“What will you say that was, my lord?” Julia asked.
“The truth. That Mr. Comerford approached me tonight, very drunk, wanting to get in touch with his daughters to apologize for his long estrangement. And that we discovered him staggering down to the river after he couldn’t reach you. We tried to stop him from acting a fool with his revolver, but it went off. Probably accidentally in his state.”
“You’ll make it appear accidental?” Arabella breathed. “That could never be believed.”
“Anything can be believed with enough power and influence. Why don’t you four go back to the house now? Go through the other side of the trail. I’ll handle it and come up later.”
Julia and Evelina each took one of Arabella’s scratched and shaking hands and started to take her up the path Reg had indicated. Silas stayed behind for a breath and then reached out his hand toward his brother. “I owe you,” he said.
To his surprise, Reggie pulled him in for a brief embrace. “Perhaps no one owes anyone anymore. Perhaps we can just start over.”
“I’d like that,” Silas said, and then turned away to let his brother manage the consequences while he tried to comfort the woman he loved.
* * *
After their return to the house, everything had become a blur. Arabella had been aware of Evelina and Julia tending to her, cleaning up her scratches and removing her torn gown to replace it with a nightrail. They’d even gotten the brambles from her hair.
Silas had been there the whole time, watching, mostly silent, sometimes helping. Evelina and Julia had stayed with her a while but eventually they’d gone to their own rooms and Silas joined her on her bed, his arms around her, his body heat the only thing keeping the chill from her bones.
The reality of what had happened was hitting now. Long waves of grief and terror that she knew would last a long time. They might fade eventually. They might soften. But they would be there.
“Would you like to try to eat?” Silas asked softly, his fingers threading through her hair gently. “You didn’t have supper or the tray Mrs. Barnaby put together.”
“I couldn’t eat,” she murmured, tracing the edge of his waistcoat with her fingertips. “I will later, I promise.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple. “I’ll hold you to that.”
She let out her breath in a shaky sigh and leaned away so she could look up at him. “When I saw you next, I thought I would be ending this between us. Not that you’d come tromping through the forest to save me.”
He stiffened. “I didn’t save you. You saved you. And we don’t have to talk about the other. Not right now. Not tonight.”
She shook her head. “But we must because we don’t know what will happen later. Tonight proved that, didn’t it?”
He sighed. “I suppose it did.”
“Do you know what I was thinking while my father was dragging me to my death?”
“No.”
“I thought of my sisters, of course. Of how devastated they’d be if they thought I killed myself. Or if I didn’t survive full stop. But there was peace there. We have said all our hearts to each other a great many times. Evelina and Julia know I love them. I know they love me.”
He smiled. “They do. It’s a wonderful thing.”
“And that’s whyyouhaunted me most. Because you and I have danced around whatever is between us for weeks. And I hated that you wouldn’t know that I…I love you.”
His eyes went wide. “You love me?”
“I do. And worse than that, I know you love me, too.”
There was a softness to his expression at that. And then he laughed, though there was little humor to it. “Worse than that? You don’t want me to love you?”
She shook her head. “I do want that. Oh God, the idea that you could love me, that you and I could fit together after so many years of never feeling like we fit at all? That’s poetic. That’s perfection. That’s everything. But that doesn’t mean it won’t cause pain. That’s why I was going to walk away.”
He let out his breath in a long sigh. “You think loving you will take away from my life.”
“It will.” She shrugged. “That’s just fact.”
“You are sunshine through clouds, Arabella Comerford. You are fizz in champagne. You are ribald laughter at a good but particularly wicked joke. You are beautiful arias sung by a master. You are a good meal after a long fast.Thoseare the things that make the world go round. They make life worth living. If you don’t think that you are worth any troubles that might come to pass because I love you, then you don’t understand love or me.”
