by Lisa Valdez
“It must be. There is no other.”
She eased from the bed and moved slowly and deliberately across the room toward where her gown lay on a chaise.
No! Anxiety shot through him. “I need to tell you something. I need to tell you something now.”
She kept her eyes lowered and picked up her gown.
No! He began to shake. His chest felt bound in iron. “Passion, I must tell you. I must…”
“I will meet you in the garden,” she said softly and, turning, she walked toward the dressing room door.
No. She couldn’t go. “But I need to tell you,” he said, following. “You must stay!”
She reached for the handle.
No. He gasped for air yet could not say the words. “A moment only…”
She pressed down on the handle, and the door opened.
No. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe!
No!
He drew a shuddering breath and forced out his last hope on a ragged whisper. “Please… Please, don’t go.”
She froze, and her gown dropped to her feet.
Tears that belonged to a boy welled in him. “Please, Passion, don’t run away from me.”
She turned and gripped the door frame. Her lips trembled. “I won’t. I’ll stay.”
His sore eyes shut for a moment in relief, and he closed the small distance between them.
She was so close.
His heart thundered in his chest.
If he didn’t say the words now, he would never say them.
Yet old fears and old pains burned with a new intensity.
His head swam. He looked into her beautiful eyes—eyes that regarded him with tenderness, pain, longing, and hope.
Hope—his only hope. “I came to tell you—I came to tell you that I love you.”
Passion’s face crumbled, and with a sob, she turned her face against the jamb and wept.
“I love you,” he repeated.
With a choked cry, Passion threw herself into his arms.
Oh, God! His heart burst and his legs buckled. He dropped to his knees and clung to her. “Please, don’t cry,” he murmured, pressing his cheek into the curve of her waist. He felt his tears on his face, but his voice was unwavering. “Once, long ago, I begged for love. I swore I would never do it again. But I’m begging you now, Passion. Please, love me.” Her hands slipped through his hair, and he pressed his face against her. “Please. For, I love you. I love you with all that I am and all that I will ever be. I love you in this life and the next. I love you. I love you.”
She bent over him, and her voice was full of tears. “You never need beg me for love. Never! I give my love to you freely, with a full heart. I love you, Mark. I love you.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, but still, he wept. They collapsed together to the floor, and years of sorrow, grief, and neglect poured out of him.
He had waited a lifetime for her words. He had waited a lifetime for her.
He knew now that love was the radiance that had been unreadable to him before. Though he had observed it in her face and studied it in her drawing of him, it had remained a mystery. How could he recognize something he’d never had, something he didn’t even acknowledge? Now that he understood, it was too late.
Finally, he had won a woman’s love—Passion’s perfect love—and now he must live a lifetime without it.
He sobbed and sobbed against her breast as she held him and rocked him. And for as long as he cried, she held him. And the only words she spoke, over and over, were “I love you.”
Passion had no idea how long she held him. Though he lay silently in her arms, she held him still. He had given her the only gift she could accept from him. The only gift she could not deny. His love. “I believe I loved you from the beginning,” she murmured. “Our last day together, I almost told you.” Her tears trailed silently down her checks. “And then everything fell to pieces, and I thought I would never tell you. I thought I would love you forever, yet never have your love in return.”
Mark’s arms tightened around her. “I would have told you before now. I didn’t recognize my own feelings.” His voice was rough. “But these days without you have been so painful, that I knew. Only love hurts this much.”
Passion sobbed and dropped her cheek against the top of his head. “I want you to know that my heart is yours forever. No matter what occurs, I will always, always love you.”
“Then I shall dream of your love.”
Her heart rent anew. “And I of yours.” She threaded her fingers through his hair and breathed the subtle lemon verbena that she would always associate with him. “When I met you, my heart was dead. I lived only in duty and obligation to others. But you brought me back. You made me alive. You made me remember my dreams—made me remember myself.” She closed her eyes on her tears. “Despite this desperate end, I was wrong to nurture regrets. You are the most splendid thing that has ever happened to me.” She kissed his brow. “I didn’t think I was going to survive without you, but you have given me the one thing that makes it possible—your love. With your love. I can survive.”
“Then that must be enough for me.” His voice was replete with sorrow and resignation. “And when I look upon your cousin, I shall remind myself that kindness to her proves me worthy of your love.”
Passion sobbed and her stomach turned. “I love you.” She tightened her arms around him. “I love you.”
She would have to stay away. It would be too impossibly painful to see him in Charlotte’s smiling company. Though this was what she had wanted—for him to treat her cousin with kindness—she could not watch it. She must stay away. Forever.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Come. Let me show you something.”
Mark pulled away from her so slowly and Passion’s heart stopped when she looked into his face. Misery was written in every feature. His beautiful eyes were red-rimmed, swollen, and shot with blood. He breathed through parted lips, and the sensual curve of his mouth was drawn down deeply at the corners. His hair fell over his brow, and his hand shook as he extended it to help her up.
Keeping his hand in hers, she drew him to the small easel she had placed in the corner of the room. “This is for you,” she managed.
