She took a deep breath. “Let me paint the picture for you.” Then maybe he would understand. “Let us assume that I agree. We marry beside the cove, where it is safest for me. Your family will be in attendance, as will mine, which includes the dryads, who will be hiding in the trees. We will come back here and live happily ever after. There will be a child, or two or three. The first years will not matter because I will be taking care of them, and they will grow up in the sacred grove while you spend your days at the estate.”
“I will be here every evening and many days,” Orion interrupted.
“I have no doubt that you will be. But those children will grow. The boys will be sent off to Eton as you were, but what do you think they would say about their mother?”
Orion frowned. Maybe he was beginning to understand.
“They will need to lie, or hide the truth, as we would have had to teach them that.”
“They will already know to keep secret the fact that they have a grandmother and aunts who are witches. We have all been taught that as soon as we were old enough to understand that some things were not shared outside of the family.”
“And you never let the word witch slip past your lips? Not once, in all the years that you were away at school?”
He stared at her, but did not answer, which meant that he had made a slip. “Nobody would believe it as the truth.”
“That is because anyone assumes the term was being used in a derogatory manner, believing the child was angry or did not like someone. What do they say about a mother who never leaves the grove? Or what happens when they say that their mother can never leave the estate.”
“They will think you prefer to be here until they are old enough to understand. A recluse is not so unusual.”
Nina blew out a sigh. Orion did not want to accept how impossible the situation was.
“What if we have only daughters?”
“Are you afraid they will be witches? It is likely.”
“No. I would not care if they were witches or not.”
“Then what is your concern?”
“They would be raised here, but one day they would be old enough to have a Season.” Maybe now he would understand.
“I could not accompany them, and I would miss their first dance and courtship. I would be the one waiting back here, wondering about which entertainments they were enjoying, or which gentleman they hoped would ask them to dance, which gentleman may break their heart. You will be there to see it all, but they will not have their mother. Instead, for comfort or advice they will rely on their grandmother or aunt, not me. Instead, I will have to wait until they return to hear everything.
Orion sank into a chair. “I did not consider…”
“No, you did not. And that is not all. They will marry. How will you explain that it must take place at Nightshade Manor, where I will be in attendance but just beyond the cove? What will they say when any of our children bring their spouse to meet their mother?”
Tears welled in her eyes as Nina voiced all the wonderful things that women could experience, if that is what they wished.
“I am sure they will come to visit when they can, and bring their children to visit the reclusive grandmother, who does not age. I will watch you grow older, then our children, then their children, and so forth. I will watch generations of my bloodline be born and grow old and die.”
“Generations?”
“A dryad lives as long as her tree,” she answered. “Basilia is two hundred and seventy-five years old. The others are not that much younger. I could live as long as they have, and my life will be nothing but watching generation after generation of my offspring grow old and die. While it would be a blessing to have known them, the continued loss would be heartbreaking, or I fear it would be.” She settled into the chair across from him, exhausted. “Maybe this is why the dryads shut themselves off from the world and do not interact with humans,” she said more to herself.
“Nina, I am sorry, I did not realize…”
“I know that you did not.”
“But have you considered that you will also cheat yourself by denying love and children? You said yourself that it could also be a blessing. Life is a balance of joy and pain and mediocre. You are not giving yourself a chance to experience anything.”
He still did not understand. “I would see everything, but still miss so much. I think I now understand how deep a pain must be to cause a woman to choose to be a dryad and have peace when they were not born of that world.”
He reached out and took her hand. “I will not give up. I will find an answer.”
That was her fear. “I think that it is best that you go.”
For once, he did as she asked, but Nina didn’t fool herself into thinking he wouldn’t be back, and it wasn’t as if she could hide from him. She had nowhere to go.
