“If I’m to take her place, you must promise if anything bad happens to me, you won’t carry the burden of guilt and grief for so many years.”
He gazed into her ardent, beautiful face, and gathered her to him, pressing her close to his heart. Perhaps now would be a good moment to unleash the spirit that had been haunting him. If he told Tia the whole, sordid story of the latter part of his marriage, he would be cleansed, relieved. At least that way, she would know what risks she took in agreeing to marry him.
“Tia, I have something to tell you that must go no further than this room.”
She nodded her head solemnly.
Taking a deep breath, he nestled his head on her breast. And told her everything.
Chapter 41
Tia had stayed with Hal until the sun rose, her heart bleeding for him as he had revealed his tale, and she did all she could to offer comfort. Again and again, she’d told him how much she loved him, and reassured him he was worthy of every sliver of her love, worthy of every last drop of her heart’s blood.
Recalling his memories had caused him such pain, she’d feared he would weep. But he was strong—perhaps even more so than he realized. He’d told her how much he admired her for surviving deprivation and loss without becoming hard and bitter, as he had.
He had praised her compassion and patience until she’d begged him to stop, lest her head explode with pride. And he’d made her promise never to let any resentment simmer, but to always tell him if he let her down in any way. It was an easy promise to make, and she had insisted on his word that he would do the same.
After a parting she had great difficulty in making, she’d returned to her room and strove to give the impression of having been there all night.
When she went down to breakfast, Hal was there, making the meal into exquisite torture.
To have him so close and yet so far, to receive the knowing, smoldering glances from his blue eyes and not be able to respond to them, was hell on earth. She could hardly believe Mama didn’t notice the atmosphere between them—it was charged like a thunderstorm. Tia tasted not one single bite, for her hunger lay in only one direction.
Both she and Hal had agreed to a brief engagement. He planned to obtain a special license today, after a declaration, in the cool gray hours before dawn, of no wish to be separated from her any longer than need be.
It had also been agreed to make the announcement tonight, at dinner. Polly was to come down from the nursery, and Hal would join them all in the dining room, dressed in his best. He would present Tia with his late mother’s pearl and ruby ring as a token of his intent and after that—hopefully—the happy couple would receive the approval of their nearest and dearest.
As soon as breakfast was done, Tia made her excuses to Polly and left her in the care of Nurse before hurrying down to meet Hal. He joined her with an expression of delight that warmed her to her very soul.
Despite his smile, when she took his arm, a tremor ran through him. Why? Was he worried she’d disapprove, that she’d be wounded by what she saw within the folly? Surely, their love was strong enough to overcome this last obstacle?
When they reached the top of the folly steps, he lifted her hand and kissed each fingertip, before removing the key from around his neck, and inserting it into the lock.
She took a deep breath and entered the gloomy tower. He busied himself around her, lighting lanterns and candles, sending the shadows flying against the walls. The chamber they were in was smaller than she expected, overwhelmed by the number of drawings and sketches plastering the walls. A great swathed object in the middle of the floor took up space as well, its shape obscured by a stiff, paint-spattered canvas.
She glanced around her again and saw a workbench loaded with tools—hammers, chisels, mauls, all covered in fine white dust. There was grit on the floor too, gray like the mortar but paler where it had blended with the white.
Puzzled, she approached the canvas to draw it aside, but Hal seized hold of her wrist.
“Not yet, my love. I want to show you upstairs first.”
Making her way carefully up the gritty stairs, she found herself in another circular chamber. This one smelled of turpentine. Several easels bearing covered canvases were set about the edges of the room.
On a small table in the middle stood a set of paint pots, brushes, and stoneware vessels. Pegs driven into the walls held several aprons, all speckled with paint.
An artist’s studio. Hal was a painter.
“You’re an artist? This is your wicked secret?” The sense of relief was so powerful she almost swooned. She’d been worrying herself to death about this?
“Wait.” He lifted the cloth from one of the canvases and held up a lamp for her to see.
She stared at a half-finished picture of a woman holding a book, her dress a dark blur of eager brushstrokes. But she recognized the dress—her favorite, the one with the stripes.
The face. Her face.
He was painting a portrait of her, from memory. She leaned in close enough to see the brushstrokes, individual blobs of white making the light shine out of dark eyes, the carefully placed streaks of darker red that gave shape to lips.
My lips.
Hal hovered behind her, waiting. But when she reached out to stroke a finger across the shiny surface, he caught at her hand. “Careful. It may not be quite dry. If you press on it, it’ll smudge.”
An unspoken question hung between them. Eventually, she said, “You have quite a talent.” She heard his exhalation of breath and knew her opinion mattered to him a great deal. But what were all the other canvases? With a queasy tension in her gut, she approached another easel and lifted the cloth.
This portrait was complete. It showed a slender woman in a yellow dress, with guinea-gold curls framing a perfectly oval face, and blue-gray eyes staring out at the observer, bearing an expression of detached hauteur. Beautiful, but proud—that was how the artist had captured the woman Tia now recognized as the late baroness.
