Page 45 of An Honorable Deception
Instead, she rummaged through the items still in her trunk and pulled out the books she’d packed first for London and then for the Tower. The novel held little appeal, but she sat down and let two of the others rest in her lap. The Bible wasn’t as well-worn as it should have been, she’d admit. She read it, but not consistently. She’d been too angry withGod during her illness, too convinced that He didn’t see her in her suffering.
The smaller, slender French tome had changed that. She traced a finger over the embossed title ofHistoire d’une Âme.
She’d forgotten these lessons, too, in the wake of learning the truth about her mother. She’d forgotten that the pain was supposed to be given a purpose. That she could let the Lord bear it with her, and so grow closer to Him through it. She’d forgotten because it was so much easier to wallow, to grow hard, to shut herself off.
Even now, she could feel the pull toward that dark, quiet place where no one else could enter.
She could go home. Two short miles to the west. Curl up in her own bed, tell the skeleton staff maintaining the place to bar anyone from entrance. Not ever admit what she’d done to Marigold, not face Yates again. Not have to see Alethia’s sincere, sorrowful eyes. When Papa eventually returned, she could tell him she didn’t want to go back to London next Season, that she’d stay at the Abbey. They’d forget about her eventually—society, her family, her friends. Like they’d done before. She could vanish into her misery.
It wasn’t the way she wanted to live. Not the Lavinia she wanted to be. Even if she couldn’t have love and a family of her own, she could still make her life mean something, like St. Thérèse talked about. She could help other people with the Imposters.
That would mean working with Yates. With Marigold. Putting aside this swirling pain. Tamping it down. Pretending, as he’d told her to do, that it had never happened.
She opened the clothbound cover of the autobiography, flipping through the pages in search of the passages she’d underlined before.
...joy is not found in the things which surround us, butlives only in the soul.She closed her eyes and let that sink in. Did that apply to people too? Could her joy not even be found in them? Obviously not. And yet she wasn’t so sure her own soul remembered how to receive joy.
...love lives only by sacrifice and the more we would surrender ourselves to love, the more we must surrender ourselves to suffering . . .Well,thatfelt right. Had any love she experienced in lifenotbrought suffering? Yet that kind had been thrust upon her. This kind ... Thérèse spoke of a different kind. Sacrificial love. A love Lavinia had never lived out.
It is wrong to pass one’s time in fretting, instead of sleeping on the heart of Jesus.Oh, how peaceful that sounded. It brought fresh tears to her eyes. She flipped again, then paused when a longer passage caught her eye. A passage that she’d underlined too many times, too hard, so that the page had bubbled under the pressure of her pencil tip.
How can a heart given up to human affections be closely united to God? It seems to me that it is impossible. I have seen so many souls, allured by this false light, fly right into it like poor moths, and burn their wings, and then return, wounded, to Our Lord, the Divine fire which burns and does not consume.
She’d made that too-hard mark with shaking hands after she’d found the letters her mother had kept hidden away for decades—letters from a mysterious Hans who spoke of how his daughter reminded him constantly of Lavinia’s mother. She’d thought, when she read them, that this Hans was a lover. Someone with whom Mother had had an affair and had left a child.
Human affections, leading her astray. Planting destruction in her life. Catching her wings on fire.
And they had been—just not the affections Lavinia hadassumed. Hans was a brother, not a paramour. It was love of Germany that inspired her above love for her family. Love for her ideals and politics above her husband and daughter. Not the Divine fire, regardless. Not the fire that burned without consuming.
The other fire had consumed her mother. It had burned Lavinia. She still felt its most recent scorching on her heart.
But there was encouragement here too. Because she could always struggle her way back to that waiting heart of Jesus. She could rest there, let Him be her balm.
Her heart didn’t have to be her prison or her betrayer. It could be the thing she offered to her Lord.
FOURTEEN
By the time they’d navigated from the train station in London to the address on the Strand that belonged to the Empire House, it was well past normal hours when ladies paid visits to charities. The four hours on the train had been quiet, and Lavinia hadn’t met his eyes even once, but Yates hadn’t exactly sought out her gaze either, and silence had suited him fine.
He didn’t trust himself to speak anyway. Not yet. Forgetting might have come easily to her after their first kiss, but it had taken him years, and he was furious with himself for that misstep this morning.
He didn’t knowwhyshe’d kissed him. Something about the fall? Had her heart been palpitating strangely or whatever it had done during her illness? Had she hit her head? Because she certainly wasn’t charmed by his sweaty, manure-scented self. And so, when she’d followed her absurd request with her own obedience of it, he’d known very well what his role was: to set her gently aside—and examine her head better for goose eggs or gashes. He’d done a bully job of it, too, for the first beat. Then when she’d said his name...
He had to squeeze his eyes shut now, even though they were turning the last corner and the moment of blindness could well mean bowling over some innocent passerby.
He hated excuses like the ones Dunne had offered up with laughter at Brooks’s. It didn’t matter that he was a man, that instinct had taken over, that rational thought had fled. He’d forgotten himself, forgotten every entry on the mile-long list of reasons he’d composed for never again offering Lavinia Hemming more than friendship. Forgotten everything but how she felt in his arms and how her lips molded to his and how she’d always made his own heart gallop like a runaway ostrich. And that was unforgiveable.
He wasn’t going to use her for the pleasure of a kiss.
And hedefinitelywasn’t going to lay his heart open for her to stomp on again, especially when she’d admitted herself that he was no danger to her determination never to fall for the supposed trap of love.
How could she think for even a moment that a loveless relationship would appeal to him? That he’d be content with someone who would kiss him in a stable but not trust him with her heart?
All right, so the fury wasn’t only with himself. For going back for a deeper kiss, yes, that was his fault. Too many old dreams, old fantasies had reared up when he’d thought he’d slain them for good.
Dratted Hydra, those.
But Lavinia had earned her share of his fury too. And if she didn’t look so blasted contrite and depressed every time he stole a glance at her, he might let it rage until it burned itself out.
