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“He likes you,” Freddie chuckles contentedly. “He’s extremely selective.”
“Or maybe he has good taste in company.”
While I fuss over the horse, he grabs one of the saddles from the hooks on the far wall. Saddling him up, Freddie hums quietly to himself. Once the saddle is in place, he moves on to the bridle, oblivious to the gut-wrenching pain that’s twisting inside me. It shouldn’t hurt; however, the murmur of the balcony music in his gravelly timbre makes tears clog my throat. It’s obvious he’s not doing it on purpose, that he really has listened to it so many times that it’s as etched into his subconscious as it is burnished into every one of my muscles. And they ache. They ache with a need to perform every move that was created for every note of the melody. Still, I can’t. The drive and strength behind it all is gone.
“You coming up?” Freddie asks, already sitting high in the saddle, hands resting on his thick thighs as he looks down at me.
From down here, I’m nothing but a mere mortal looking up at a god and praying that he’ll save me. That he’ll take my pain because I can’t bear it anymore. I can’t physically contain it as it cuts and cuts into my flesh and my soul.
Stepping up onto the mounting block, I give him my hand, turning to the side so that he can wrap his arm around my waist and lift me up. When I’m seated in front of him, with my back to his chest, he rests his chin on my shoulder, asking, “Do you want a blanket? I’ve hooked a couple to the back, but if you’re cold now…”
“I’m all right, Freddie.” Really all I want is for him to distract me again, to take me away from myself. If that’s even possible.
Without another question, he urges Beck forward. His arms on either side of me keep me warm as we leave the heated stables and head out into the darkening night. I’m not sure how he’s so in command of himself and the steed after our five-hour drive down from London, but the faster Beck canters and the breeze blows against us, the more I relax into him. The groan of my muscles numbs the dull ache in my chest, and the heat of his body around mine makes it feel as though I have my own personal sun at my back as we gallop through the hilly countryside.
The sea shimmers with the last lick of light as the wind picks up, stinging my cheeks and my hands as I hold on to the front of the saddle. I’ve never felt so free as I do right now. The ocean disappears as we head through woods, and although there are low-hanging branches and logs in our path, Beck seems to have it all memorised, feigning from side to side and leaping. I’m breathless by the time we reach the open lake.
It reminds me of Windermere with the wild woods to one side and overgrown fields to the other. I’ve never been here before. A sprawling Georgian manor sits close to the water with stone columns and staircases that in the silvering light make it look as haunted as I feel. It’s stupid, it really is, but the place has a lonely and melancholy aura that tugs at my tears, pulling them from me like it wants to take away my hurt.
I’ve never fallen in love with a place before. Not like this.
Beck gradually slows to a trot as we approach the house. Verdure winds around pillars and creeps up barely used staircases as Freddie jumps down and then ties Beck to one of the stone balustrades before helping me to my feet.
“Welcome to Heather Hill,” he murmurs, looking around us. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but it is home.”
There’s something terribly endearing about the way he’s gnawing on his lip. Much like the surroundings, he has a desolate shadow in his eyes, a glum weight that makes his chest heave as he drags in deep breaths.
“This place has a habit of doing this,” he exhales, thumbing away my tears. “It’s why I brought you here. You can cry all you like. You can scream. You can do anything you feel. Even if it’s a little bit crazy. You can break things and…anything really. It doesn’t matter because when we leave, it’ll all stay here, and no one will be any wiser to it.”
Unhooking the blankets from the saddle, he throws them over his shoulder before guiding me up the stone steps to the large porch that overlooks part of the lake and the grounds. The shutters on the glass-paned doors and windows are all closed, and even as we hold hands, there’s an overwhelming solitary feeling that wraps around us. And if a place could be a doppelgänger for a soul, this would be Freddie’s. It’s no wonder that I’m so enamoured with it. It comes as no surprise that I’m already begrudging when he takes me away.
“Bear with me,” he tells me, releasing my hand as he wrenches the rusty knob to an orangery.
Even with his strength, it takes a few sharp yanks and twists to get the thing to budge, and once it does, it’s almost as though the door pulls itself wide open, and an overwhelming botanical scent rushes us.
“Christ,” I gasp wondrously at the sight of all the verdure that has crept from the outside in. Ivy is spun around pillars, and blossoms cascade from intricate beams that cross beneath the moonlight. “It’s…wow…”
My gaze flashes back to Freddie’s as he stands beside me, hands clenched at his sides and the rolled-up blankets hanging from his shoulder. The tick of his jaw makes it seem as though he’s about to cry. It’s not a strange sight either because I’ve seen it before. It was the prelude to the screaming and crying, that almost indiscernible wobble of his chin as his teeth bite together, trying so hard to hold everything together.
“Do you want to scream?” The question tumbles from my lips as I grasp his fist in my hand.
Looking down his nose, he side glances at me. “Sometimes. So I’ll come here and I’ll just sit in here, or I’ll go out there.” He nods towards an open archway beyond the lily-covered pond in the middle of the vast room. It’s only at the sight of it that I pick up on the noises around us, the croaking of frogs and chirping of crickets.
Lacing our fingers together, he leads me around the side of the pond, towards the arch. The closest I’ve been to a place like this are the greenhouses at Kew Gardens. Still, this place is paradisiacal comparatively.
“Word of warning, it gets cold by the water,” Freddie remarks as we walk through the curving glass tunnel leading to another stone staircase that is half-encased in glass.
When we reach the doors and he manages to work them open with a high-pitched whinge, the cold air hits us as it blusters through the stone archways and columns. At the bottom of the staircase, the water laps at the stone steps, the sound frightfully disarming as I watch him unravel the padded picnic blanket and lay it on the ground. He doesn’t touch the other; instead, he uses it as a cushion when he lies back, patting his chest for me to join him.
I’ll never hesitate when he offers himself to me, and as I lie with my head on his chest, looking up at the canopy of stars and shrubbery above us, he tells me, “You never apologise to me, or anyone else, for how you feel. I won’t have it. Do you understand me?”
I nod even though it seems like a sin to feel so sad when he’s given me everything that I have wished for. Even with what’s happened, it feels awful of me to be so hopeless when I still have my life and I have him. My love.
“It’s never going to stop hurting, Georgina. There will always be something that reminds you of your friend. When you least expect it, someone will do or say something that will gut you because your memories of him are always going to be tinged with his blood.”
There’s a hitch to his voice that’s wet and utterly heartbreaking. I thought that my heart was shattered, but the sound of the tears in his voice undoes me. And I want to look up and see them. I want to kiss and lick them away like he does mine, yet it seems a crime to unbalance the moment.
“That last sight of him will ghost all your memories, but if there’s one thing I wish for you, it’s that you see past it. Don’t let it ruin the happy times because they’re the ones you forget first. As cruel and unjust as it is—” The crack in his voice reverberates through me. Then he sucks in a trembling breath, and I cannot hold in my cries. They’re nothing like the other tears. These come from somewhere so deep that they cut me open. I might as well be bleeding. Inhaling deeply, he hugs me tighter to his chest. “—the good times are the most fragile memories you have. And if you don’t push past the shitty stuff, eventually that’s all there is. It’s all you’ll have left.”
