Page 100 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
She stood at the window of her room and watched him ride away. Dawn was still streaking the sky when he set out, riding his gray into the future. His self-determined future, the one that didn’t include her.
She had no tears left to shed—either of fury or of pain—not even in anticipation of the misery she knew now hovered on her horizon. If this was how it was meant to be, then it was; ranting and railing wouldn’t change anything. As he’d said, she’d failed to convince him to turn aside and take the right path with her.
In the way he looked at things, that was her loss and his gain.
She watched him go until he rounded the curve in the drive and she could see him no more.
Only then did she draw a deeper breath. Folding her arms across her chest, she stared out unseeing and, finally, allowed herself to look inside.
Desolation lay heavy on her soul. A barren wasteland littered with powerful yet powerless feelings stretched, unending, inside her.
She breathed in, out. Waited.
Nothing in life was set in stone, not if it involved people. Every single soul possessed free will; every person, no matter how weak, was entitled to choose their own destiny.
He had chosen his self-determined path with deliberation and intent, and in repudiating so adamantly the alternate destiny she and the Lady had laid before him, he had, at least in part, rescripted her future.
Irreversibly.
So where did that leave her? What aboutherright to define the life she wanted—to claim the life she’d grown to adulthood expecting would be hers?
What now for her?
For long moments, she stared out at the land she had accepted as her birthright, to which she remained committed to protect and to nurture. Eventually, she exhaled and, closing her eyes, reached…and to her surprise, found the usual calm waiting. Waiting to enfold her and draw her in, to center her, to anchor her…
She’d expected to feel far less sure, far less stable.
Life, apparently, went on—and she was strong enough to endure. She breathed in again and felt steely resolve infuse her. She came from a long line of women who had found their way through turbulent times—through emotional storms and defeats as well as physical ones; no more than they would she give up, would she eschew her duty.
She would endure.
She’d been born to this—however it played out—and she would go forward.
More assured, she allowed herself to examine her emotions, recognizing and acknowledging them before setting them aside. Yes, there was hurt, layers of it, and beneath that a level of devastation—a disbelief that he truly had gone without even making any real attempt to understand—and beneath even that, beneath all, lay a yearning. A hollow core of emptiness; that was something she had expected to feel, along with the nagging, useless thoughts of whether she could have—should have—done this or that, something else, something other, to hold him and bind him to her.
From the first, she had understood that this decision had to be his. Entirely his, without undue influence from her.
Without the full impact, the full pressure, of her love.
Did he love her? She doubted he did, not as he might have—not as he would have if he’d claimed the position by her side. Acknowledging a possibility gave that possibility the potential to become a reality, but he’d turned away without giving love a chance, without even considering doing so.
Did she love him?
Her mind balked, unwilling to delve deeper.
She opened her eyes, stared outside, and forced herself to acknowledge even that. “Yes.”
The truth resonated inside her, inviolable, immutable.
She had loved him for years; a quietly patient, undemanding kernel of unconditional love had been planted in her soul so long ago that she’d fallen into the habit of taking it for granted. But her love was no longer that gentle bud. Although she’d been aware of gradual changes through the years, until that moment she hadn’t truly appreciated how much had altered over the last days, how their constant adult interactions had nurtured that long-buried seed to rampant, full-flowering life.
Love wasn’t something one commanded. It came on its own terms, was governed by its own rules, and needed no permission to grow into a force that compelled, and held, and never, ever, let go.
Such was her love for him now, and all she could do was feel it, acknowledge it—honor it and herself and hold true to it, and wait to see if he ever rode back to claim it and her.
Time would tell.
So she was back to waiting again, to relegating her heart and her private life to the back of her mental shelf again.
