“Yer a wee bit helpless aren’t ye?” she asked, peeling the carrot while I carefully sliced through my half of the onion.
“A bit, I suppose. I’m certainly not equipped for this sort of thing.”
She considered me thoughtfully, head tilted to the side. “Ye remind me of someone but I dinnae know who.”
I rather suspected the person I reminded her of was herself. But that wasn’t a conversation I was willing to have yet. “Is that a good thing?”
Her brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Not sure.”
“You’ll let me know? When you decide?”
“Aye.”
Even a simple supperof stew was far more involved than I had ever imagined, but it was astonishingly good, especially given my empty stomach. After eating, Godfrey, Miss McAllen, and I settled into the drawing room and Lock went to wherever Lock went when he was not here, with a promise to return in the morning.
To be quite honest, I was fairly certain the only reason the driver was still wandering around was because he found my situation unbearably amusing. Regardless of the reason, he was helpful and I wouldn’t be the one to send him away.
The beds were less beds and more pallets on the floor, but they were better than whatever we would find when we eventually risked the second floor. I knew that much. Someone had outfitted them with clean bed linens and lit a fire in the hearth. All things considered, it was not the most uncomfortable I’d ever been.
No sooner had I sat on the edge of my pallet bed than Miss McAllen added, “Oh, Yer Grace, a letter came for ye while ye were fussing with shovel. It was an express.”
I limped over to the table she indicated and brought it to my bed by the fire to read as the other two tucked under the covers, turning to sleep.
Far from the expected elegant swirls of Celine, the overdone flourishes of mother, or the distracted scribbles of Davina, the handwriting was an unfamiliar, sloppy, unembellished script.
I worked the paste open, carefully unfurling it.
My heart knew the writer long before my eyes dragged down the page to find Tom’s name at the bottom. There was no one else it could have been.
The handwriting was clumsy and inconsistent, and I rather suspected the product of several drinks too many.
Xander,
I hope Scotland is everything you hoped it would be and more. And another, more wretched part of me hopes that you’re miserable—both because I wish you would return and because you left me. It was so incredibly easy for you to leave me.
For a few, too brief, kisses, you gave me everything I ever wanted. Then you took it away with you. I’m left here to long for feelings I’ll never know again. It is a kind of cruelty that defies sense, strains logic.
When I’m near you, the world makes sense. But when you’re away, the world is a dull, unfeeling thing. Was it a figment of my imagination? Were you there with me, filling me with hope and lust and, dare I say it, love?
I could have loved you. Sometimes I think I always have. Late at night, I worry that I was made for you—that God took a piece of my heart and gave it to you for safekeeping. But he forgot to give me one of yours. It is the only explanation—the only thing I can think—it is why I can barely breathe in your presence. And it is the reason you are so entirely unaffected by me.
The moment we met—the moment I saw you—changed my life. And that moment was so inconsequential to you that it didn’t even spark a memory. And in the cruelest of ironies, I was blessed to know you, touch you, kiss you for a few years, weeks, minutes. Those seconds, hours, eons, will live in the scar where a piece of my heart once resided—a beautiful agony I can never—do not wish to—rid myself of. But you, your heart is intact and overfilling with mine as well—those memories will have no place inside you, no room.
You upended my life and you set it alight and all I wish to do is beg you for more. If you were here I would, on bended knee, but you are gone—away from me with no word, no hint, no hope of contacting you.
That I made an opportunity of my own does not negate your neglect. If you had but asked, I would have come with you—begged to do so. Instead, I’m left to nurse the wound in my heart, the one that will never, cannot ever close.
Though I will never send this, I suppose I must wish you well, for it is the only way for the piece of my heart to experience joy.
Your drunken lovesick fool,
Tom
For a moment, I thought the ceiling was dripping—it wouldn’t be out of character for the house—but the drops were falling from my eyes.
I thought I had done well, made the right choice. A clean break would be easier for him—for us. Three conversations and I’d set fire to the whole of his life. Leaving, hastily and unceremoniously, was best for him and his reputation.
He didn’t know—hadn’t the slightest idea—what it was when the rumors began to swirl. When the cruel looks became cruel whispers that became cruel words. It wasn't long then before those wretched words could turn to hate-filled actions. I had the shield of title and wealth. Tom had neither. His only protection was the cloak of secrecy. And rumors stalked me like a wildcat. Leaving him was the only gift I could offer him.
