“She’s better then?”
He leaned close to her ear. “She has maybe a day or two at most. The tumors are crushing the breath from her.”
Chloe closed her eyes, drawing up her strength to face this. She walked into the ivory-and-beige room, lit only by two small bedside Tiffany lamps, and Roarke closed the door behind her. She halted, startled—awed—by the terrible and beautiful scene before her. Mr. McCaslin stood by the bed, treasuring his wife’s hand in both of his. Their love radiated in the shadowy room, almost palpable in its force. Each face searched the other; a tender smile lifted both. Their private communion separated them, set them apart from Roarke and her. Mr. McCaslin was losing the love of his life.
Chloe pressed the back of her hand to her trembling lips.
Why aren’t you here, Kitty?
Pale and thin, Miss Estelle looked over at Chloe and lifted her other hand. “I need to talk to you, my dear, while I can still make sense.” Resistance to pain flickered across the woman’s face. “The doctor is giving me more morphine and pretty soon I’ll just come and go in dreams, I guess.”
“Roarke and I’ll leave you, then.” Mr. McCaslin started away.
“No, dearest, my heart, stay,” she pleaded. “The time for secrets is over. Please sit down near me.” Her husband nodded and sat on a vanity chair close by the bed.
On the other side, Chloe approached and accepted Miss Estelle’s frail, outstretched hand. She couldn’t believe how quickly the woman had lost ground since Christmas.
“Chloe, I’m glad you finally came home.” Miss Estelle gazed up with eyes now too big for her face. “Bette and your mother need you and you need them.”
Chloe only nodded, not trusting her voice. Roarke’s presence so near and yet untouchable brought fresh desolation to this parting.
“You lost your nerve when Theran died,” the woman said with searing accuracy, “but I think you’re getting it back. Your father’s mother was a wonderful person. It was fortunate that she and Jerusha’s mother had the raising of you.” Another twinge of pain etched itself on her pallid face. “Bad times are here, but you’ll find your feet.” The woman tried to squeeze Chloe’s hand.
The meager effort brought tears to Chloe’s eyes. “Don’t exhaust yourself talking to me.”
I’m not worth it.
“Why did Kitty leave us?” Deep, hopeless sadness infused each of Miss Estelle’s words.
“I don’t know. She left me, too.”
Just like Roarke.
The double loss dragged at Chloe’s heart.
Miss Estelle closed her eyes. “I can’t believe we lost her. Something happened in New York and not that bad alcohol—something else. When she brought Jamie to us, I thought we might get another chance, a chance to start over. But as soon as we’d adopted him, she left.” A single tear dripped from the lady’s eye. “I guess she just didn’t want to leave us—Thomas and me—all alone.”
Chloe could think of nothing to say to this, so she tightened her hold on Miss Estelle’s hand.
The lady opened her eyes. “Roarke, come stand beside Chloe.”
Roarke obeyed his mother. His face was a dangerous rock cliff again. His brooding anger at this new sorrow vibrated in the air around him. Chloe longed to turn to him, hold him against the loss he now faced. But no.
“Son, I don’t have any time left for sensitivity or discretion. I don’t know what you did or was done to you in France, but it’s time to put it behind you.”
Chloe clung to the lady, reckless hope glimmering—hope that his mother could break through at last.
Roarke’s face softened. “Mother, I—”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t have the strength to hear it even if you’re ready to tell me now. I’ve prayed and prayed that shadow would pass from you, but it hasn’t. You’ve nearly lost Chloe. And your father and I have nearly lost you, too, along with Kitty.” Sweat beaded on the lady’s forehead. “We must have been sadly poor parents to lose both our children this way.”
“That’s not true,” Roarke accentuated each word. “You and father were, are wonderful. Kitty and I failed you. You didn’t let us down.”
“Then, don’t disappoint us now. Tell your secret to Chloe and clean it out of your soul and your life. Thomas and Jamie are going to need you when I’m gone. Your father’s heart is frail. You must shoulder the load and keep the bank afloat.” Miss Estelle looked transparently pale, as though she were vanishing before their eyes. “I think it will take all your strength and intelligence. But the county needs the—” She faltered.
“I’m getting the doctor again, Estelle.” Her husband left.
“Call in the children,” Miss Estelle murmured, writhing silently in pain.
