Once Beloved (18 page)

“I did,” she admitted. “It wasn't just you. It's clear that I am not welcome in Marksby. At first, the rejection caused me such pain, such humiliation, but I must own the consequences of my actions.”

“You don't believe in regrets, though, do you?” His eyes glittered as he leaned closer.

“Of course I do. I feel them as much as anyone else. But I've spent enough time living in the past. I know what mistakes I've made. I know all the ways I've failed, and I've lost much. But I also know there are choices I've made that I wouldn't change for all the world, and I refuse to regret those choices just because others deem them wrong.”

“What about the effects of those choices on others?”

“I am not God. I make many decisions every day for the benefit of others. But I am not omniscient, nor am I omnipotent. We all have hard choices to make, and sometimes the consequences are difficult. I can no more regret leaving—and having the life and family I cherish—than I can regret returning now.”

She met him halfway, raising to kiss him, and marveling at the feel of his body. Then, the most unexpected thing utterly deflated her. Without realizing it, her hand had found its way to his hip. She felt muscle and bone, but something nagged at her consciousness. Isaiah had had a raised scar there, a souvenir of the injury that ended his military career. Confusion swept through her. She didn't want to think of Isaiah at this moment. Didn't want these unintended comparisons. What she had with Isaiah was sacred. This was . . . purely physical.

“Where did you go?” Daniel whispered against her lips.

“What do you mean?” she replied evasively. “I haven't moved.” He tilted his body away and simply looked at her. She touched his face, his stubbled jaw scratching her hand, and said more gently, “I'm right here.”

He didn't pull away from her, but he frowned. “You disappeared. Your body was here, but it was as if you were no longer part of what was happening, what we were doing.”

“I have . . . reservations,” she admitted.

“I do too,” he admitted before gently touching his lips to hers and then softly kissing her cheek, her jaw, her neck. Such whisper-soft touches. It was shocking to realize how much she had missed such tiny intimacies. It was equally surprising to realize that Daniel, so rough and ragged, touched her with the gentleness of a butterfly's wings. “I have bushels of reservations. But they don't seem to be very strong ones, not here, not now.”

So tempting.
Too
tempting. Mere days ago, he'd felt nothing but contempt and rage toward her. Shrouded in darkness, a cacophony of thoughts assaulted her. She slipped away from him, steeling herself as she anticipated his objections.

“I cannot,” she said. “This is . . . you are . . .” She shook her head, unable to voice the words, unable even to complete that sentence in her mind. It had been so long, and in all those years, she hadn't felt tempted, hadn't felt this keen pull of desire. Until now. And she hadn't missed it. Until now. That part of her life, so sweet and intense, had been buried with her husband. She couldn't do this.

A frisson of wicked freedom, just a hint of it, shot through her. It had been so long since she could trust someone to look out for her, so very long since her mind could rest even for a moment. The luxury of it made her dizzy and impulsive. In the space of a breath, she silenced her rioutous mind and practically launched herself into Daniel's chest, his arms wrapping around her from the impact. She should have been furious with him, with herself. He resented her. He'd lied to her about his wife. She'd destroyed his family, his livelihood. He, of all people, was the last person with whom she should be sharing such intimacies. In fact, she was furious! But her anger was caught in a tidal wave of emotions, a froth of heady desire. His weight against her, the faint whiskey-laced scent of him, the bulk of his broad shoulders, his massive chest, his body hardened by the necessities of the family farm—all of it overloaded her senses. The feel of his broad shoulders beneath his shirt, of muscles flexing and contracting as he pulled her closer, made it impossible for her to breathe. Or perhaps the breathlessness was due to the fact that their mouths had been locked together for so long.

“So, so long, it's been—” she stammered. Her own voice sounded so strange, so breathless yet thick and heavy. She pulled away, taken aback by her forwardness, by her wanton irrationality. Guilt and self-loathing crept up her spine. She couldn't betray Isaiah like this. But his hands locked on her wrists. She met his eyes and froze at their stormy intensity. Could he be caught in the same maelstrom? She pulled her lips away but continued to cling to him as the feel of his body against hers made words impossible. Sensations ran riot through her, feelings she barely recognized, heat and longing she couldn't comprehend. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to rein in her response. She even managed to unclench her fingers and press her palms against his chest to gain some distance and composure.

Then his breath danced across her neck, hot and ragged as it brushed past her ear, and she was lost. Such a small gesture, and yet it was an intimacy she hadn't known she'd craved. A delicate, delicious sip of water in the desert. When his teeth gripped her earlobe, she shivered.

“Make that sound again,” he murmured into her ear.

