Constance fumbled her hands in her lap for a moment, then lifted her left hand to reveal a sparkling emerald ring. “Because I’ll be married.”
Scarlett’s fork fell from her hand, clattering against the plate.
Jameson, to his credit, didn’t move a muscle.
“Married?” Scarlett ignored the ring and locked eyes with her sister.
“Yes,” Constance said, as though Scarlett had asked if she wanted more coffee. “Married. And my fiancé isn’t exactly supportive of my role here, so I doubt I’ll be encouraged to keep it once we’re wed.” There was no emotion in her voice. No excitement. Nothing.
Scarlett’s mouth opened and shut twice. “I don’t understand.”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” Constance said softly.
“You have the same expression you wore the day our parents forbade you from marrying Edward until after the war.” Dutiful—that was it. She looked resigned and dutiful. The nausea returned with a vehemence as that foreboding feeling slipped from Scarlett’s chest to her belly. “Who are you marrying?”
“Henry Wadsworth.” Constance lifted her chin.
No.
Silence filled the kitchen, sharper than any words could have been.
No. No. No. Scarlett reached for Jameson’s hand under the table, needing an anchor.
“It’s not up to you,” Constance argued.
Scarlett blinked, realizing she’d spoken out loud. “You cannot. He’s a monster. He’ll ruin you.”
Constance shrugged. “Then he ruins me.”
If it dies, it dies. Her words as she planted the rose yesterday echoed in Scarlett’s mind. “Why would you do this?” She’d been home this last weekend. “They’re making you, aren’t they?”
“No,” Constance rebutted softly. “Mummy told me they’re going to have to sell the rest of the land around the house at Ashby.”
Not the London house…their home. Scarlett pushed past the pang of regret at the news.
“Then it is their fault for not managing their own finances. Please don’t tell me you agreed to marry Wadsworth in an attempt to keep the land. Your happiness is worth far more than the property. Let them sell it.” More importantly, Constance would never survive a marriage to Wadsworth. He’d beat her spirit to death and body close to it.
“Don’t you see?” Pain flickered over Constance’s features. “They’d sell off the pond. The gazebo. The little hunting cottage. All of it.”
“Let them!” Scarlett snapped. “That man will destroy you.” Her hand gripped Jameson’s.
Constance stood, then pushed her chair under the table. “I knew you wouldn’t understand, and you don’t have to. It’s my decision to make.” She strode from the room, her shoulders back and her head high.
Scarlett raced after her. “I know you love them, and you want to please them, but you do not owe them your life.”
Constance paused with her hand on the doorknob. “I have no life left for myself. All I have are memories.” She turned slowly, losing her polished facade and letting her anguish show.
The pond. The gazebo. The hunting cabin. Scarlett’s eyes drifted shut for the length of a deep breath. “Poppet, owning those places will not bring him back.”
“If you lost Jameson, and you had a chance to keep the first house you lived in at Kirton-in-Lindsey, even if only to walk through the rooms to talk to his ghost, would you?”
Scarlett wanted to argue that it wasn’t the same. But she couldn’t.
Jameson was her husband, her soul mate, the love of her life. But she’d loved him for less than a year. Constance had loved Edward since they were children, swimming in that pond, playing games in the gazebo, stealing kisses in the hunting cabin.
“There’s no saying the land would even be there by the time you wed.” Which hopefully wouldn’t be this summer—only a few weeks away.
“He’s purchasing them now, in good faith…as an engagement gift. It was all settled this weekend. I know you’re disappointed in me—”
“No, never that. I’m frightened for you. I’m terrified that you’re throwing away your life instead of—”
“Instead of what?” Constance cried. “I will never love again. My chance for happiness is gone, so what does it matter?” She opened the front door and stormed out, leaving Scarlett to scramble after her.
“You don’t know that!” Scarlett yelled from the pavement, stopping her sister before she reached the street. “You do know what he’ll do to you. We’ve seen it. Can you honestly give yourself to a man like that? You are worth so much more!”
“I do know!” Constance’s face crumpled. “I know it in the same way you do. I saw your face last night. Had it been Howie at your door, telling you it was Jameson who’d been lost, you would have been decimated. Can you look me in the eye and tell me you’ll ever love again if he dies?”
Bile rose in Scarlett’s throat. “Please don’t do this.”
“I have the power to save our family, to keep our land, to perhaps teach my children to swim in that very pond. We are not the same, you and I. You had a reason to fight the match. I have a reason to accept it.”
Scarlett’s mouth watered, and her stomach convulsed. She hit her knees and lost her breakfast into one of the bushes that framed their doorway. She felt Jameson’s hand at the nape of her neck, gathering her unpinned hair as she heaved, emptying her belly.
“Honey,” he murmured, rubbing circles on her back.
The nausea subsided, gone as quickly as it had come.
Oh God. Her mind scurried, trying to trace an invisible calendar. She hadn’t had a moment’s peace since March. They’d moved in April…and it was May.
Scarlett stood slowly, her gaze meeting Constance’s wide, compassionate one.