Chloe moved away from the bed, taking refuge in the shadows. Roarke stepped to the doorway. “Children, Miss Estelle wants to see you.”
Jamie and Bette tiptoed into the room as though afraid of waking someone. Miss Estelle patted the bed on both sides of her. “Come. Lay down one on each side of me. I’m lonely.”
The children obeyed hesitantly. Jamie lay down and gazed into his mother’s eyes. On the other side, Bette tenderly patted Miss Estelle’s shoulder and whispered, “I love you.” Chloe pressed the back of her hand to her quivering lips.
Dr. Benning walked in and replaced the celluloid oxygen mask over his patient’s mouth and nose. He turned on the valve on the green oxygen tank standing beside the bed as Miss Estelle closed her eyes. Her husband sat back down in the chair while the doctor checked his wife’s pulse.
Roarke and Chloe walked out of the room as in a dream. Roarke led her down the hall without one word. Chloe found herself in his bedroom, a room she hadn’t entered since childhood. She looked around at the masculine room done in navy and white, at the gold cuff links tossed on the highboy and the brown silk tie hanging over the closet door knob. Awareness of Roarke brought gooseflesh up on her arms.
“I didn’t want to take you downstairs. Maisie and the cook are there,” Roarke explained, feeling hoarse as if he’d been screaming. “We won’t be overheard here.”
Chloe stared at him, unwilling to chance believing he would finally open up. “You’re really going to tell me?”
His expression was harsh yet rueful. “I know you were never close to either of your parents,” he voiced the first thought that came to mind. “I’ve watched you quietly mourn your father. It does you credit.” The woman he loved stood so close and when she had heard the truth she’d leave him once and for all.
“I think I’ve mourned for what might have been between us. Are you going to tell me then?” Her audacity shocked her. They were alone at last. Roarke was close enough to touch. She shuddered with the nearness of him.
He nodded. “Sit down.” He motioned toward a blue-plaid armchair near the hearth where a low fire burned. “These old houses. We should have put in a modern furnace but now we won’t be able to afford to.”
“Don’t talk to me of furnaces.” She let herself down into the soft chair and thought of Roarke sitting here each night reading, all alone.
Roarke eased down on the edge of his high antique bed, covered by a thick quilt in blues and white. He pressed both hands down on either side of him. The haunting image of the battlefield crinkled in his mind like a photograph about to catch fire. “The funny thing is that I think I can tell it now. Knowing I’m about to lose Mother makes it easier somehow. I don’t know why.”
Chloe waited, tense, hardly daring to hope yet at the same time fearful of what he might reveal. The intimate setting was lowering her resistance and she was remembering the times Roarke had held her in his arms. Dangerous memories.
Roarke gazed at Chloe, drinking in the way she glowed in this room, the beauty she brought wherever she was. Then the image of the battlefield, shells exploding all around, men screaming, cursing; dust spurting up as bullets bit the earth. “I was a coward, Chloe.”
She looked at him, her lips parting. “No.”
He closed his eyes, seeing it all over again. “I ran and hid under enemy fire.”
Chloe couldn’t believe her ears. He’d put them through all these years of agony because he ran? “There’s more to it than that,” she said flatly.
“I was the lieutenant.” He pushed back his hair with his good hand. “I was to lead my squads as we repelled a German raid and . . . I didn’t. I hid behind dead bodies and cowered while my men led themselves into the fray.”
The words, spoken so matter-of-factly, seemed almost unreal to Chloe. This man wouldn’t do that. “Roarke, you’re not a coward. You’re not.”
“Chloe, how can I say it any plainer?” Acidic irritation spurted through him. “I did not stand and fight. I turned and ran. Theran wouldn’t have turned tail. I did.”
Of course, Roarke would demand the most of himself. Struggling for words, she looked down. While she searched for what to say, she spread her white hands out on the lap of her black dress. Her hands and nails were no longer those of a lady. Scrubbing floors, washing her own dishes, rubbing clothes on a washboard had taken their toll. After years of running away, she’d come home. She’d finally turned to face the fight. Her calluses and broken nails were her badges of honor. “You’re not a coward—not anymore. You came back.”
He stood up in one angry, fluid move. “I don’t know what you mean.” Why couldn’t she get it?
“I was a coward, too.” She clenched her hands, two fists in her lap. “But I’ve come back to face . . . everything. My mother, Bette, our people. And so have you.”