“What? What do you mean?” She barely got the words out. The feel of him, of his lips on her skin, of his coarse jacket, of his solid thighs even through her skirts, all of it drove rational thought from her mind. She hadn't felt such overwhelming passion in so very long, and she hadn't realized how very much her body missed the attention, the surging desire, until this moment.

A low laugh rumbled through him, felt through her palms rather than heard. “Didn't you hear yourself, love?”

“I—no, I—what?” She forced her eyes open and found him pulling his head back to look down at her.

“You make the most arousing noises, my dear. Are you enjoying yourself as much as you seem to be?”

As she stared up at him, bile rose sharply in her throat, the bitterness flooding her mouth. This man was a stranger to her. How could she engage in these . . . acts . . . with someone she didn't love and couldn't trust? With someone who, until very recently, despised everything about her? How could she lose herself so completely? She'd kept such absolute rein over her emotions, over her affections, since her husband had been taken from her. The loss of him had devastated her so completely that she couldn't bear for people to touch her, with the exception of her children. Her stomach twisted at the thought, and she yanked her body away. Her husband was the only man she'd ever been with, the only man she'd ever loved. She'd known when he died that this part of her life, the physical, was finished. This was some twisted aberration.

“No,” she said firmly, as she loosened her grip. “No, whatever madness this is, I am not enjoying it.” As if repeating the denial would make it true.

He released her immediately. He stared back at her, his face obscured by the darkness. Yet she could see an echoing struggle within him.

“Nancy was the world to me,” he said, gruffly. “She was the only woman I wanted to spend my life with. As her feelings for me faded, I tried harder and harder to convince her to stay. But nothing worked. Everything was too plain, too simple. She wanted things I didn't even know existed and couldn't even begin to give her. When she left, my heart ceased to function.” His tone shifted as he continued, “I know too well that one can enjoy relations without involving the heart at all. Or rather the body can feel fleeting pleasure, release at least, without attachment.”

She ought to be shocked by what his last statement implied. Such thoughts, pleasure for pleasure's sake, were selfish and sinful. She ought to be disgusted by the suggestion of engaging in such intimacies without affection or even possibly without respect. But she wasn't shocked or disgusted. She was intensely, overwhelmingly curious. So horribly curious she cursed herself for wanting to explore the invitation that loomed in his words.
No!
She pictured Isaiah, pictured him laughing and cajoling. He was the only man she'd ever desired.
Isaiah, my love.
Whatever this errant feeling was, it wasn't real. After feeling so hated for so long, she was relieved to be accepted. That must be all this was.

“I can't,” she said. It was all she could think to say.

Hands clenched at his sides, Daniel said gruffly, “I should take you home.” Still, she hesitated. His breathing ragged, he added, “Before we do something we'll regret.”

A
s Gran responded positively but slowly to the treatments, Helena's days developed a routine, of sorts. Despite all the potent memories that lurked in the house, tucked in drawers, hidden behind curtains, she found comfort in being here, in making herself useful here. A whiff of Mother's perfume or her father's pipe would bring her to tears, but it was no longer an unwelcome shock; instead, she embraced each grief as it came and let it run its course.

A thump against the window startled her. She'd left windows open in the back bedrooms to let in some much needed fresh air, and she looked around warily. She saw nothing unusual, inside or out, but couldn't relax. The sound sparked some vague memory, one she didn't want to uncover, but she couldn't forestall the bitter taste in her mouth or the ringing in her ears. Or the darkness at the edges of her vision. No, no, no! Then she caught sight of a gray object on the floor, small, the size of a child's ball. When it twitched, she shrieked. She pressed her clenched fists against her forehead as she struggled to master her unbalanced reaction. In a blink, the poor bird hopped and then took off, only to crash into a window again and then another, growing more frantic as it sought the open air. On one detached, disembodied level, she could sympathize with its impotent struggles, but as it screeched and thudded against the arc of windows, her senses overloaded, and she dropped into a crouch against the wall, hands over her ears, as the banging transformed in her mind.

God only knew how much time had passed before she realized a trembling hand stroked her head. Gran stood over her looking weak but determined. “I heard a crash. What happened?”

“Nothing, Gran! Only me being clumsy.” She looked at the windows, some of the curtains tattered by the bird's struggles. It was ridiculous to try to prevaricate. Clumsiness couldn't possibly account for how her grandmother had found her. And Vanessa stood in the doorway, watching, waiting, wringing her apron.

She rested her forehead on her folded arms, hiding her face.

“What happened to you, Lena?” her grandmother asked, gently. “What happened to the inquisitive little girl who wanted to go everywhere and meet everyone and feared nothing, not even her parents' wrath? You've always had a good heart, but anyone can see plain as day that you're broken. Well, anyone who knows you. You're afraid of everything, it seems.”