Carefully, she withdrew the sheet from the finished painting. The light fell across the portrait, and Charlotte looked back at them—Charlotte, in all her loveliness, her sweetness, and her poignant sorrow and insecurity.
Mark stared at it. His expression didn’t change as his reddened eyes moved over the picture.
“I thought…” Passion bit her trembling lip. “I thought if you could see her as I see her…”
Her voice shook too much to continue.
“It’s magnificent.”
His voice was flat and desolate. He looked at her, and his eyes welled. “But I would that it were a picture of you. I shall look at it and I shall see you. I shall look at it and I shall dream of you.” Tears fell slowly now. “I shall look at it and I shall remember the brief but joyous moments I spent in your embrace. And as I live out my life in the company of your cousin, I shall yearn for the life that might have been—a life with you—a life with love.”
Passion could barely see past her tears.
Mark’s hand slipped behind her head, and he pressed his lips, hard and firm, against her brow. Then he grabbed the painting and disappeared through the opening in the wall. The panel closed silently behind him.
Passion bent and covered her face with her hands. Her stomach cramped and her head spun. She felt sick, so sick, but her tears wouldn’t stop.
Oh, God! Her stomach heaved. She ran to the basin. She gasped and panted.
But there was no help for it. She purged her unending grief into the bowl.
Mark ascended the stairs slowly. He had ridden all afternoon, trying to ease his mind of the pain and the loss. He had tried to think only of her love, but thoughts of that led to thoughts of all that he would never have.
; He was miserable and exhausted, and each step was a labor.
“My lord!”
He turned and found Charlotte looking up at him from the vestibule.
He didn’t want her. “Yes?”
“May I have a word with you?”
No! “Now?”
“If you please, my lord.”
Mark turned on the stair and walked back down. Charlotte met him, and they crossed the hall to the library. After closing the door, he walked to the windows and looked out over the rear garden. Abigail Lawrence strolled through his roses. He turned away.
Charlotte stood right behind him.
He drew back. “Yes?”
She looked nervous. “You appear to be very tired, my lord. So I won’t take much of your time.” She reached into her pocket. “I just wanted to give this to you.”
She pulled her hand from her pocket and held out an aged letter bound with a faded green ribbon. Mark stared down at Abigail Lawrence’s address penned in his mother’s familiar hand.
The letter. He felt relief but no joy.
His hand trembled as he slowly took it from her fingers. Pulling the ribbon, he opened the faded paper and let his eyes skim over the words. The original read exactly like the copy Abigail Lawrence had sent his mother.
Finally, the damned letter—handed over to him by the very person who, for all she knew, had the most to lose from doing so.
He looked at Charlotte. “Why are you giving me this?”
“Does it mean anything to you, my lord?”
“It does.”
Charlotte wrung her hands. “One of my maids gave it to me, my lord. She found it hidden in my mother’s room and advised me to read it immediately. She said there was something in it I should know about you.”
Mark frowned. “So now what, Miss Lawrence? I ask you again, why are you giving me this letter?”
Charlotte looked up at him, and her gray eyes were shiny. “Because I am trying to love you, my lord. And if I am ever to love you, and if I am to be your wife, then I should only know the best of you.” She shook her head. “I did not read the letter, my lord.”
Mark’s frown deepened, and another shadow fell over him. “What?”
“I said, I did not read the letter. And I don’t want to.” She gripped her skirts. “I’ve been agonizing over what to do with it, vacillating between temptation to read it and determination to burn it. Then I realized that I should just give it to you. The fact that my mother had it hidden away makes me certain that, at some time, she intended to use it against you.”
Mark stared at her, stunned. This, he never would have predicted.
“As your fiancée…” She blushed. “As your wife, my allegiance is to you, my lord. And if I can protect you from any ill will, including my mother’s, then it is my duty to do so—indeed, it is my pleasure to do so.”
Mark didn’t know what to say. He stared into Charlotte’s gray eyes and saw her for the first time. He saw a wounded girl who, despite constant criticism, still carried hope and some sense of herself. He saw innocence and virtue—so much innocence that the connection between the letter and their engagement hadn’t even occurred to her. He saw the beginnings of strength beneath her timid shell. He saw her, finally.
It had been easier to hate her. Yet he couldn’t do that anymore. Slowly, he took her hand in his. “Thank you for your allegiance,” he murmured. He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand and then bowed his head. “Good afternoon.”
A small smile and a frown battled for preeminence on her face. She bobbed a curtsey. “Good afternoon, my lord.”
When the door had closed behind her, Mark crossed to the fireplace. It had already been lit in preparation for the evening. He took one last look at the cause of his ruin, then tossed it in the flames.
He watched until the hungry fire had turned every bit of it to ash.
Matthew was safe.
*
Chapter Seventeen
Good-bye
Passion threw up into the basin. While she expelled the small breakfast she had consumed, Patience rubbed her back and held up her hair. Prim mopped her brow.
When nothing was left in her quivering stomach, they assisted her back to the comfortable chaise and sat on either side of her. While Prim poured fresh tea, Passion took a moment to close her eyes.
