And as for the rest of their lives?I cannot wait to see where we go from here…
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Would the two of you like to be alone?” Lady Honora asked from behind where Rose and Christopher stood.
“If you don’t mind,” Christopher said without turning around.
“I’ll just be outside if you need me…” Lady Honora was quick to hurry from the room, leaving Rose and Christopher alone.
They had been holding hands when they walked inside, but Rose gently released Christopher’s hand and took a step back so that he could be alone. He did not notice, too swept up in the moment, too fixated on what he was seeing and what it meant to him.
Finally, he is starting to accept who he is. Better yet, he is starting to realize that he should not be ashamed of where he came from, because that’s what has made him the man he is today.
As to who that man was? He was a man whom Rose was well and truly in love with. Not the same person she had married. Not the same person she had learned to live with. But a transformed version of that, one who was real, and honest, and loved her with all his heart.
“I can’t believe she kept it like this,” Christopher said, almost to himself as he continued to gaze over the room. “All this time…”
“You did not know?” Rose asked.
Christopher shook his head. “I did not think to ask. No doubt, too, my father warned her not to tell me. Likely, he would have asked that she have it destroyed.”
“He was only trying to protect you,” Rose said.
“I know it,” Christopher sighed. “And I do not blame him. I just wish…” She was standing behind him, to his right, and she saw the smile spread over his lips. “I just wish he had been alive to see me now. To understand that what he did was not the curse he seemed to think, but a blessing.”
“I am sure he knows.”
“Maybe,” he said. “It still would have been nice. Nicer still if she had been alive for long enough for him to accept what he had done, even given a chance to do as I know he would have wanted.”
“And what’s that?”
Christopher turned to look at Rose, and she was not surprised to see tears in his eyes. “To have lived with the woman he loved. To have not given a damn what people said. My father and mother were happy, I know they were… but I guess he could have been happier.”
Rose smiled and walked to Christopher, where she took his hand once more. “I suppose that just means you’re going to have to be happy for him.”
“It looks like it.”
“Better late than never, too, I can’t help but think.”
Christopher laughed, something he had been doing a lot more lately. And then he turned back to look further over the room, and Rose could see the smile reflected in his eyes, just as she could feel how happy he was for this small moment in time.
I couldn’t be happier for him, too. Even though he has changed much this past week, even though he is finally starting to heal, this right here is exactly what he needed. Proof not just of where he came from, but who he truly is. The man whom I love, as he loves me.
The room that they were in had once belonged to Christopher’s mother.
Once Christopher told Rose the truth, and once she accepted this truth, they decided to visit his aunt to tell her that Christopher was sick and tired of running from his past. He would no longer hide who he was, and he would certainly not pretend to be somebody other than who he was.
His aunt had been thrilled by the admission, at which point she revealed that for all these years, she had kept Christopher’s mother’s room as it had been.
“It felt wrong to destroy it,” she explained as she led them to the room. “Your father wanted me to, of course, but I suspected that was a request brought about by pain, rather than a need to hide what he had done.”
“Did he ever find out?” Christopher asked.
“Just before he died, I showed him,” she said with a gentle smile. “And I knew then that I had made the right decision. As I am sure that you will be.”
It was a simple room, with just a single bed, a wardrobe, and a writing desk. Far more than most maids were afforded, but Christopher’s mother was more than most maids.
And while just seeing the room that his mother had once called her own might not have brought about a visceral reaction, it was what had been kept in the room that had tears streaming down Christopher’s face.
