Once Beloved (21 page)

“With all my heart! I received a charming letter just yesterday from them. My sister has them practicing their writing.” She smiled. “They sounded fine, still enjoying the novelty of staying with their cousins. Surely, they are staying up too late.” She shredded more grass. “I feel that if I go, I will truly never return. All I have left of the Thorton family will be gone.”

“The house and remaining property will surely go to you and your sister when the Grand-dame finally gives up the ghost.”

“Ha! She'll probably outlive us all. Anyway, it would be impractical for us to keep it from so far away. We'd best sell it.” Her voice cracked before she could get all the words out. “How morbid! Talking as if Gran is at death's door.”

“These past weeks, you've had to prepare yourself for that possibility,” he said. He tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and a shiver of pleasure skittered down her back.

“So much has changed, Daniel, and yet this is still my home. Every day, the truth looms that I will lose all this . . . lose her . . . far too soon.”

“You could rent it out. Then it would still belong to you, and you could gain revenue from it.”

The idea of strangers living in her family home, working her father's field, turned her stomach. “We know nothing of landlording. And we couldn't manage the tenants from afar.”

“You could sell it to Mrs. Weathers.”

“No, if you can believe it, she's already said her family is planning to move closer to Manchester. Her children are determined to go for work.”

“I could keep it for you.” He seemed as shocked as she by his suggestion, but he continued, “'Appen one of your boys or Mrs. Addison's children may want it someday. You couldn't sell their legacy out from under them. Anyway, we own the rest of the land. It wouldn't be much more to manage.”

Shock upon shock. “Daniel, you couldn't do that.”

“Why not?”

She sputtered and grasped for responses. “You have your own land, your own home, to manage.”

“We took over much of the land years ago. What's left wouldn't be much more to manage, and it could remain yours. I could live there and let Gordon's oldest boy have my house. He's old enough.”

The thought of Daniel living in the Thorton house warmed her, although she couldn't begin to imagine why. She refused to delve into those murky corners in her mind. He'd serve as an excellent caretaker. He'd walk in her footsteps, in the footsteps of her parents, and the home would be preserved. Suddenly, the image of him leading his future wife through the house, perhaps a woman with whom they'd grown up in the village, struck her with a sharp bolt of emotion. The vision of him taking the faceless woman's hand as they ascended the stairs—no, no. That wouldn't do.

“I could not ask that of you. It would be unreasonable to yoke you to our property, especially if you were to remarry. Your bride would want control over her home, over its furnishings. She wouldn't want to live in someone else's home. And I couldn't bear . . .”

She'd meant to say that she couldn't bear to have her childhood home altered, her family's things removed, but that wasn't entirely what she meant. She couldn't bear the thought of him remarried. And that was a horribly sparkling gem of truth newly unearthed—she didn't just desire him. She cared for him. Such a strong, honest, beautiful man—why shouldn't he marry again? Why shouldn't he build the family he hadn't had with his first wife? He deserved better. He deserved more. But the thought of him with that fictional other woman, that fictional family, tore at her—the sharp-beaked eagle tearing at the gut of Prometheus, helplessly chained to a rock.

“Do you think, after the taste I've had of marriage, I would seek that misery again?”

“Not all women are like her.” His bitterness tore at her heart. He was such a good man, and he deserved more than this solitary, work-driven life.

“I don't place all the blame on her. Clearly, I was a terrible husband as well. I have no need and no interest in such a future. I would only be your family's caretaker, and I can just as easily work Lanfield from there.”

“Have you ever wanted to do anything else? The stargazing, for instance?”

“That's a pastime. It's entertainment. The farm's in my blood. It's me. I owe it to my brother, to my father—I owe it to Hal and the other bairns.”

She wished it could be otherwise, for his sake. What, after all, was owed to him?

“This . . . with you . . . this is very different from what I had with . . . my husband,” she admitted. “You know, for a time, I felt his death, especially the way he died, was a betrayal. He'd sworn to be by my side, to devote his entire being to me—but in the end, his dedication to the cause, to his ideological fantasy of harmonious labor, mattered more than I did, more than our family did. At least, that was what I thought back then.”

“I blame her too.” Blame. Present tense.

“As well you should, though. She actually did betray you.”

“You talked of fit. Of suitability. I knew she and I were flawed from the start and took her to wife anyway.”

“That doesn't excuse her faithlessness.”

“It was clear that she wanted more than the farm, more than this country life. Like you, she had the spirit of a wanderer, but she found no encouragement in me.”

“She chose to wed you.”

“It wasn't as if she had much choice.”

She observed, “We always have a choice. They aren't always easy, and sometimes none of the options are desirable. But we always have a choice to do the least harm.”

“I think she gambled that I would become unsatisfied with my life and become more like her. She told me more than once I should get out from under my brother's thumb. We never truly understood each other. I can only be thankful that children didn't enter the picture. It was best that she left.”

“I do believe you've just said more words now than I've heard you say in the past three weeks combined.”

“I envy you.”

“What do you mean? Why on earth?”

 

So many reasons
, he thought.
I envy so much of your life.

“Because you had the love of your life. Because you are bent by your grief but not broken. Because you chose a difficult path but have no regrets.”

