Page 110 of In Need of a Duke
And I think, now, I might have been holding our child and how that wrecks me. And I wish I could hold you now too because I know you have had the same thought. I remember how afraid you were when you told me and then your shock at my response. I could never hate you, Lottie.
Then or now.
I have lied to myself that I have, but it was never you who I hated.
It was myself.
That green flash…
Brilliant.
Lottie, darling, I’ve had too much wine now, and I don’t know if I will ever have the courage to post this. I fear it will just wait with the others. But if I send it, know I will come home once my mother is settled in Italy with the rest of her family.
Home.
With you.
Us.
I hope when I return, I find you still wish to have me. I have been thevery worst to you. I will beg if I need to. I will kiss you perhaps until you change your mind. On that freckle maybe by the curve of your shoulder.
Freckles? Now I must end this.
Charlotte, don’t hate me. I don’t believe you could hate me nearly as much as I hate myself for how things ended between us.
The dratted cad.She couldn’t stop crying. She wiped her eyes, swallowing back a gasp at the pain radiating in her chest before she opened another letter.
It’s late here,and I can’t sleep.
I remembered there was something I wished to tell you. It happens every day at a remarkable rate. I find myself making a mental note that I must remember to tell you, and then I find I am still too much of a coward to return to you. For how I treated you and ran off. For how I must have made you feel as if you did something wrong when you are anything but.
If you were here, I would press a kiss to your cheek and tell you of my day. We would laugh at something small that had happened. Something so small it would be insignificant to anyone else except to us. That’s what we would share—the everyday ordinary. Then we would climb into bed together every night, and there would be no question of where we belonged or what was significant because I would be holding you.
Anyhow, there is an old man here in the village. We walk together most days after lunch in the hot Italian sun. He loves to show me his lemon trees at the villa. Each slow step he is mostly quiet, easy with my company. The heat can be unforgiving, and I like to swim in the ocean afterward.
I’ve forgotten what I wished to tell you. I’m not sure I can tell you the peace I have found here after discovering the truth about my father. And now this letter is destined to remain with the others because I am not sure how to begin to tell you what I have discovered about my family.
I feel alone, holding the weight of everything.
And then I remember you are likely in England believing I have abandoned you.
And I hate myself all the more for it.
What I would give to move forward. To be anywhere else than where I am currently stuck. And the worst of it is, I’ve only myself to blame.
You should see these lemons, Lottie. They are so very big and sweet and bitter. Pure sunshine.
Like you, Honeybee.
Charlotte wiped her face,her heart breaking in her chest, furious. Why hadn’t Ian sent these? Any of these? Why had he allowed her to believe the worst of him?
She shuffled through the pile, picking up the last letter dated two weeks before he returned.
Lottie,
I’m not sure why I write anymore. I never posted the first few, and then with time, I wrote when I missed you. Which, by the pile, was often. And now I write because I fear when I return, you will not see me.
I buried my mother today.
