Page 51 of For the Love of Lilah
“My God!” With this, Christian was crouching beside my chair, his fingers skimming up my throat. I hadn’t known there were bruises there where Fergus’s thumbs had pressed.
Christian’s eyes went black. His hands gripped the arms of the chair before he lunged to his feet. “I’ll kill him for this.”
I jumped up to stop him from storming out of the cottage. My fear was such I’m not sure what I said, though I know I told him that Fergus had left for Boston, that I couldn’t bear more violence. In the end it was my tears that stopped him. He held me as though I was a child, rocking and comforting while I poured out my heart and my desperation.
Perhaps I should have been ashamed to have begged him to take me and the children away, to have thrust that kind of burden and responsibility on him. If he had refused, I know I would have gone on alone, taken my three babies to some quiet village in Ireland or England. But Christian wiped away my tears.
“Of course we’ll go. I’ll not see you or the children spend another night under the same roof with him. He’ll never lay a hand on anyof you again. It will be difficult, Bianca. You and the children won’t have the kind of life you’re used to. And the scandal—”
“I don’t care about the scandal. The children need to feel loved and safe.” I rose then, to pace. “I can’t be sure what’s right. Night after night I’ve lain in bed asking myself if I have the right to love you, to want you. I took vows, made promises, and was given three children.” I covered my face with my hands. “A part of me will always suffer for breaking those vows, but I must do something. I think I’ll go mad if I don’t. God may never forgive me, but I can’t face a lifetime of unhappiness.”
He took my hands to pull them away from my face. “We were meant to be together. We knew it, both of us, the first time we saw each other. I was content with those few hours as long as I knew you were safe. But I’ll not stand by and see you give your life to a man who’ll abuse you. From tonight, you’re mine, and will be mine forever. Nothing and no one will change that.”
I believed him. With his face close to mine, his fine gray eyes so clear and sure, I believed. And I needed.
“Then tonight, make me yours.”
I felt like a bride. The moment he touched me, I knew I had never been touched before. His eyes were on mine as he took the pins from my hair. His fingers trembled. Nothing, nothing has ever moved me more than knowing I had the power to weaken him. His lips were gentle against mine even as I felt the tension vibrating through his body. There in the lamplight he unfastened my dress, and I his shirt. And a bird began to sing in the brush.
I could see by the way he looked at me that I pleased him. Slowly, almost torturously he drew off my petticoats, my corset. Then he touched my hair, running his hands through it, and looking his fill.
“I’ll paint you like this one day,” he murmured. “For myself.”
He lifted me into his arms, and I could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he carried me to the bedroom.
The light was silver, the air like wine. This was no hurried coupling in the dark, but a dance as graceful as a waltz, and as exhilarating. No matter how impossible it seems, it was as though we had loved countless times before, as though I had felt that hard, firm body against mine night after night.
This was a world I had never experienced, yet it was achingly, beautifully familiar. Each movement, each sigh, each need was as natural as breath. Even when the urgency stunned me, the beauty didn’t lessen. As he made me his, I knew I had found something every soul searches for. Simple love.
Leaving him was the most difficult thing I have ever done. Though we told each other it would be the last time we were separated, we lingered and loved again. It was nearly dawn before I returned to The Towers. When I looked at the house, walked through it, I knew I would miss it desperately. This, more than any place in my life, had been home. Christian and I, with the children, would make our own, but I would always hold The Towers in my heart.
There was little I would take with me. In the quiet before sunrise, I packed a small case. Nanny would help me put together what the children would need, but this I wanted to do alone. Perhaps it was a symbol of independence. And perhaps that is why I thought of the emeralds. They were the only things Fergus had given me that I considered mine. There were times I had detested them, knowing they had been given to me as a prize for producing a proper heir.
Yet they were mine, as my children were mine.
I didn’t think of their monetary value as I took them out, held them in my hands and watched them gleam in the light of the lamp. They would be a legacy for my children, and their children, a symbol of freedom, and of hope. And with Christian, of love.
As dawn broke, I decided to put them, together with this journal, in a safe place until I joined Christian again.
Chapter Ten
The woman seemed ancient. She sat, looking as frail and brittle as old glass, in the shade of a gnarled elm. Close by, pert young pansies basked in a square of sunlight and flirted with droning bees. Residents made use of the winding stone paths through the lawns of the Madison House. Some were wheeled by family or attendants; others walked, in pairs or alone, with the careful hesitance of age.
There were birds trilling. The woman listened, nodding to herself as she plied a crochet hook and thread with fingers that refused to surrender to arthritis. She wore bright pink slacks and a cotton blouse that had been a gift from one of her great-grandchildren. She had always loved vivid colors. Some things don’t fade with age.
Her skin was nut-brown, as creased and lined as an old map. Until two years before, she had lived on her own, tending her own garden, cooking her own meals. But a fall, a bad one that had left her helpless with pain on her kitchen floor for nearly twelve hours, had convinced her it was time to change.
Stubborn and set in her ways, she had refused offers by several members of her large family to live with them. If she couldn’t have her own place, she’d be damned if she would be a burden. She’d been comfortably off, well able to afford a good home and good medical care. At the Madison House, she had her own room. And if the days of puttering in her garden were past, at least she could enjoy the flowers here.
She had company if she wanted it, privacy if she didn’t. Millie Tobias figured that at ninety-eight and counting, she’d earned the right to choose.
She was pleased that she was having visitors. Yes, she thought as she worked her needle, she was right pleased. The day had already started off well. She’d awakened that morning with no more than the usual sundry aches. Her hip was twitching a bit, which meant rain on the way. No matter, she mused. It was good for the flowers.
Her hands worked, but she rarely glanced at them. They knew what to do with needle and thread. Instead, she watched the path, her eyes aided by thick, tinted lenses. She saw the young couple, the lanky young man with shaggy dark hair; the willowy girl in a thin summer dress, her hair the color of October leaves. They walked close, hand in hand. Millie had a soft spot for young lovers and decided they looked pretty as a picture.
Her fingers kept moving as they walked off the path to join her in the shade.
“Mrs. Tobias?”
