Page 180 of Immortal Rose

“Finally, after I’d had a bout of illness, that stubbornness broke. She contacted Uncle Giles. The response came sooner than either of us had expected,” Hugh said, his voice going softer, fainter. “Because it wasn’t from him at all. Glenmoor had intercepted her message and learned where we were hiding.”

A heaviness settled over me as I realized where the story was headed.

“She brought it in from where it had been left at the door,” he whispered. “I was across the room, reading, as she took the letter from its wax wrapping. She threw it into the fire at once, but it was too late. I caught only a trace of that perfume—that bloody perfume—” He crushed his fist to his mouth, shuddering. “Her pain . . . my God. Nothing I did stopped it. I couldn’t help her. She pushed me outside and locked the door. I pounded and pounded on it until my hands bled, begging her to let me back in. I watched her through the window. I saw her take the knife from the kitchen and . . .”

His voice was hoarse with emotion, with unspent tears.

“I couldn’t stop her. By the time I got the window open and reached her, she had already done it. I was too late.”

“My God,” I said. It was the only thing I could say. “My God, Hugh.”

Of all the stories I had imagined, of all the tales the scandal sheets had spun, the truth was so much darker, so much more horrific, than I could have ever imagined.

“I lay down beside her on the floor,” he said tonelessly. “I lay there for hours with her, until a priest rode past on his way to his new parish. He and his wife helped me bury her and brought me with them to the nearby village, Elmsberry.”

He paused, swallowing roughly.

“They were able to contact Uncle Giles, who came to fetch me himself,” he said, with a shuddering breath. “Later, we returned for Mother’s body, so she could be interred in the family mausoleum, and I found the wax wrappings where she had dropped them. Scattered around them were withered white rose petals streaked with pink—they’d been sealed inside of the letter. From the bush Father had planted for her at the manor the day I was born.”

He finally looked at me then, his eyes desperate.

“You were right, of course,” Hugh said. “It is a matter of pride. My world ended that day in the snow. I am still there, at the window. Unable to help her. Unable to do anything but watch as everything was taken from me. There is no end to the hate I feel for him.”

“I’m not sure you hate him enough, frankly,” I said.

His soft laugh faded all too quickly. “If I walk away, he will have won. I won’t be able to save the King, or protect Eleanor, or clear your name.”

“I don’t want you to walk away,” I told him. “You are not the little boy in the snow anymore. No matter how many years were lost to that pain and darkness, you have still built the beautiful life you deserve.”

“I can’t risk anyone else,” he choked out. “The thought of anyone else dying for me is unbearable.”

I drew his hand to my chest, flattening his palm over my heart. “You are alive. I am alive. Your mother’s only regret in all of this would have been leaving you.”

He reached into the collar of his shirt, mussing the crisp white cravat to yank a thin leather cord out from beneath it. I caught a glimpse of the silver pendant, three linked silver knots, before he yanked it off him and shoved it into his pocket.

His essence overtook me, drowning me in its comforting depths. I gasped, my hold on his hand tightening as the full depth of his anger, his pain, and his fear swirled around me like ravening ghosts.

But there was that deep sweetness of love, too. Vanilla—smoky, heavily dusted with the cinnamon of pure, unbridled desire.

It stripped away my defenses, leaving me utterly at the mercy of my feelings. But there was clarity in that intensity, in that place where his truth met mine, because I now had a name for the storm raging in me, and I had no reason to be afraid of it.

Mama’s young face hovered at the edge of my vision, aglow with firelight. She had been younger than me when she had lost her heart to Greystone, younger than me when she had married the wrong man. For years, I’d lived in terror of making those same mistakes, of losing my heart to someone who would crush it in his fist and cage me.

But that was not this man, and I was not Mama. This was my life.

“After she died, I vowed I would never let myself be brought back to that state of fear and uncertainty,” Hugh said. “But now I live it every day; the sight of you in the morning brings the sweetest joy of my life and the worst dread. Speaking to you fills me with equal parts longing and despair. Kissing you is the purest form of pleasure and torment I know. Because anything might happen to you, and I might not be able to prevent it. It would rip the heart from my chest. I can hardly stand it.” He shook his head, his jaw setting with anger again. “I’m sorry. That was too much to burden you with.”

“It’s not a burden to understand you,” I said.

He released a shaky breath, pressing his free hand to his face.

“I feel the same way,” I told him. “That uncertainty is love.”

He stilled at the word, as if afraid he had misheard me.

“It’s only strengthened by choosing to face it,” I continued. “You can’t control my fate any more than you can control who you love.”

“I don’t accept that,” he said. His expression was surly enough that it squeezed a laugh from me.