Page 91 of Duke of Emeralds
“Best for whom?” Isaac asked.
Thomas did not answer.
Colin sat up, all the lazy confidence gone. “I know you, Tom. You don’t give up. Not ever. If you left, it’s because you thought it would help her. Am I wrong?”
Thomas shook his head. “That’s not how it works. Some things are better ended.”
Isaac studied him. “Is that what you want?”
Thomas stared at the cold grate, words slow and quiet. “I don’t know what I want.”
Colin exhaled, loud enough for the whole room to hear. “That’s the first honest thing you’ve said all morning.”
Thomas rubbed his jaw, feeling the scratch of stubble. “There’s nothing to be done about it. We had an arrangement; she kept her end, and I kept mine. But it’s finished now.”
Colin shook his head. “That’s not how people work. It’s not how you work. You don’t get to walk away from a marriage just because it got hard.”
Isaac offered, “Unless you want to spend the rest of your life alone, drinking bad coffee and talking to sheep.”
Thomas smiled despite himself. “Some days, that sounds preferable.”
Colin scoffed. “You’re a bloody liar. You want her back, but you’re afraid she’ll say no.”
Thomas looked up, surprised by the sharpness in Colin’s voice.
Isaac said, “You’re afraid she’ll say yes, and then what? That you might actually be happy?”
Thomas shook his head. “She’s better off without me.”
Colin rose and stalked to the window, staring at the drizzle. “You ever wonder what you’d be without all this?” He gestured at thecottage, at Thomas, at the whole sorry mess. “I’ll tell you: you’d be the man who let the best thing in his life walk away because he was too proud to ask for help.”
Thomas bristled. “That’s not?—”
“Yes, it is,” said Colin. “You’re too damned noble. If you’re in pain, you bottle it. If you want something, you talk yourself out of it. No one ever told you you’re allowed to want things, Tom.”
Isaac added, “Or that you’re allowed to ask for forgiveness.”
Thomas was silent.
Colin turned from the window. “Go to her, Tom. Or at least write. If she wants you gone, let her say it herself.”
Isaac nodded. “It’s better to fail than regret never trying.”
Thomas sat, staring at his hands. They looked foreign to him, large and worn, the hands of someone who’d spent a life building things just to watch them break. He swallowed hard. “What if she says no?”
Colin smiled, a wolfish thing. “Then you come drink with us, and we’ll help you plot a more dramatic rescue.”
Isaac raised his cup. “To lost causes.”
Thomas almost laughed, but it caught on the edge of something raw. “You’re both fools.”
Colin clapped him on the back. “But we’re your fools. Don’t forget it.”
They left him soon after, citing appointments and wives who would murder them for arriving late. As they stepped out into the drizzle, Colin called over his shoulder, “Think on it, Tom!”
Isaac lingered, one hand on the knob. “You’re allowed to want things, Thomas. She might want them too.”
When they were gone, Thomas sat by the fire, alone with his thoughts and the silence they’d left behind. He tried to picture Hester—her hands, her voice, the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn’t watching. He wondered if she missed him, or if she’d already moved on, locked the memory of him away with the rest of her disappointments.