But for daily walks with her sisters, she had kept mostly to her room in the three days since she and Mark had declared their love. Her heart was too raw to risk running into him. She had neither the energy nor the will to participate in lengthy meals with him and Charlotte and the wedding guests, who had been arriving in droves.
She took her meals in her room but made sure to visit with her cousin every day. Though Abigail continued to plague her, Charlotte had new hope for the happiness of her marriage. She had explained to Passion how she seemed to have finally won her fiancé‘s civility by turning a certain letter over to him.
Passion had listened with a sore yet satisfied heart as Charlotte told the story. She was proud of her cousin’s actions and enormously relieved for Mark. He was out from under Abigail Lawrence’s thumb, and Matthew’s parentage would not be exposed. It had to be one less weight upon his shoulders.
“Darling…” Prim said softly.
Passion opened her eyes and took the cup of tea Prim offered her. She sipped it and sighed. These daily battles with her stomach were draining. She smiled weakly at her sisters, who where both looking at her. “I assure you, this will pass. Please don’t fear you will have to mother me forever.”
“And who mothered us all the years after Mummy died?” Prim reminded her.
Passion smiled at her sister’s kindness.
“Darling”—Patience patted her leg—“this brings us to the very subject we wanted to speak with you about.”
Passion lowered her cup. “What is it?”
“You’ve been ill every day now,” Patience said.
“You’re exhausted,” Prim added.
Passion frowned. Need she defend her suffering? To her sisters? “These days have been a great trial,” she murmured.
Prim leaned forward and took her hand. “Of course they have. Your grief is reason enough for your illness. But…”
“Passion.” Patience looked at her directly. “We think you’re with child.”
Passion gasped, and her teacup rattled violently in her hand, for the moment she heard the words, she knew they were true.
Prim took the clattering china from her, and Passion pressed her hands protectively over her abdomen as her vision blurred with tears. Her wounded heart filled with sublime joy. A baby! A baby in her body! Mark’s baby! She closed her eyes. Their baby.
She wept tears she hadn’t known she had, and, again, her sisters were there to comfort her.
“I have believed I was barren for so long,” she sobbed on Patience’s shoulder. “It hurt so terribly, but I didn’t know how much until now—until the measure of this happiness.”
Patience brushed the tears from Passion’s cheek, and her own eyes were shiny with moisture. “It is happy, happy news. And you shall be the most wonderful mother.” Patience looked at Prim, whose face was streaming with tears. “And we shall be aunts.”
Prim smiled and cried and laid her head against Passion’s stomach. Passion held her and shared a glance with Patience. Prim had been young when their mother had passed, and this was a childhood reflex that had moved from their mother to Passion. It was a bid for comfort, and over the years it had remained with her.
“Will you tell the earl?” Patience asked.
Now Passion felt wrenching sadness. This was the dim side of her joy. “How can I? His life is set.” She blinked back her tears. “Knowing would only increase his grief.”
Patience frowned with concern. “But, surely, one day…”
Passion nodded and stroked Prim’s brow. “Yes. Perhaps, one day…”
“What will Papa say?” Prim asked.
; Passion shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I feel terrible trepidation about that. Papa will be incredibly disappointed in me,” she whispered. “I can hardly stay at the vicarage. Where shall I go?” She turned from Patience to Prim in anguish, her tears running afresh.
Patience took her hand. “We’ll go to France. Aunt Matty will come with us. We ought not leave Papa entirely alone, so Prim and I can trade off having visits with you.”
France. The idea of her child being born in a foreign country pained her. The idea of being so far from home pained her even more. But she must be far away. And she must stay far away, for she could not shame her family.
Prim sat up, and it was almost as if she had read Passion’s thoughts. “But you mustn’t stay away too long, Passion. After a time, you must return home. The child should know his aunts and his grandpapa.”
Passion shook her head. “How can I? My presence and the baby’s would undermine Father’s role. He could lose the vicarage. We would all be shunned.”
“Then we’ll tell people we’ve adopted the child from some destitute relations,” Patience offered. “Or we’ll say you married again, but that your husband died.”
Passion looked at her sister. It would be a lifetime of lies. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Patience stroked her hand. “We’ll think of something. But Prim’s right. You and the baby belong with us.” She squeezed Passion’s fingers. “Besides, the babe will need a father figure.”
Passion’s heart twisted. A father figure, but not a father. She brushed away more tears. “I will have to stay away for a long time. And any decision to return will have to be Papa’s.”
Prim smiled. “Then I am happy, for I know what his decision will be.” She rested her hand on Passion’s stomach. “Oh, Passion. A baby! You’re going to have a baby!” Her lovely face was so joyful and her sky-blue eyes so tender. “You know how I love babies.”
Patience rested her hand atop Prim’s. “Come what may, this child could not have two more doting aunts.”
Passion kissed her sisters and then rested her hands on theirs. Her joy was bone-deep but bittersweet. Mark had given her a child. He had given her not only his love but also the living manifestation of his love.