear to lose another one.

  Robert lifted her hands to his lips, his brown eyes still holding her gaze. “Do I not love you?” he asked softly. “I know your pain, have made it my own, and will be there; holding you; comforting you. Trust that I will care for you, like no other could. Like no other would.”

  Rachel’s throat tightened as she again shook her head, his poetic verse giving rise to the panic that overrode her firm control. She tugged her hands within his grasp and leaned back. Away from him. His understanding. His acceptance. “No… Please.” He would leave. They always left.

  “Stay and be still. Trust in the love that I feel. Then believe,” Robert leaned forward to kiss her softly on the cheek, “simply,” and then the other, “in me.”

  “…please,” she whimpered, her eyes fluttering closed. She didn’t want to lose this ally. This strength who accepted who she had become…

  “In us.” He gently drew her again into the circle of his arms. “In love.”

  Rachel choked back a sob, her arms tightening around him as she buried her face into his neck. “Why?” she cried. “Why would you love me…”

  A deep breath preceded his softly voiced “Because you are ‘Rachel’.”

  But the answer didn’t make sense. She had become a cold-hearted woman more apt to despise tenderness than freely accept it… and yet when she was with him, it seemed ‘Rachel’ of her past life was encouraged and empowered to be revealed. To work alongside who she had become to create an individual more… whole…

  Robert pressed his lips gently against her temple. Rachel could barely process the tenderness behind the action, so overwhelmed with his confession and what it caused within: an extreme shift beneath the numbness that bucked and battered against everything she’d come to be taught. Giving truth, instead, to those romantic dreams welcomed as a child.

  “Please forgive me, Angel,” Robert requested in a low voice. “I shouldn’t have confessed this secret.”

  Rachel pulled back to hold his brown gaze. “Why?”

  His smile seemed almost sad as he tenderly brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Though you crave acceptance and love, your heart is still struggling to become ready for it.”

  She blinked, something in her very soul struggling and pushing past the protecting numbness. “How… How could you possibly know?”

  Lowering his hands to take hers, he also looked down to the action. “A press in my soul. A whisper from God, whom I always trust with everything in my life… But there were so many pressures. To confess, so that you would know that you are loved; that your worth is more than just an innate talent for business. To keep it back, waiting for the time when you would be…”
He shook his head and again met her gaze. “But being in the presence of a woman such as yourself, a passionate creature of depth and sensitivity I found myself saying the words even though you may not be ready. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Hurt me?” Rachel asked, confusion ringing in her tone. “Hurt me? You accept and love and lead and chastise in a way never had before: tenderly. Gently. With understanding and regard to my feelings. I have come to hurt myself each time I forcefully push you away,” she responded intensely.

  “And you push me away to protect yourself,” he informed, his tone soft and as understanding as it had ever been. “You’ve had a hard life, Rachel, and… and making confessions such as this when you aren’t ready to hear them is arrogance, on my part.”

  Surprise widened her eyes. “Arrogance?”

  He nodded. “That my feelings and desires are more important than God’s or your own. That my choices are to be heeded and God’s ignored. That the passion of the moment is more… appropriate than protecting the passions of our future.” The extreme showing of shock in her features brought a softer smile to his face. “I told you I’m a rogue who has a tendency of following his heart. Well, of late that heart hasn’t wanted to follow God’s direction. Now I find myself hoping and praying that my bauble won’t negatively affect our relationship.”

  “La! How do you live so passionately from moment to moment following only the possible faulty whispers of God? How can you trust Him so completely when there is no way to prove His involvement?”

  Robert’s smile remained. “My soul and heart won’t believe He isn’t involved. Too many miracles to the contrary. Others would say the miracles are coincidence, but who is to say that isn’t only pronouncing the word incorrectly? My heart is at peace with the decision to believe in Him and listen to His–”

  “Do you feel peace at confessing your feelings?”

  The smile vanished and he blinked. “Pardon?”

  “You say that your heart is at peace with your belief. If that is how you determine the truth of God, then why can’t it also be how you determine whether or not your confession of… love was His leading?”

  Surprise and shock faded to thoughtfulness and a different type of listening. Then he smiled, his face softening as he continued to watch her. “God, You have fashioned a brilliant woman here,” he said quietly.

  She flushed and forced a scoff, welcoming his encouragement and the extreme warmth at how he spoke it. “Don’t be absurd.”

  “I’m not being absurd, Rachel. You are right, again, and I’m jealous that you seem to be a better believer than I myself.”

  Rachel waved it aside, looking over at him in shock when he took her hand in his.

  “Very well,” he surrendered in low voice, “I won’t regret my confession.”

  At the tone of his statement and the expression in his eyes, Rachel felt another slip and then the coming of the ‘weakness’ of tears. She fought them back out of habit and a tenacious desire to protect something a part of her didn’t want: extreme calm. But the change in Robert’s expression confessed that he saw what she tried to hide. A talent that never failed to unnerve and terrify her. Terrify her because she knew she could no longer hide who she was. Terrify her because she had come to know that he accepted her because of it.

  Rachel very slightly shook her head as her gaze held his, her soft whisper of “Don’t,” causing a deeper change in his features. Yet what did she ask? To not leave? To not change? To not abandon her to the woman she came to fear?

  He gave her hands a gentle pressure. “I won’t, Angel.”

  Those words dug deep into her soul, and she held them as tight as she clasped his hand with hers. She needed an ally, and with his confession had come a terror that this ally would be more than what she had been prepared to accept of him. He knew that. Had admitted to it. Had asked for forgiveness for putting her into a painful position. A position of fear, suspicion… and relief.

