Page 32 of Better Love Next Time
This was the end? He had kept her for two years and remained faithful. She had returned to England forthem, concocted a past, faced her worst fears.
And this was the end?
She pushed the ledger to the shelf. She had forgotten how cold sorrow was. How the chill of loss wrapped insidiously at her flesh and bones and soul and left her shaking.
“Kitty we cannot go on like this.” His lips brushed her temple. “I am sorry.”
“Don’t!” She whirled around. “You allowed me pretty speeches on dreams and purposes. You agreed to try?—”
“No. I agreed to make arrangements for our return.”
“You. You! Why can you not forgive me? You cling to your resentment like a talisman. You punish me every day for my mistake. You want no reasons because—because you enjoy hurting me. Hating me.”
He strode the length of the room to gaze out the loft windows, his hands linked at his back. “You are wrong. I do not enjoy this, nor is it my wish to hurt you. And I do not hate you. This is for the best. For the both of us.”
She bit back a sob. He couldn’t even look at her. “Please grant me the property. I will live in one of the cottages. That is the home I wish for. ”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He shook his head. “Because it cannot be undone. Because it is over.”
“Look at me,” she demanded at his back. “Look at me and tell me you wish never to see me again.”
He turned from the window. His face was stone.
This was the end. She was four and twenty. In her heart, she had loved Julian through eternities and would continue. How ridiculous for her to believe good followed bad. What good had come to her? What wounds healed?
Brushing the dust from her cloak, she fought back tears. “I sincerely doubt you have no wish to hurt me, Julian. Because you agreeing to make arrangements and bringing me here so that I might see the futility of our dreams, reeks of revenge.”
She remembered nothing of her return to the inn under the broad Hampshire sky. In her room, she tugged her gloves from her trembling hands and tossed them to the bureau. Unhooking her bodice, she let the gown slip from her shoulders.
She had no one. Her father had disowned her. Her brother marched in step with her father. Her mother was dead. Father Dunlevy could not be seen with her, though she had posted letters to him to warn him she had returned.
She caught sight of her dark, indistinct reflection on the window pane.
“Julian…” she whispered to it. “I must tell you the truth.”
Cringing, she turned from the window, as if it were that very steel-grey day. The words wouldn’t come, even spoken alone. She paced the room, trying to loose the shame and fear clawing at her flesh. Would the truth matter now? She had been a coward too long. Was still a coward. Something primal and sick kept her silent.
And if this thing inside of her, that only wished for peace and forgetfulness, would somehow grow a spine?
“Spine!” she shouted to the room.
Everyone would know of her stupid choices. If they believed her.
Hurrying to the washstand, she splashed water to a cup. She fumbled for the laudanum and spilled incalculable drops to the water. She took a sip and set it back to finishing undressing.
She untied her petticoat and unlaced the tapes of her stays. One by one, she removed the pins from her hair and let the weight of her long curls fall wherever they might.
Placing her glass to the bedside table, she settled against the pillows with her sketchbook. She drew the harsh line of Julian’s cheekbone. All sensual playfulness gone, his mouth was a hard slit. His brows she drew as a slash. About his left eye, she feathered creases with her chalk, working for an hour before they reflected the proper indifference. Then a curve at his chin to form the faint cleft and minute brushes to represent the razor’s absence for a day.
At dusk, Althea, a serving maid, inquired on her comfort. “Madame, I’ve a tray for you,” she said through the door.
Kitty sent her off. She sketched on for hours until her despair was quiet. Studies of the rotting hull, the sign, Sam Worthing, Andrew. She sipped the water until there were no crushing lows or fleeting highs.
Finally, at the purple dawn, she finished the laudanum. Her eyelids fluttered with blissful heaviness. She rolled to her side and found peace. In nothing.
