“I should. Given that you have known her for less than a month. But I will not. Because I have met her and come to know her myself. And I am envious, I do not mind admitting it. But, I look upon her as a sister to Emily and a daughter to me. She is an angel. A veritable angel.”
Nathan smiled. “I will not argue with you.”
“I did not come here to check on your nerves. Or cold feet, as they say. I came here to tell you something. Something that I have been carrying with me for a long time. Too long.”
Nathan turned his head in Walter’s direction, frowning. For the first time in a day and a night, his thoughts did not touch Gemma. He caught a note in Walter’s voice that he did not recognize. An uncertainty and a grief that were uncharacteristic.
“I know that you have always carried the guilt of your father’s death with you. Because you could have helped him but did not. Even though you acknowledge that he was a devil. An evil man who abused his wife and drove her to the grave. A man who deserved death.”
“It was not my place to give it. I was his flesh and blood,” Nathan said.
“ButIwas not,” Walter replied.
Nathan was taken aback. Those words landed with the sound of tombstones crashing to the ground. There was a finality to them.
“I was not,” Walter repeated. “But I saw that without your mother’s influence, he would make you into as much of a devil as he was. He would corrupt your spirit and twist you into a hateful, angry creature. He took away the most wonderful woman I have ever known. A woman I loved more than I loved my own wife. And…”
“Walter…what are you saying?” Nathan stammered.
“I substituted his medicine for a dummy. Something that would do nothing to alleviate his symptoms. I killed him.”
Nathan gaped, unable to believe what he was hearing. He heard Walter weeping and considered the words he had just heard. The admission caused him no pain because he agreed that his father was beyond redemption. He had not known that Walter had been in love with Nathan’s mother. He considered what he would have done had Gemma been in the position his mother had been. Driven to an early death by the cruelty of a monster.
He would want to kill that monster. Would consider it justice.
Nathan reached out and placed a hand on Walter’s head.
“You did what you did out of love. You saved me from the life of a tortured soul. And you have lifted a burden from my shoulders that, at times, has almost crushed me. It has driven me to seek solace in the bottom of a bottle. You have freed me from those chains. Thank you, Father.”
* * *
Kirkby Manor rose from the forest that had almost overrun it. The Stamfords had lacked the funds to save it from dereliction, at least until their malevolent plan to disinherit Gemma had come to fruition.
“I could murder them for their neglect. This place was once magnificent. They have tried to let it be forgotten because they could not live up to its example,” Gemma raged.
“Describe it to me,” Nathan asked.
They stood side by side at the entrance to Kirkby Park. Ivy-encrusted granite gate posts marked the entrance, the wrought iron gates long since removed by locals to be melted down for something useful.
“The Park is full of long grass, almost above my head. Ornamental plants like rhododendrons and hydrangeas have run wild. The bushes are twelve feet high and glorious blues and pinks.”
“That, at least, sounds delightful. Nature reclaiming its primacy,” Nathan commented.
Gemma squeezed his hand, their private signal for her agreement with him. It was one of many non-verbal cues they had developed to allow them to communicate without speaking. Touches here and there, even kisses. Since their marriage, a few months before, they had grown closer than Gemma had ever believed two people could be. Nathan’s lack of sight meant that he saw much by other means, making him a more perceptive husband and a more responsive lover.
Gemma could feel the bond between them, even when they were apart. It was like an invisible thread tying them together.
“The house looks as though every piece of glass is broken. Ivy is getting in through the window frames and some of the roofs have fallen in. I think there may have been a fire at some point.”
A hand at the small of her back, a gentle rub, and a shoulder leaning on hers briefly. The contact conveyed strength, which she needed desperately. She turned to brush a kiss against his cheek. Where a kiss on the cheek could be platonic or innocent, she made it loving and laced with passion, letting her lips linger on his skin as though tasting him. At that moment, the third person present made themselves known.
Their unborn child kicked her. She gasped, putting a hand to her stomach, the gasp becoming a laugh of delight.
“He is becoming quite strong,” she said.
“Or she,” Nathan replied.
“No, he is a boy,” Gemma asserted. “The future Earl of Kirkby and Duke of Hamilton. The first to hold both titles. And we will raise him to understand how important those titles are, how much power it puts in his hands. Power for good.”
They resumed walking, holding hands. Nathan did not carry his cane nor did he walk with his hand on his wife’s shoulder. He trusted her to see the path ahead.
It allowed him to walk freely, as a sighted man, while holding Gemma’s hand. She would warn him of obstacles in his way, guide him around danger, and through her, he would experience all of the beauty of the wide world that he had shut himself away from for too long.