“That’s not the same. You’re not a man. You don’t understand.” He’d waited all these years and now she had no idea what his cowardice had cost him.
She looked into Roarke’s dark, anguished eyes. “There are all kinds of courage. I don’t think you were ever meant to be a soldier. And you never got a second chance to face the enemy, did you? I mean, you were wounded in your first battle?”
“It wasn’t even a real battle, just skirmishes at Seicheprey in Lorraine, just German raids. I deserved worse than this.” He glanced down at his stiff arm. But he’d often wondered if he would have been able to conquer his cowardice if he’d had another chance.
“Roarke, I’ve known you all my life. You are a good person. Does one day, one action, define a man? I’m sorry you didn’t do what you feel you ought to have.” She stood on shifting sand. One false step and she would take them both down to disaster. “The Great War’s been over for a decade. Isn’t ten years of banishment enough?”
He paced, unable to stay still. “Every time someone thanked me for serving my country, I wanted to blurt out the truth.” Even as he fought her, hope forced itself into his heart. “But I couldn’t.”
“Don’t you think people ever asked about my daughter?” she asked him. “I was a coward, too. I deserted my post as mother. Don’t you think that guilt’s as real and as harsh as yours? What could I have done that was worse than leaving my child with my mother?”
Halting, he stared at her. “It’s not the same.” But he recognized the torment in her eyes and the suffering in her tone. It touched a deep chord in his own guilt.
“Every day I want to run away again,” Chloe said, daring him to belittle her woman’s cowardice. “I look at Bette and the guilt nearly strangles me. Then I ask myself—what’s best for her now? I wasn’t here for the first ten years of her life, but I can be here for the rest of her life.”
Strength deserted him. He sat back down, his head in his hand.” I can’t . . . there isn’t any way I can make up for what . . .”
Chloe rose and went to him, the thick carpeting cushioning her steps. She knelt before him and rested her head in his lap. “Let it go, Roarke. It’s history. You can’t change it. You should ask yourself, what’s best for your father. He’s such a good man. And what about Jamie and Kitty?
And me?
Be rid of it now.”
“How can I?” His voice came out muffled, agonized.
Chloe combed her mind. It was now or never. “Didn’t you hear your mother? The county needs the bank and your father can’t do it alone. You’re here now to fight the battle of this depression.”
“And you think that will redeem me?” he jeered. Her words were persuading him, but it couldn’t be this easy.
The song that had finally come clear this morning at church sang in her mind, compelling, irresistible. “God takes us just as we are.” Over the past decade, she’d forgotten the most important thing Granny Raney had ever taught her. Truth flooded her, emboldened her. “Ask Him for forgiveness and let it go. Don’t make yourself and the rest of us suffer on and on.”
“It’s not that easy.” But the photograph, frozen in his mind, was crinkling more. Chloe’s presence was realer than a faded memory of the Western Front.
“It’s not easy for me to stand up for Bette against my mother and do it with respect.” Chloe took his good wrist in her hand. The contact after so many years apart shivered through her.
This is Roarke, my dearest . . . friend.
“I have to do it for my daughter. Drake told me, ‘We thought the party would never end.’ But the party’s over. We’ve got to face this new decade together or we’ll let . . .
make
others suffer. That’s not right.”
He was fighting a losing battle. Chloe knelt on the floor in front of him, holding him, and it was as though a storm were flooding his soul. He ached with emotions long held in check, and he moved to push them away. But in the act of removing her hand, he looked down, and he finally noticed something he’d overlooked. In a heartbeat, his long-denied need for this woman stirred. “You took off his engagement ring,” he whispered. He gripped the last shred of his resistance to her.
Chloe looked up at Roarke, her large blue eyes filled with a longing even he could read. “I can’t marry Drake. If the crash hadn’t come, I would have and it would have been a mistake. One in a long list of mistakes I’ve made.” She took a deep breath. “I want to marry you.”
He stared down at her, so beautiful, so earnest. Where had she gotten the courage to say that? Could he do less? With a sigh he gave up the fight. “Good. Because I want to marry you.”
He stood then, dragging her up with him. All the longing of wasted years surged through him.
She’s right.
A frenzy to claim her overwhelmed him. He kissed her deeply, searchingly. His heart pounded and, one-armed, he wrapped her tightly to him and felt her heart beating against him. “Forgive me for all the years I’ve wasted.”