There were other pictures—on the walls, on the table, pinned to the back of the door. Some were pastel, some charcoal; a few were watercolors . . . but they were all of the same woman.
Hal’s late wife.
Tia’s scalp tingled as a sense of dread settled on her. Seizing Hal’s lantern, she returned to the room below and stood once more, staring at the covered shape on the floor. With a flourish, she whipped the cloth away and cast it aside.
And froze in amazement.
There, stretched out on a roughly hewn bed of marble, lay a perfect representation of a woman. Her hands were folded across her breasts and her hair, carved in elaborate detail, spilled across a pillow of gray-veined stone.
The sight stole Tia’s breath. Stunned, she forced her legs to move and bent low over the dead face, examining the sculptor’s art. The contours were there, the full lips, the deep eyelids, even delicate scratches for the lashes brushing against carved cheeks.
A perfect Venus in death, a monument to lost beauty.
But more incredible than the depiction of the woman was the veil draping her face. A veil of marble which interrupted her perfect features in folds like those of the finest lawn cloth.
Tia turned to Hal. “You? You did this?”
“For my sins, yes. I have worked on it nearly every day since her death, as a monument to her.”
“Hal, it’s . . . it’s truly remarkable.” Tears burned her eyes. What else could she say? Here, forever enshrined in stone, was a sculpted masterpiece, testament to a man’s love for his lost wife, a symbol of his devotion.
How was she ever to compete with this deceased paragon of beauty? How could she ever hope to take Mary’s place in his heart? Her eyes were wet with tears, her lungs so heavy she could barely breathe.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted
to.
“You love her even now.” Her voice cracked.
“No. Tia, please, I’ve put it all behind me. Now, I have you. How can I love a ghost, an idea, a memory? Not when I have found a living, breathing, beautiful woman who has helped me face up to—and overcome—my demons.”
Oh, how she wished she could believe him. “You come here regularly,” she choked out, “to commune with Mary and ask her shade for forgiveness.”
“I do not. I come now to draw you, to paint you. See, this table is full of sketches.” He gathered up a sheaf of them and thrust them at her. “See? All you.”
She turned squarely to face him, wracked with sobs. “I don’t believe you can love like a normal man, Hal. This work shows obsession to the point of madness.”
She swallowed hard and forced out the words that tore her apart.
“I can’t marry you.”
Chapter 42
Hal’s face paled as his eyes bore into Tia’s. “Don’t say that. Don’t tell me I’m a madman. I’m an artist. I’ve been striving for perfection, creating a masterpiece. It’s what artists do.”
All she could think about was the fact he’d closeted himself away from the world for three years, building a shrine to his dead wife. She fought down the bile rising in her throat.
“I can’t do this. I can’t. I can never match up to her.”
“Darling, I care nothing for her now, nothing. I’ll have all the sketches, all the pictures, taken out and burned—whatever you wish. It is only you who has been able to bring the light back into my life. I need you to trust me. When it comes to Mary, there is no competition, I swear it. Don’t throw away our chance of happiness. Tell me how I might prove my love to you, and I will.”
But she was no longer listening. Her heart had shattered into a thousand tiny fragments, glass-sharp splinters that pricked and stung, goading her for being such a fool as to fall in love with a man obsessed with the memory of his dead wife. His charismatic, stunningly beautiful wife. Whom he’d loved to the end, even though she had cuckolded him and condemned him to do penance for the rest of his life by committing suicide right in front of him.
Turning her back on Hal, Tia made for the outside door.
She thought she heard him call after her to take care, but her body hardly knew what it did. All she knew was the need to quit this dreadful place, hie away from the tomb of all her hopes and into the sunlight and fresh air.
The walls of the folly seemed to shudder and close in around her, and when she burst out through the door, the stairs bucked beneath her as if they were alive. She struggled to find her way down, her eyes blurred with tears, limbs shaking in abject misery.
The rock under her feet gave an abrupt shudder, and she lurched forward several steps before she was able to regain her balance. She reached the level surface of the lawn and heard Hal call out to her.
But he wasn’t begging her to return to him. He was shouting, “Run, Tia, run!”
Catching the note of fear in his voice, she turned back and saw him swaying at the top of the stairway while the whole mountain of stone rocked beneath him. Unable to tear her eyes from the terrifying spectacle, she froze, torn between rushing back to help and keeping herself out of danger.
White-faced and furious, he yelled again, waving her away. She stumbled backward as the ground shook. With an almighty roar, the tower and its base blurred, expanded, then shivered into pieces. She threw herself down as dust and shards of rock billowed toward her, slicing into her skin, embedding themselves in her hair.
A sound, like thunder, rolled off into the distance. Moments later the ground ceased to vibrate. All she could hear was the cracking, splintering sound of broken pieces of rock settling and boulders coming to rest on the grass.
Coughing and sputtering, she dragged herself onto all fours, crawling in the direction of the folly. Nothing remained of it but a jumble of black, formless rock.