“I am, Gran. I am terrified, and I don't know how to change that. I don't think anything can.”

She heard her niece moving carefully through the room toward the windows. At the girl's gasp, she looked up to see Vanessa cradling something dark in her hands. That damned bird. Others might see it as portentous that a lone bird, probably seeking food or companions, essentially trapped itself for days and may have destroyed itself trying to get free from its self-imposed glass prison.

“Oh, no!” Helena said, “Please no! Tell me it's not dead.”

Vanessa looked unsure but, to her credit, didn't waver.

“But why, dearie? What made you so very frightened? You seemed fine when you arrived. A bit skittish perhaps, but that's understandable considering how foolishly folks around here carried on about your elopement, as if that were any of their business. I thought—I hoped—that after you'd been here a few weeks, you would feel at home again.”

“I see now that this will always be my home, at least in spirit. But the village has gotten no better in all this time. I'm a scapegoat for all the ills that have befallen this land.”

“Aye, well, women have carried the blame of the world since Eve. You used to know better than to credit all that nonsense or else you wouldn't have left.”

She looked up and met Gran's gaze. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that her niece had moved toward the windows. For once, she needed her family to understand her choices.

“I always took it to heart, Gran, but my husband mattered more to me than any of that; he mattered more to me than my own life. None of the vitriol from our little community touched me then, not when I could have a life with him.”

“That look in your eye says it all. He meant the world to you, and now you've lost him too.”

Gran squeezed her hand with surprising firmness, and she closed her eyes tightly to rein in the sudden surge of emotions. Lost him. He'd been taken from her, brutally, and she was the one who was lost. Now more than ever.

“What happened, dearest girl? What made you so afraid?”

“It's the crowds, Gran. I cannot abide too many people close around me.”

“But why? You've not had such difficulty before.”

“How much do you know about the circumstances of my husband's death?”

“Not very much. The newspapers reported mill riots in the South, and we saw his name among the injured. Later, railway gossip filtered from into the village.”

“I don't know how much detail the papers would have provided here, but if ours were any indication, the news depended very much on which side the publisher favored. I was there with him. He wasn't even a party on either side. We were simply passing through the town on our way home from a trip to the ocean. It wasn't a riot yet, simply a gathering of people in the town square to air their grievances. When he saw the crowds and heard the angry grumbling, his aim was to pacify them, lest anyone be harmed. He tried to mediate between the mill owners and the workers.”

“And look what that got him,” Gran said quietly, neutrally, as if reading her own thoughts.

“Exactly! Foolish, foolish man. I told him not to stop. That it wasn't our business. But he believed he could help, believed he could be the voice of reason. He waded into the crowd toward the raised platform at the center of the town square. I tried to follow him, but the crowd became too thick. I remember he called to me and said, ‘Go back! It will be safer for you at the edge of the crowd.' But I couldn't bear to be so far away. Watching him make his way, pausing occasionally to convince men here and there to let him pass, I knew in my bones something was wrong. I should have fought harder.

“I don't know what prompted it, but . . .” She stood and began pacing, touching things around the room. She was in Marksby in her childhood home. She was safe. “It happened so quickly. One large stone flew at him out of the mass of people. I don't know if anyone could have known what direction it came from. I only saw Isaiah's head recoil from the impact. He raised his arms, but I couldn't hear what he said. Then another rock hit him, and then another, and another. I remember screaming, and I remember the crowd around me tightening and surging forward. He dropped out of view, and I tried so hard to get through that mass of people. I begged and cried and shoved. All the while, the crowd tightened around me as everyone strove to get closer to the action. At some point, a constable was trying to get the people around me to disperse. He must have thought me mad as I babbled.” She looked out the window at the patchwork rise and fall of the fields around them. In the unreasoning madness of the mob, it was a wonder she had survived.

Gran came to her side, the older woman's grasp on her hand impressively firm. “He died doing what he felt was just. He wouldn't have left you alone by choice.”

“A kind couple who owned a shop nearby saw me pass by in hysterics. I was informed later that I only agreed to take shelter with them when the constable promised to find out my husband's condition. I waited there for so very, very long.”

Thin but strong arms wrapped around her. “Go on, my lass. I'm here with you.”

Helena couldn't hold back the sobs that punctuated the rest. “Isaiah never woke again. The doctors and surgeons there did what they could, to no avail. Soon, they agreed we could do no worse by returning home so the boys could perhaps see their father before he passed on. That was the most harrowing ride of my life. I watched him like a hawk for the entire trip, terrified that each breath would be his last. Terrified that each jolt caused him unspeakable suffering not visible to the human eye.”