“Oh, Scarlett,” she whispered. “Neither of us will be Section Leader by the end of the year, will we?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Jameson asked, his hand steady when Scarlett felt like the slightest breeze might send her back to the ground.
Scarlett looked up at him, taking in those beautiful green eyes, the strong set of his chin, and the worried lines of his mouth. He was about to worry a lot more.
“I’m pregnant.”
Chapter Nineteen
Noah
Scarlett,
Here we are again, separated by miles that feel too long at night, waiting for our chance to be together again. You’ve given up so much for me, and here I am, asking for more, asking you to follow me once again. I promise you, once this war is over, I’ll never let you regret choosing me. Not for one minute. I’ll fill your days with joy and your nights with love. There is so much that waits for us if we can just hold on…
“I brought lunch,” I called out to Georgia as I walked in the front door of her house. Had to admit, it was still a little weird to walk into Scarlett Stanton’s house without knocking, but Georgia had insisted, since we’d started spending our afternoons together last week in what she called Stanton University.
“Thank God, because I’m famished,” she called out from the office.
I walked through the open side of the French doors and stopped short. Georgia sat on the floor in front of her great-grandmother’s desk, surrounded by photo albums and boxes. She’d even moved the large wingback chairs out of the way to make room.
“Wow.”
She looked up at me and offered an enthusiastic smile. Damn. Just like that, my mind wasn’t on her great-grandmother or the book I’d staked my career on. It was on Georgia, plain and simple.
Something had changed between us the day we’d gone rock-climbing. Not only did it feel like we were actually on the same team, but there was now a heightened awareness, as if someone had started a countdown. I couldn’t have written the sexual tension any better. Every simple touch between us since then was measured, c
areful, as if we were matches in the middle of a fireworks cache, knowing too much friction would set the whole place ablaze.
“Want to picnic?” she asked, gesturing to a vaguely open bit of floor at her side.
“I’m game if you are.” I picked my way across the spread of memories to claim the spot at her side.
“Sorry,” she said with a sheepish cringe, her wide-neck sweatshirt slipping off her shoulder to reveal a lilac bra strap. “I was looking for that one picture I told you about from Middle Wallop and got kind of lost in this.”
“Don’t apologize.” Not only did she look better than our lunches, she’d unlocked a veritable treasure trove of family history and laid it bare for me.
If that didn’t say opening up, I wasn’t sure what else could. We’d come a long way from her hanging up on me. Everything about the woman next to me was soft, from the sweep of her hair into that knot on her head, to her bare, shorts-clad, mile-long legs crossed beneath her. There was nothing icy about her.
“Once I found the pictures, I couldn’t help myself.” She smiled down at the open photo album on her lap as I took the boxes of takeout from the bag.
“No tomato,” I said, handing hers over. I couldn’t remember if my last girlfriend liked her coffee sweet or black, yet here I was, committing everything about Georgia Stanton to memory without even trying. I had it bad.
“Thank you,” she replied with a smile, taking the box before pointing up to the desk behind us. “Iced tea, unsweetened.”
“Thanks.” Guess I wasn’t the only one committing the details to memory.
“I still think you’re a weirdo for drinking it without sugar, but whatever floats your boat.” She shrugged and flipped a page in the album.
“That you?” I brushed off her commentary and leaned over her shoulder slightly. Whether it was her shampoo or perfume, the light citrus scent I breathed in went straight to my head, along with other body parts I needed under firm control around Georgia.
“How can you tell?” She shot me a quizzical look. “You can’t even see my face.”
“I recognize Scarlett, and I highly doubt there was any other little girl dressed up as a princess Darth Vader.” Scarlett’s smile was proud, just like it was in every picture I saw of her and Georgia together.
“Fair point,” Georgia admitted. “Guess I was feeling a little dark side that year.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven.” Her brow furrowed. “Mom had come to visit before marrying husband number two, if I remember correctly.”
“How many husbands has she had?” It wasn’t that I was judging, as much as the look on Georgia’s face had me more than curious.
“Five marriages, four husbands.” She flipped the page. “She married number three twice, but I think they’re getting divorced, since she’s currently back with number four. I honestly don’t bother keeping track anymore.”
It took a second to connect those dots.
“Anyway, you need the pictures from the forties, and these are mostly just me—” She moved to shut the album.
“I’d love to see them.” Anything to help me understand her better.
She looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“I mean, Scarlett’s in them, too, right?” Weak.
“True. Okay. We can move to the older stuff next. Don’t let it get cold.” She motioned to the burger I had in front of me.
We ate and flipped through the album. Page after page was filled with pictures of Georgia’s childhood, and though some of the pictures included Hazel or Scarlett, it was years—and my entire lunch—before Ava appeared again. Georgia looked like a happy child for the most part—huge smiles in the garden, the meadow, out by the creek. Book signings in Paris and Rome—
“No London?” I asked, turning the page back to make sure I hadn’t missed one. Nope, just Scarlett and Georgia—who was missing two front teeth—at the Colosseum.
“She never stepped foot in England again,” Georgia said softly. “This was the last book tour, too. She wrote for another ten years, though. Swore it kept her from going senile. What about you?”
“Me? Am I at risk for going senile?” My eyebrows shot up. “How old do you think I am?”