  Rachel faced forward, her hand still clasping his. Many a man had confessed to feelings of love, but none had displayed a true and romantic support of it. Not as Robert had, with actions and words. What am I to do with this confession? Yet again her lack of training in the area of woman and lover showed her wanting in expertise and instinct. He loved her, and she did not know how to return the affection, or even how to pursue it. Instead, she felt suspicion and a terror that he would leave.

  She lowered her gaze to her fan and his hand still enfolding hers, face paling when she again heard a whispered confession. Again, she slightly twitched, but once more he whispered it while giving his hold of her hand a gentle increase in pressure. He courted her. He pursued her. He understood her. He opened his past and his very self to her ridicule so as to prove his trustworthiness. Revealing weaknesses. Revealing strengths. Revealing facets of an honorable character--

  “I love you.”

  Rachel swallowed hard as she blinked away the burning, her hand tightening on his until her own hand throbbed with pain. Proving she was alive and not dreaming. Proving she was not trapped within a nightmare that would rob her of her remaining hope. Then she felt his soft lips press tenderly against her temple, causing a blink and the release of a single tear as he again whispered, “I love you, Ange,” against the skin in a tone that ushered the confession and admittance deeper than the others. Inviting her to begin a search for a lesser-known emotion that seemed to soar with each whisper.

  ~~~

  Robert absently tapped the envelope against his fingertips as he stared blankly at the letter resting on the coffee table in his room at the hotel in Richmond. Each day he had reread the short and brusque letter. Each day it had served as a conviction toward a future confession. Each day the confession had been bitten back. Out of fear, very likely, but Robert couldn’t help hoping the hesitancy to be God’s whisper.

  And if not… Robert tossed the envelope on top of the letter and sat back into the couch, covering his face with his hands and releasing a quick breath.

  "Is this what you wanted?" Henry Samson had asked.

  “To give her a choice? Yes,” he muttered.

  Robert stared blankly at the ceiling. ‘And what choice has she been entrusted with now but that which is opposite my own?’ Yet Robert couldn’t force himself to believe that as the only reason she had accepted his attentions. Rachel had confessed trust, comradeship, attraction even. No. While the original acceptance may have been an escape, he didn’t believe it to be true anymore. She didn’t regret her decision, for he never saw that expression on her face. Intrigue, yes. Softness at times, yes. Suspicion, of course, though less. But not once regret or boredom. ‘Do you truly believe she would accept you if she knew you’re no different than ‘him’?’

  Robert slowly swallowed. That answer he didn’t know, and he didn’t want to ask the question to find it. Why must this truth be revealed, Lord? I’ve set aside that future. I’ve put it behind me, deciding against it and putting the choices and controls back to their rightful place. Why must I now jeopardize it all? Why?

  He sat up, the letter drawing his focus moments before he swiped it up. He buried a hand into his hair as he read it through yet again. A refusal to one and an acceptance of another; but one man. Torn between two roles, one he had never wanted and the other he had fully accepted; but one man. One he had come to despise, pushing him off to become a man who no longer let others choose his path…

  Robert tightened his hand around the letter moments before throwing it aside. Each man would hurt her, though he would have given anything to not.

  Pushing himself roughly to his feet, Robert muttered "Blast!" and then began pacing his room, rubbing trembling hands through his scalp as he desperately tried to pray himself off this particular path. Yet truth in a growing relationship wouldn’t let him go further than hearing those first fated words and their possible consequence. Her reaction. Her judgment. The betrayal and hurt.

  "Not that, Lord."

  But he couldn’t wait
until they arrived at his father’s that next morning. Hearing the truth from Damon or his own father would have hurt her worse. No. He had to do it now. Tonight. So that she could escape, if she so chose. So that she wouldn’t be trapped in unfamiliar surroundings bombarded by those very people who held her life in seemingly uncaring hands.

  "No," he muttered, stepping toward the door to jerk it open and-- he blinked. "Rachel," tone surprised.

  Rachel’s slender form startled the same moment she lifted her head and eyes from their close scrutiny of a leather-bound book in her hands. A journal. "Robert," she said, voice calm, as was her expression.

  Yet Robert felt something not right about the calm. It was too… complete. Lord? "It’s late," he observed carefully, "and Damon will be here early…"

  "Yes." She again lowered her gaze to the book. "I could not sleep."

  Robert absently nodded while releasing a deep breath. "Neither could I." Robert stepped out into the hall, drawing her gaze when he motioned toward a padded side-bench a little to their right and across the hall. "You seem as troubled by something as I am," he prompted as they progressed toward the bench.

  Rachel absently nodded, fingers caressing the cover of the journal as she slowly sat. "I am."

  "May I help?" he asked, lowering himself to sit beside her.

  This time she shook her head. "I do not know," while continuing to consider and regard the journal in her hands. Then she lifted her emerald eyes to meet his gaze and offered it forward. "This is all I am able to offer of my past self."

  Robert blinked as he focused on the book in her outstretched hand.

  "You have asked twice when I began writing in verse," she continued, "and both times I have put off answering. Now, I have no reason. You have exposed your own verses to me, opening yourself up to ridicule though there wasn’t necessity…" Rachel offered the book a little more forward. "You deserve a return of the same intensity. A showing of the same trust."

  Trust. A past self. A timid young woman. A vulnerability exposed… Robert swallowed hard, enfolding her hand and the book in both of his as he shook his head. "I don’t deserve this, Rachel." He met her surprised expression and again shook his head. "Not yet."