He nodded. “Ihavetried, but these last few weeks have proven at last that it’s hopeless. And yet what can I do? There is hardly any time before the wedding and my mother is still ill, perhaps more gravely than I believed given today’s collapse. To end the engagement would cause ruination and scandal to both our names. And harm my mother and all her hopes.”
He paced away from her and the touch that soothed and yet still burned. “I am trapped. I have walked into that trap willingly to soothe a much beloved mother and what will happen at the end of this road? She’ll be lost regardless?—”
He broke off as the wave of pain washed over him, more powerfully than he had ever allowed it before. He staggered to his knees in the broken remnants of the castle halls and howled the pain into the air where it floated away.
Lily was there then, down on her knees beside him, her arms coming around him, bringing his head to her shoulder as he wept with an intensity he hadn’t experienced since he was a very young child. She whispered gentle, meaningless words of comfort and protection, her hands smoothing along his back as she held him.
At last the cloud passed, the pain receded a fraction, the weight returned to his shoulders, though with less pressure than it had been before. He lifted his head and they sat in the grass, looking at each other.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She smoothed a lock of hair away from his forehead. “You shouldn’t be. This is such a hurt, George. How could you carry it alone?”
“But I shouldn’t give it to you, Lily.” He took her hand and lifted it to his lips just as she had done with his. “Notyou. It’s wretchedly unfair of me. Entirely selfish.”
“But Idounderstand it,” she said. “And I am glad to know the whole story. To realize at last why all this happened in such a rush.”
The rush. God, that was the rub, wasn’t it? If he and his mother hadn’t rushed all this for the sake of fulfilling her last wish, he wouldn’t have been in quite so deep with Alice when he met Lily at the masquerade. He would have had the opportunity to find her in his own way, to get to know her…to have the future that was now snatched from him.
Everything would have been different.
Now he was left with the reality that the only person in the world he wanted to tell his secrets, the painful or the joyful, was the woman sitting on the grass beside him. He wanted to be able to ask her to bear his pain and know it wasn’t unfair, because he would do the same for her with pride. Because he loved her. HelovedLily and it wasn’t even a surprise to him to recognize it.
He touched her cheek gently, memorizing all the gorgeous lines of her, all the warm emotions in her eyes, all the edges and curves of her. She truly was a goddess, just as she had been in those first moments he’d met her. But he didn’t want to be a god of war who lost her. He wanted to be her acolyte. To follow behind her, worshipping at her feet for the rest of his days.
She made a soft sound as his fingers dragged along her skin and he found himself leaning into her. The rest of the world fell away as she turned her face upward and their lips drew closer. Close enough that he could feel her breath.
With a gasp, she turned away and he was dragged back to reality. To all the reasons why a kiss between them now would be world breaking. He rested his forehead against her shoulder a moment, both of them breathing raggedly in the quiet.
At last, she got up and dusted off her gown. He watched her from his place on the ground a moment before he joined her on his feet.
“I am…I’m truly sorry, my lord,” she said softly, not meeting his eyes once more.
He nodded. “Thank you.”
“I won’t—I won’t say anything to anyone about what you told me,” she promised, and then she did lift her gaze to him. “But may I suggest that it might help if you weren’t the one carrying all this burden? There are so many up at that house who…wholoveyou, Lockhart. Their concern when you left them was so clear, as clear as their worry for your mother. I think all of them would be glad share in some of this burden.”
“You mean, I suppose, that the secret can burn as much as the injury,” he said.
She looked at him and for a moment there was only silence between them before she nodded. “Yes. I’ll leave you to the tower, my lord. Good day.”
“Good day,” he said, and watched her walk away, her steps as unsteady as his aching heart.
* * *
If Lockhart and his mother had told any of the other family about her illness, Lily couldn’t see evidence of it in the days that followed his confession at the tower. Everyone continued to behave normally, including Lady Pembrooke, who returned to the gathering by the next day as if nothing had happened.
Certainly, Lily didn’t think he had confided in Alice, either. Her sister would have told her if he had, for Alice hadn’t ever been very good at keeping secrets. Her open face revealed too much.
So it was, it seemed, still something he’d shared with her alone. Another private bond that only added to the weight of regrets on her shoulders. A reminder of what could never be.
As was her sister. Alice stood on the dais before a full-length mirror with her seamstress darting around her, adding the final tucks and pins for her wedding gown. Lily pushed her other thoughts away and focused instead on how beautiful her sister was. The gown was the finest silk and lace, with just hints of pink along the bodice that would have made the color in Alice’s cheeks pop if her sisterhadany color in those cheeks. At present, she didn’t. She just stared at herself in the mirror, her face drawn down in a deep frown.
Lily stepped toward her. “You do look beautiful, my love.”
That seemed to shake Alice whatever thoughts troubled her and she glanced over her shoulder at Lily with a smile. “Thank you. Did you…did you say that you brought in your gowns to have me look at?”
Lily hesitated at her sister’s question. Alice was definitely troubled if she wasn’t clear about a conversation they’d had less than a quarter hour before when Lily had first arrived in the room, dresses draped over her arm.