“You make me sound . . . I was a selfish girl. I wouldn't trade the life I had, but the way I behaved was terrible. Immature. Selfish. What you all must have thought of Isaiah. He was such a good man, such a noble and kind man, and I do have regrets. I regret that the way I left, the actions I chose, made it impossible for people here to see his goodness, for my parents to welcome him into the family properly. It all could have been so different, so beautiful, if I hadn't run away like a petulant child.”

“Will you come to me tomorrow?” he asked, loath to leave her side.

“This isn't something we can keep a secret for long, not in a town like this. Your brother would be furious beyond reason if he found out we were engaged in an affair.”

“He needn't find out.”

She scoffed. “After he found me in your bedroom, I'm sure he must already harbor suspicions.”

“Let him. I don't care. What I care about is learning how to please a woman.”

“I would say you've achieved that. It seems you're a quick study.”

“Call it a point of pride. If there's something I wish to master, I'm highly motivated. But I'm sure I need more practice in order to excel.”

“What makes you think I have any interest in your tutelage?”

“I may be uneducated in this area, but my instincts have not gone completely awry. I see your pulse throbbing at the base of your elegant neck. I see the pretty pink that flushes your face when I mention pleasuring you. Plus, you have a natural incentive for me to improve.”

“Just once more,” she agreed.

“Speaking of once more . . .”

As he practiced what she'd taught him, her moan clawed through him, dragging across his nerves. Yes. This was what he wanted, her splayed out before him, completely open to him. But not just bodily. She'd exposed herself to him, made herself vulnerable to him, and his entire being reveled in her trust. The heat of her skin seared him wherever they touched—lips, chest, hips, everywhere.

Even as the voluptuous sounds walloped him, he refused to shut his eyes. Helena. No one else. No other memories would intrude on this moment. Her first peak eased some of his unrelenting drive to claim her. His thrusts gentled as she breathed deeply and slid her hands across his shoulders, down his arms, along his chest. She smiled up at him, an expression so unexpected he froze. His lungs forgot their function. When she levered her head up so she could touch her lips to his, the world resumed spinning, but at a faster rate than normal. He deepened the kiss, pushing her back down to the pillow as he devoured her mouth and moved deep inside her. Quick, hard pulses that made her body convulse every time he rubbed against that magical spot within that made her cry out. He ground against her, determined to wring every drop of pleasure from her body. When she moaned, her back arching against him, her nails digging into his forearms, his hips jerked harder against her body as his control slipped.

Her body loosened as her head lolled against the pillows. When it became clear that he wasn't done with her yet, she said, haltingly, “Too much . . . I can't. . . . It's so . . .” Then she could do nothing but moan and whimper.

“I need you,” he said. “Look at me, Lena.”

When she opened her eyes and looked at him, her gaze remained unfocused, hazy with pleasure. “I . . . I . . . oh . . .” And then, “Yes. Take me. Take what you need.”

The roar in his head drowned out all thought. He pounded into her, and feminine gasps and cries fed the bonfire that raced through him. When she screamed his name, he cried out in triumph before the waves of ecstasy drowned out all his senses. His last thought before losing consciousness was
Stay
.

As she drifted back to earth, the silence was interrupted only by the occasional and remarkably expressive bleating of sheep in the distance.

“Such a simple life they lead, those sheep,” she said, idly. “They're guided from birth, kept from going astray, protected and well-fed. Feeding and wandering and playing without fear of being lost. These sheep knew nothing of loss or want. Only the beauty and freedom of open space.”

“Don't paint too pretty a picture. We've had lean years. We've had losses.”

“But have they felt the losses, you think, beyond the moment, beyond fleeting instinctive hunger?”

“They're not as mindless as you might think. I've seen the ewes worry for their lambs—seen them give their own food to their young. I've seen them mourn their dead. At the end of last year's lambing, we lost a ewe when she wouldn't stop searching for a lamb we sold. She kept escaping, and one day we couldn't get her back. It's not always easy looking into the eye of a mother after having lamb stew, I'll say.”

“You don't just see them as cattle, do you?” She remembered. Even in his youth, he'd had a tendency to name all the animals. In a flock of hundreds, he'd know each sheep by name.

“Men must harden their hearts for slaughter when needed.”

Women too, you dear man. Women too.
She straightened her spine, knowing she had to be firm, possibly even cruel. But she had to shear herself away from this man and this town. And she had to start cutting herself away now. A clean cut with a sharp tool. The chill of the night seeped through her shift, and she rolled away from him to cover herself more completely.

“Daniel,” she said hesitantly, trying to gather her resolve and find the right words, “you have been an invaluable help to me, but we have no future together. Look at this place. We live worlds apart. You belong here, and while I am overjoyed to again be welcome, I belong in London. That is where my heart lives.”

“You are where
my
heart lives. I know you feel the same. Admit it,” he insisted. “In your touch, in your eyes, in the way you watch over me and anticipate my needs, in the way your body responds to mine, I see that you care for me deeply. Tell me what you feel. Even if we cannot be together, at least give me the truth.”

She shook her head. She dared not say the words. If she said them, this would be real. It couldn't be.

“Marry me.” His tone made it a statement, not a question.

“Don't mock me.”

“I am not. Marry me.”

“That's ridiculous. Why?”