“Is a pessimistic man. My medical studies in company with my initial fears have set his opinion in granite.” Lord Cunningham glanced down at the hardback on the stone bench. He shrugged. “I think I was so afraid that whatever plagued my father would take Violet from me too. It was easier to imagine the worst than to face the possibility she might only be cursed with debility.”
“How long?” Meg stood on legs that lacked strength. “How long have you suspected her condition was not so severe?”
“Months. Her ability to recover from the fever made me certain.”
“But you did not tell me.”
“No.”
“To what avail?”
“To the avail that if I were so unable to secure your heart … I could, in essence, secure your compassion.” He reached out, and though every part of her body wanted to shrink back, she allowed his hands to grab hers.
His thumb worked slow, repentant circles against her skin. “You understand me now. You see me clearly. In my futile attempts to show you the best of me, I have only ever shown you the worst.”
A fusion of too many emotions overtook her. At first, grief that he had deceived her so long, followed by joy because Violet no longer awaited death. Then it struck Meg with sad but potent force.
The same thing she’d always felt for him.
Pity.
“We are all cowards, my lord.” She leaned forward, hesitated, then pressed the faintest kiss to his tear-trekked cheek. “It was never me who made Penrose Abbey bright for you. No more than it was me you loved.”
“I do love—”
“No, my lord.” She shook her head, ever so slightly, as her heart pulsed with new understanding. “You loved the man I saw when I looked at you. You loved that I saw someone noble, someone I could lean on, who was strong and brave.”
His lips parted, trembled, with acknowledgment of the truth.
“Be that man,” she said before giving one last squeeze to his hands and walking away.
Everything was different here. Warm afternoon air bent the tall grasses like waves rippling across sea-green water. All the bushes Tom watered were a vibrant green.
A little overgrown, a little reckless in their shape.
But flecked with so many flowers, so many white and graceful blooms, that it didn’t matter. The painted red walls drew her closer. How strange that they should mesmerize her like this.
Without warning, a thousand vibrations marched alive inside her. They hummed as she reached the door and stepped across the white-framed threshold. “Tom?”
No one occupied the cottage room.
Like a wanderer long gone but finally come home, she stood a little hesitant and afraid, lifting her straw bonnet to a peg. Her eyes traveled the room.
The chairs Tom made himself.
She smiled.
The braided rug Mrs. Dickey had woven.
A clay vase on the table, where faded purple flowers drooped and lost petals that fell to an open Bible. She approached, touching things, sweeping her fingers over hanging copper pans and the dustless mantel and the curtains she’d sewn herself.
Heavens, she was ridiculous.
For stroking his overturned pipe on the arm of a chair. For finding the metal comb and the pinch of emotion that stuck in her throat. She looked at all of this—these pointless nothings—so lovingly it hurt.
Then she pressed to the window.
Outside, a small flock of birds soared across the hazy summer sky, and the crab apple tree waved its leaves in time to the breeze. Tom sat beneath the boughs. A large basket was nestled beside him, half filled with fruit, and a rickety wooden ladder leaned against the trunk.