She laughed. “I know you’re thirty-one. I meant, do you think you’ll write until you’re ninety?” she rephrased, elbowing me gently.
“Oh.” I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to imagine a time I wouldn’t write. “I’ll probably write until I’m dead. Whether I choose to publish it or not is a different subject.” Writing a book and going through the publishing process were two completely different beasts.
“I get that.” As someone raised in the industry, she undoubtedly did.
Another page, another picture, another year. Georgia’s smile was blindingly bright as she stood in front of a birthday cake—twelve, going by the decorations—with Ava at her side.
In the next picture, which looked to be a few weeks later, the light was gone from Georgia’s eyes.
“You’re not going to ask why my mother didn’t raise me?” She peered at me sideways.
“You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“You really mean that, don’t you?” she asked softly.
“I do.” I knew enough of the bare bones to piece it together. Ava had become a mother in high school, but she wasn’t cut out for being a mom. “Contrary to what experience you have with me because of our project here, I’m not in the habit of prying information out of women who don’t want to give it.” I studied the lines of her face as she looked anywhere but at me.
“Even if it helped you understand Gran?” She flipped the album page carelessly, as if the answer was inconsequential, but I knew better.
“I promise I’ll never take anything you don’t wholeheartedly want to give me, Georgia.” My voice dropped.
She turned my way and our eyes met, our faces only a breath apart. Had she been any other woman, I would have kissed her. I would’ve acted on the blatant attraction that had grown way past any analogy I could’ve mustered. This was no longer a simple zing of electricity, and it had developed far beyond a shot of lust or a surge of overwhelming desire. The inches between us were thick with need, pure and primal. It was no longer a matter of if, but when. I saw the battle raging in her eyes that felt all-too-familiar, because I waged the same war against inevitability.
Her gaze traveled to my mouth. “And what if I wholeheartedly want to give it to you?” she whispered.
“Do you?” Every muscle in my body tightened, locking down the nearly uncontrollable impulse to discover how she tasted.
Her cheeks flushed, and her breath hitched as she looked away, back to the photo album. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” She flipped through a chunk of the album, landing on her wedding pictures, not formal, but candid.
“You look beautiful.” It was more than that. Wedding-Day Georgia wore a look so openly, honestly in love that a stab of irrational jealousy flooded me. That asshole hadn’t been worthy of her heart, her trust.
“Thanks.” She flipped to what was obviously the reception. “Funny, but now when I think about that day, I mostly remember Damian schmoozing anyone he could in Gran’s circle.” She said it easily, as if it was the punch line to a joke.
My brow knitted. How long had it taken Ellsworth to dull her sparkle?
“What?” she asked, glancing my way.
“You don’t look anything like the Ice Queen in these pictures,” I said softly. “I don’t understand how anyone could ever mistake you for cold.”
“Ah, back when I was all hopeful and naive.” Her head tilted as she turned the page yet again, this time revealing a shower of bubbles as the bride and groom made their way toward their honeymoon getaway car. “The nickname didn’t come until later, but that first time I found out he was cheating on me, some
thing…” She sighed and flipped again. “Something changed.”
“Paige Parker?” I guessed.
She scoffed. “God, no.”
My attention snapped to her face as she turned a chunk of pages—years.
“He wasn’t that careless back then. Actresses get you caught, but eighteen-year-old assistants don’t.” She shrugged.
“How many—” The question was out of my mouth before I could stop myself. It was none of my business how incredibly hurtful Ellsworth was. If I were married to Georgia, I’d be far too busy keeping her happy in my bed to even think about someone else’s.
“Too many,” she responded quietly. “But I wasn’t about to tell Gran that I didn’t get that same epic love she did—not when all she wanted was to see me happy, and she’d just had that first heart attack. And I guess, admitting that I’d made the same mistake as my mom was…hard.”
“So you stayed.” My voice lowered as another piece of the Georgia puzzle clicked into place. Indomitable will.
“I adapted. It’s not like I wasn’t used to being left.” She grazed her thumb over a picture, and I looked down to see a colorful autumn tree in a location I recognized well—Central Park. Georgia stood between Damian and Ava, her arms around both, her smile a dim shadow of the one just a few years before. “There’s a warning, a sound your heart makes the first time it realizes it’s no longer safe with the person you trusted.”
My jaw flexed.
She turned another page, another black-tie affair. “It’s not as clean or impersonal as a break or a shatter. Besides, those are easy to repair if you can find all the pieces. Truly crushing a soul—now that requires a certain level of…personal violence. Your ears fill with this desperate”—flip— “rasping”—flip—“gasp. Like you’re fighting for air, suffocating in plain sight. Strangled by life and someone else’s shitty, selfish decisions.”
“Georgia,” I whispered as my stomach turned, my chest pulling tight at the agony and anger in her words, pausing over a picture from the red-carpet premiere of The Wings of Autumn. Her smile was bright but her eyes flat as she posed at Damian’s side like a trophy, both generations of Stanton women at her right. She was freezing over right in front of my eyes, each picture a little colder than the last.
The Things We Leave Unfinished Page 24