“It's never easy to see our loved ones go, is it?” Her grandmother spoke softly, as she would to a child. “No matter how they pass, we're never truly ready to let go. And to lose your husband so young, to be alone in all that violence, oh, my sweet Lena, I wish we'd known.”

Helena leaned into her grandmother's unyielding hold and let the tears come. All the terror and helplessness and frustration and loss poured through her. When the flood of emotion receded, she was able to explain how Isaiah's gruesome death still haunted her.

“Since the incident, I have found it increasingly difficult to be amid large groups of people. Being here, able to walk the fields without a soul in sight for miles, has been heavenly. In London, I find it harder and harder to leave the house. At first, I felt mere discomfort, but the feeling has grown over time instead of diminishing. These days, I find myself suffocating when surrounded by people. Even the very thought of being in the midst of a group can leave me paralyzed with fear. I've begun fainting. It's really quite pathetic.” She finished with a wry smile. “Some might say we received our just desserts.”

“Anyone who would even think such a thing is inhuman!” Daniel! At the sound of his furious voice, she whirled to face him. How did he manage to appear at her lowest moments? She hadn't heard his footsteps approaching, and suddenly here he was, filling the doorway. If she were a fanciful person, she might think he looked like an archangel, massive and righteous and larger than life.

“Daniel! What are you doing here?” Helena asked as Gran moved to greet him.

After responding to Gran's welcome and asking about her health, Daniel held her grandmother's hand in his large one and said, “I came to see your grandmother. Gordon's wife sent along a basket, which I left with Mrs. Weathers. She told me that Mrs. Thorton was expecting me.”

He looked uncomfortable, and she feared how much he'd heard of their conversation.

“
That
was when your spells began?” he blurted out.

“You were eavesdropping? How very ungentlemanly of you,” she said, without heat. She looked at him warily. “How much did you hear?”

“Enough,” he said simply. “I heard enough to fit the pieces together. We should talk.”

Gran interrupted, “My fine lad, help me get back to bed and then take my granddaughter out for a turn in the air. I suspect she's not fully recovered from that wee birdie that confused indoors and outdoors.”

“I'm fine, Gran. Mr. Lanfield came to visit you, not me.”

“Well, and he's seen me, hasn't he? Let people fuss over you a bit for a change, Lena. In any case, leave me a moment's peace.” Gran's parting wink discomfited her and reassured her simultaneously. The woman was quite fond of teasing her family; the twinkle in her eye attested that she was getting back to full health.

As she led Daniel down the stairs, she whispered, “It was exceedingly kind of you to come, but you needn't stay. I'm certain you have important things to attend to.”

“I do indeed,” he said, with a determined gleam in his eye. Then he took her hand and pulled her out the front door with him.

 

“Where are we going?” Helena asked.

Daniel wished he had an answer, but, in truth, when he'd taken her hand, he simply wanted to take her
away
. When he had entered Mrs. Thornton's room, he should have announced his presence immediately, but he'd thought they'd hear him coming up the stairs. The agony in Helena's voice had frozen him on the staircase. He'd been nearly overwhelmed by the urge to rush to her side and wrap his arms around her like a human suit of armor. Even now, the impulse to simply cocoon her loomed large. She wouldn't accept that. Now he just wanted to get her away from the memories that troubled her. Away from the past that hung over her. Just away.

Since he couldn't give her a direction, instead he asked, “You've been better, haven't you? Since you've been here, I mean. You had no problems during the trip to Bradford.”

He didn't miss her hesitation as she chose her words carefully. “I believe I have. It hasn't escalated, which is a wonder when you consider all the unfamiliar and even hostile situations I've been in recently.”

“Let's follow the Grand-dame's advice,” he said impulsively. “She's never steered me wrong before. Come for a walk with me, not for errands or tasks, but simply for enjoyment.”

He half-expected her to say no, to give a heap of excuses why she couldn't spare the time. He was all too adept at that himself, devoting his attention to everything that
had to be done
. But he wanted her company. After hearing of the real reason for her spells, he wanted to see her safe and to ensure that she found her tenuous equanimity again. An odd sensation built in his chest when she said, “I know exactly the place to go!”

He wasn't a bit surprised as their path led up to his stargazing nest. She hadn't seen the watchtower ruins in daylight, and it clearly held powerful reminiscence for her. The all-encompassing view was stunning in its own right, giving the impression that one could see all of England from this perch. One could feel all the promise of creation here—the fields, the forests, the beasts, even the puffs of smoke from distant factories, all of it lay at one's feet.