The room was largely empty but lit by giant, west-facing windows. The furniture wasn’t much to look at, but those windows were a vision. For a moment, Andrew was startled by the beauty before him. Rolling hills and verdant trees, an over-bright sunset in splashes of the brightest orange and the lightest purple.
He walked toward the window, mesmerized by those colors. His gaze caught on the tallest tree he could see. It was skinny and unstable looking, and he’d almost bet it was half dead and in danger of falling. Itbrought him back to childhood, to the version of Della he’d done nothing but lose. If their younger selves were out there right now in those fields, he’d be climbing that sickly, half-dead tree just to impress her.
As if watching it play out in front of him, Andrew continued to imagine them there. He’d be overdressed, wearing one of his father’s cravats and old boots he’d still shined. She would have a ribbon in her hair, and she’d be carrying a book around with her at all times like a beloved pet.
He would start to climb that tree, and she would gasp. He’d always treasured those gasps of surprise. Back then, he’d thought they were expressions of unexpected amazement. He thought she couldn’t believe how daring he’d been. Now, even in his own mind, he saw that version of her differently. He saw her, on the ground, looking up at him with widened eyes. He thought she might be nervous, terrified of him falling.
As he watched his younger self climb back down to safety, he remembered how she’d sigh. He’d always interpreted that as something wistful or longing. That was naive of him. Now, he could see it for what it was: relief. It was that sense of peace he always felt around her. Had she really always felt it, too?
Andrew had climbed all of those trees because she always smiled at him when he came back down to the ground. Perhaps he’d never had to impress her at all. Perhaps all he’d ever needed to do was stay on the grass by her side. If he had, maybe the past eight years would’ve been full of those never-ending smiles. None of those terrified gasps, and none of those gut-wrenching sobs he’d heard today.
As darkness began to take over, he tried to imagine the future instead of the past. He tried to forget about the possibilities of which they were robbed. Eight years’ worth of smiles and laughter and kisses and dreams. Thousands of mornings they’d both woken up alone, silently wishing for each other. All of those letters. Though they’dbeen a sacred connection between them, they seemed so shallow now. So many missives back and forth about the minutiae of their daily lives, all while they hadn’t been able to say a word of what they truly meant to each other.
With the sun, his anger faded. His heartbeat slowed as he overthought each and every one of his feelings. Once he worked through the immediate, surface-level rage, there was a deep well of grief for all of that lost time. The worst thing about grief, though, is its longevity. There’s no cure for it, no remedy for relief. There was no way to get all of those years back.
At some point, once he started counting stars, he realized he’d already missed entirely too many sunsets he could’ve spent with Della. It had all been out of their control, those years they’d spent apart. Now, though, they were sitting in the same room, looking up at the same inky black sky.
Andrew counted the stars in his field of vision one more time, just for good luck. Then he prayed that would be the last of Della’s sunsets he’d spent with her so close but still so far away.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Andrew,” Della whispered,finally.
He turned around. Far away from her still, but somehow, he felt closer than he’d ever been.
“You and I, we keep passing each other by like ships in the night. So close but so far away, and I do not think I can bear another near miss.”
Oddly, he smiled. All she could see was the flash of his teeth in the barely there light, and he was alarmingly beautiful. That grin was something alive, the way the moonlight fell over him was almost otherworldly. Almost tinted blue, he seemed like some kind of apparition. A spirit here to haunt her with dreams of nights like this she’d missed.
“I have been on many ships,” he said, rolling up onto his toes and then lowering himself back down to his heels. He was trying not to pace, Della knew. Despite his uncanny appearance, it was that familiar motion that made Della realize he was indeed real. He was here, again. “And maybe you do not see other ships when you pass by them in the night. But you hear them. You feel them. Even if you miss them, you know they have been there.”
He took a breath so deep Della thought she felt it displace the air around her, and she knew, with that sixth sense she had about him, that her life was about to change forever.
“I am trying to say that I have been devoted to you for years. And I should not have left. Even if I thought that you felt no affection for me—”
“Oh, Andrew.” Della stood up abruptly, launching to her feet from the settee in an impressive show of force. “You cannot possibly continue acting as if I do not love you.”
Andrew froze. Della watched it happen, from head to toe, as his blood turned to ice. She wondered if his heart was still beating below all that frigidity.
“Are you so surprised?” Della mused. His reaction was quite ridiculous. “I’m sure I have at least alluded to falling for you. For God’s sake, Andrew, you are the one person from my old life I wanted to keep. I wrote to you, I worried about you, I...” She was so overwhelmed by it all that her words wouldn’t come. They refused to manifest themselves, and her lungs emitted a frustrated breath instead.
All at once, though, Della realized that some things were beyond words. As she took each creaking step toward him, it was as if she were the fire needed to melt the sheet of ice he’d become. She’d watched him freeze, and right before her eyes, he was melting.
He reached for her as soon as she was close enough, and Della let out a blissful sigh. The hand against her cheek wasn’t frigid or even cool. It was the exact warmth her life had been missing for eight years. His other hand swept locks of her thick, unbound hair off of her shoulder.
Della had forgotten about that, what she looked like. With her swollen, red eyes and hair that hadn’t been brushed since they’d left the last coaching inn. She was certain she made a disastrous picture in front of him. It was not the ideal time to be declaring oneself, she realized entirely too late. The pads of his fingers traced up her neck, and all thoughts, both rational and otherwise, made a swift exit from her mind. Both his hands came to hold her face, his thumbs moving over the highpoints of her cheekbones. Della breathed in his scent. Sheleaned in close enough to feel his heartbeat against her own chest. That radiant sense of peace fell over her like the warmth of her favorite blanket, the one that lay somewhere in this house, having yet to be unpacked.
“I love you so much,” Andrew said. His lips hovered over hers. One of his hands gripped her waist and the other twined through the strands of already tangled hair at the nape of her neck.
Della kissed him. All she had to do was tilt her head up, just enough to bump her chin against his. He reacted swiftly, pulling her closer in every way that he could. With his hands, with his lips, with his heart.
She opened her mouth once she tasted the mint on his tongue, and she sank her fingers into those untamed curls. Della heard a melting sigh, and she couldn’t place who it’d come from. They were sharing breath, so she supposed it didn’t matter.
Andrew broke away from her mouth, raining hot, open-mouthed kisses across her face and down her jaw. She felt him suck on the delicate skin just below her chin. She felt the brush of his teeth and the swipe of his tongue.
Della moaned something that sounded vaguely like his name. As soon as she spoke, even one broken, unintelligible word, she realized what she hadn’t actually said. She stopped him with her hands on either side of his face. She tilted his head back so she could look at him. She’d never get tired of those kind, fathomless eyes turned so darkened and hungry. His pupils were blown, and he was still supernaturally lit by the moon.
“I love you,” she said. He needed to hear it, and she needed to say it. Not out of exasperation or a sense of urgency, but because it was the truest thing she knew. One of the most basic things she knew about herself. She would always be ill. She would always be a baroness. She would always be in love with Andrew Lockhart.
