Lady Trent
Page 33
Her eyes rounded. “I am not a coward,” she said slowly through her teeth.
“Such a woman who cannot face her own heart, her own thoughts, the truth about herself, and who would run from the consequences of those things…what else would you call such a woman?”
“This is not who I am,” she decided, her eyes stinging but without tears. She said it louder a second time, “This is not who I am.”
“Then you have been pretending all along.” He cornered her, making a point that she was already aware of. She understood exactly what he was saying. “Since the beginning, you have been pretending to have feelings for anyone at all, even to the point of marriage?”
“I love Jacob and you know it. I have not pretended. But now look at me, what I’ve become. This person I…..I am not who I was.”
“No, you are not,” he agreed, and stared upward as if to recall something, and indeed he did reminisce, recalling what’d been said of her in the beginning. “Rachel the Elder, known for her humility and honesty and faithfulness to those she loves, and to those things she sets her heart upon. Even then you were not who you truly are, or even what you were capable of. And now you will walk away from your commitments. That should not surprise me, just as it did not the first.”
So soon as he had said it, a hand came up automatically, and she slapped him hard across the face. She then stood back, shocked by her own actions. She’d never stricken anyone in all her life.
He didn’t budge, not even to touch a hand to his cheek which reddened before the very eye. He appeared a bit disappointed with himself, his choice of words. His gaze lowered and skipped about before coming to rest sadly upon her. “You thought yourself faultless,” he said.
“I did not.”
“And deceived yourself…not seeing that your ultimate fault all along was pride.”
“I was not proud, and I certainly am not now.”
“Because you thought you were perfect, and that you were incapable of anything besides perfection.”
“I never claimed to be perfect.”
“And now you threaten to run away. From what? None other than the very imperfect person you have become. You cannot face yourself let alone Jacob or even I. Yes, by all means leave. Go. And build again that perfect nature you’d adapted to.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do understand. Can you not see it? You despise what you claim we have made you become. You were capable all along. You merely secluded yourself from the prospect of it. Not that I disagree with that seclusion. For the sake of it all, I wish you would have stayed in Westerly and continued to be the woman you wanted to be.”
His words sank in. Her emotions were torn in all directions. She felt grieved and angry and sad and then all of those things all over again.
“Do not run away,” he calmly commanded. “Stay put and face these conditions. That, Rachel, is what people in the actual world do. They do not run and hide behind veils.”
“Then what would you call this?” She asked, skimming a hand from left to right. “Have you not hidden yourself?”
“This, milady, is a temporary arrangement. I will do what is required of me as a man, as I already have done by even speaking the truth. Now I must face it. I must face him. I will do what reasonable people are known to do. We confront our wrongs and admit them until it is no longer necessary to do so. We face whatever becomes of it. But you seem to find no fault in yourself at all.”
“I did not say I am without fault.”
“I shared my feelings, you needn’t share yours. You have no obligation to admit anything. I am the one he will now detest, not you.”
“What could come of any of this? Jacob is hurt. I cannot see him this way. I do not want to see him this way….hurting as he is.”
“I suppose you think I do.”
“I don’t know what you want.”
“I did not spill my heart out to him in hopes he would shove you out of his life and into mine. His friendship means more to me than any woman ever will.”
“Then I will leave and the two of you can settle it between yourselves.”
“You truly think it that simple.”
“I can handle my own hurt, Marcus, but I cannot handle his and yours, too.”
“Then by all means, leave us be to handle it. By all means, do that very thing.”
She studied his words before swinging around. This time he did not stop her, but allowed her to go, and Patrice no longer appeared offended by her presence as she swished by her at the bottom of the staircase where she’d escaped after overhearing the conversation from the other side of the door.
Rachel left, and made a stop…back to the Great City. And then back to a portion of the reality she’d once known.
To be continued
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