Of Hal, there was no trace.
Chapter 43
Horrified, Tia stood on shaky legs, then lurched forward through the dust and rubble, casting about for any sign of Hal’s bottle-green jacket.
“Hal! Hal!”
No answer. She screamed for help, hoping one of the gardeners was within earshot. In response to her shout, the sharp-eared dogs started baying. Someone from the house must soon realize something was wrong.
She tripped once and fell, bruising herself badly on some broken masonry, adding to the rents in her skirt and the bloody scratches on her hands. But there was no pain, only terror. Where was he?
A piece of dusty cloth poked out from a pile of boulders. Frantically she pushed them aside and dragged at it, but it came away in her hand, along with a splintered wooden frame. When she peered into the gap she’d created, a dead face leered back at her and she let out a horrified shriek.
The image swung into focus. Not Hal, but the veiled face of Mary’s marble statue, damaged by a multitude of cracks.
Her heart pounded painfully, and she gulped in several breaths, willing herself not to faint. She must continue searching—every second counted. Her blood beat so loudly in her ears she could barely hear, but she yelled again for Hal, then stilled to listen for any response.
Suddenly, a few yards away, the rubble began to shift and slide. She scrambled across to the spot and threw herself into the task of scraping, dragging, and rolling the stones away. Something shifted underneath, dusty but animate, pushing its way back to the surface.
Hal.
“Oh, thank God you’re alive.” But he was a dreadful sight, his clothing torn, his pale face gray with dust, his eyes shocked and unseeing.
“Are you hurt? But you must be—your poor head.” She choked down her panic—she must be strong for him now, stronger than she’d ever been.
Blood gushed from his temple, staining his battered shirt front, and he was coughing so hard as he dragged himself upright, she feared he would suffocate on the spot.
She rolled away more rubble, trying to clear a space around him so he could sit in comfort. He drew a hand across his mouth and uttered a hoarse, unintelligible sound.
“No, don’t try to speak. Save your breath.” She stood and screamed, “Help! Help us, somebody!”
Hal broke into another violent fit of coughing, so she knelt again and banged on his back to ease the spasm. It gave him enough relief to try extricating himself from the shattered masonry that covered his legs, but he could only move slowly, like a man emerging from water.
Tia clutched at his shoulders, blew dust from his hair, pressed her handkerchief against his flowing wound, and murmured words of comfort in his ear.
His head swiveled around, his pallid eyes roving over her body, her anxious face. “Tia, you’re hurt.” His voice was a painful croak. “Go and get your cuts seen to.”
“Not so badly as you. Hal, you look an absolute fright.”
“I don’t feel too well, I confess.”
“I think I hear running feet. Help is coming.” Thank heaven.
He took her hand, brought it to his bloodied lips, and kissed her fingers as he met her eyes, though he was struggling to focus. He murmured, “It seems I have become a victim of my own folly.”
Then he fainted.
The gardener’s boy ran up as Tia fought not to lose consciousness herself. “Quick, get to the house and send two strong men down here with a door or a tabletop. Lord Ansford needs a stretcher. Send the fastest footman for a doctor—no, send a groom on the fastest horse. Tell Lynch, tell Symons, tell everyone.”
She had no idea if her commands made any sense, but if they didn’t, surely one of the people she’d sent for would be able to take charge.
Nausea and confusion threatened to consume her as she settled next to Hal, who remained unconscious. Tia cradled his head gently in her
lap, making it easier to staunch the bleeding.
He mustn’t die, please God, he mustn’t die. There was so much she needed to say to him. There was so much they needed to share.
The discovery of the sculpted memorial had unsettled her horribly, but she’d have grown used to the idea in time, wouldn’t she? And what he’d told her about artists was probably correct. After all, she had no experience to inform her judgment. She’d known long before they met, he was obsessed with his first wife, so why should she be so upset to discover he’d sculpted the late Lady Mary?
Hal was clearly a man of varied and exceptional talents. And there was no reason for her not to respect the fact.
When Tia examined her heart, she found her reason for reacting so negatively was jealousy. How foolish of her, to be jealous of a memory. The late Baroness Ansford had nothing to give her husband. But she, Miss Galatea Wyndham, had a whole lifetime of loving to offer him.
She brushed her free hand across Hal’s hair, attempting to extract some of the larger slivers of rock to keep them from digging in and cutting him. His breathing was very ragged, but his eyelids were moving. He must be coming out of his swoon, giving her reason to hope.
He was a strong, healthy man—he would recover. He simply had to. For how else could she tell him she’d been a complete idiot to upset herself so about his sculpture? How could she show him how much she loved him and wanted to be his wife?
Right there, she swore she’d never leave him, however broken he might be, however badly injured.
She simply couldn’t do without him.
Chapter 44
The events following Hal’s collapse passed in a sickening blur. Tia remembered seeing his limp form borne away on a large wooden board, her handkerchief pressed against his gushing head wound. She recalled Symons helping her off the ground and carrying her back to the house, to the anxious ministrations of Mama.
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