“And if I bring you more anguish and heartache than would otherwise come?” he asked, unable to keep the question buried.
Thea drew in a breath, holding it in her lungs for a long, silent moment before adding, “Whether or not you accept me, my path is set. My parents insist that I marry, and I will not do so to please them, so I will be forced to make my way in the world. I would prefer to do so with you by my side.”
Chapter 39
Thea’s thumb brushed his cheek once more, sending a shiver down his spine. “Please do not push me away. You need someone by your side as much as I do: we are not meant to traverse this world alone.”
Swallowing past the lump in his throat, Frederick shook his head. “I am managing.”
“But you aren’t thriving. You ignore your troubles and laugh them away, but they fester beneath the surface.”
Frederick straightened, frowning as he stepped away from her. “I have just destroyed my legacy and my life because of the troubles my father chose to ignore. How can you say I am following his example?”
“You manage thebusinessof it all, but you avoid everything else,” she said, setting her hands on her hips. “You hardly mourned your father in the first place, and I would wager the whole of Rensford Park that, beyond being generally furious, you have not faced how deeply this has poisoned your feelings toward him. He stole. He lied. His selfishness has destroyed you and everything you love.”
“I am well aware of all those details—”
“But you stuff them away, brushing them aside because you hate to face those dark emotions, Frederick!”
Throwing his arms wide, he raised his voice. “And what should I do about them? Cry? Rail? Scream to the heavens? What good would any of it do?”
“If you were simply letting those feelings go, I wouldn’t say a word,” said Thea, forcing herself closer. “It’s that you feel them all so deeply and never acknowledge them. They fester, rotting away your soul.”
Those words struck true, and thoughts rose unbidden, pulling themselves free of the shadowy depths of his heart, whispering of secrets that were best left buried. Of pain that could not be undone. Of all the invisible weight that rested on his shoulders.
“And you would have me taint you with my burdens? Allow my rot to infect you?” he asked, shaking his head.
“It isn’t tainting, Frederick! It is lifting together. All the cares of the world are lighter with someone by your side to help bear them up.” Thea’s eyes grew bright with unshed tears, the whole of her heart in every word, and it was like a poker shoved into the embers that burned within him, churning them so that the air flowed deep, fanning the heat and flames that had been banked for so long.
“You want to know all my dark secrets and wretched thoughts?” said Frederick, his voice rising, though whatever sense he had left fled as his heart took control, filling his mouth until he could not stop the words from flowing out. “You want to know that I abhor my father? That hearing him spoken of as though he were good and noble makes me ill and furious: he stole from the poor to fill his own coffers and left me to bear Mother’s shame and see my sister wed to a halfwit, whom she despises? Of course, I hate him!”
Thea’s bright eyes met his without flinching, watching him with silent strength as Frederick laid the whole of his heart at her feet. The words flew from his mouth in a flurry, pullingfree everything he’d stuffed far away and out of sight. The helplessness. The confusion. The agony of losing the myth he’d idolized for so much of his life.
And he couldn’t stop it as he drew ever closer to the one secret that lay buried beneath it all.
“He fled like a coward,” said Frederick, his voice trembling. “Rather than face the troubles he created, he ended his life and left me to clean the mess he left behind—and even then, he wasn’t content to allow me the peace of believing his end was natural. Oh, no. He left a note to confess his sins for his peace of mind and—once more—left me to carry that burden in silence as I lie on his behalf or risk seeing my family brought even lower.”
Frederick’s words grew frantic, his breaths heaving with each confession until it felt as though he couldn’t draw air into his lungs. “Is that what you wish to know, Thea? You wish to know all that wretched business so that you can be weighed down with it as well? Are you happier now, knowing that?”
But then her arms were around him, drawing him tight into her. Frederick’s first instinct was to pull away, but she refused to budge, and he wouldn’t use force. Fitting snugly into that spot perfectly designed for her, Thea pressed her cheek against his shoulder, her breath steady against his collar, and every muscle tensed at the feel of her there as the scent of lilacs filled his nose.
And something inside him shifted.
Frederick hardly knew how to categorize it. Nothing about his circumstances had altered one jot, and the ever-present strain that had tormented his waking and sleeping moments remained. But in the circle of her arms, the noise of the world quieted. It was a fragile calm, faint as the first glimmer of dawn on the dark horizon, but it ushered in the promise of a new day.
Sagging forward, Frederick buried his head into the crook of her neck and simply existed in that moment with her. This was a place where toils and troubles could not go, and thoughthey loomed in the shadows, waiting to pounce, they weren’t so frightening with Thea near.
That last missing piece—that lingering bit of unease that had tickled the back of his thoughts as he stood in the shop just that afternoon—slipped into place, and Frederick felt the rightness of this to his bones. A certainty so strong that he knew he could not deny it.
He could not let her go.
“Yes, you fool. I want to know it all,” she whispered into his shoulder. “You are not alone in this. You do not have to be. Not ever.”
If any restraint remained, it snapped beneath that heartfelt declaration, and Frederick did what he had longed to do for weeks and brought his lips to hers.
*
The world shifted. Thea couldn’t say how, but she was no longer merely holding Frederick; her fingers clutched at his lapels and felt the thrum of his heartbeat through the fabric as his mouth found hers, desperate and searching, as though he were starved for the very air she breathed.
