“What’s happened to Beth?” Nora heard the panic in every one of his heaving breaths. He’d likely sprinted just as she had when he saw the physician’s cart in front of the house.
“And you,” his mother said, not answering him as her eyes flicked to him over Nora’s shoulder. “You were nowhere to be found either.” A heavy, guilty silence followed. “Beth needed you,” she addressed both of them. “Ineeded you. And you both couldn’t be bothered to be where you were supposed to be.” She wrapped Beth’s limp fingers in her own and her furious eyessettled on Nora. “It appears your headache is much improved. You should have come down to tea. Had you been there, you could have helped me catch Beth. We could have saved her from this injury.”
Nora’s eyes stung and she opened her mouth to speak, but Thomas saved her. “Mother, that is unfair.” She could feel the familiar heat of his body as he stepped closer to her back. “There is no guarantee that Nora could have done anything had she been there.”
“You have no room to speak,” the viscountess hissed at her son. “Precious time was wasted in trying to locate you at the stables. I wound up having a footman carry Beth up here and sent a stable boy to fetch Dr. Brown. Both of you have let me down today.”
Nora’s heart shattered. She’d failed her dearest friend—one person who loved her above all else. The words flayed her, but they were the truth. She should have been at tea that day, seated beside Beth as she usually was. She shouldn’t have lied to sneak out of the house. She shouldn’t have hidden her liaison with Thomas.
“I’m so sorry,” Nora sobbed, clapping her hand over her mouth as she dashed from the room.
“Nora!” Thomas called after her, but she didn’t slow. She passed her room and descended the curved staircase so quickly her feet barely touched the ground. Flinging open the heavy oak front door, she ran out into the fields. She did not register the darkening sky above as fickle Mother Nature transformed a once glorious day into a storm.
Nora should have known Thomas would find her with ease when she sat beneath the ancient oak tree beneath which she and Beth had spent many a summer afternoon reading. Aching and hollow, she wished to curl in upon herself like a beetle, but her bloody corset wouldn’t even allow her to mourn properly. Instead, she sat ramrod straight against the biting bark, caring nothing for the snags to the back panels of her gown.
“Princess?” he whispered, his boots crunching on fallen twigs and decades worth of layers of decaying leaves. A far off roll of thunder danced across the sky. Nora only stared at the earth until his boots came into view, slightly scuffed from racing after her. He crouched down and offered her his hand. “Mother never should have spoken to you that way.” Nora had no reply, so she sniffed and took his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet with little effort. “She was merely frightened, and I cannot blame her for that. People lash out when they are afraid. We will give her some time to calm herself and then we will tell her that I was called out to the fields and you…felt better after a brief nap and took some fresh air. That will explain why they couldn’t locate you in the house. What?” Nora had begun shaking her head as he spoke and continued even after he was done.
She heaved a painful, shaky sigh. “We cannot do this to Beth,” Nora sobbed, her heart breaking with each syllable. “She deserves our love and attention.”
There was a pregnant pause before Thomas asked evenly, “Are you saying you cannot share it?”
“I am saying that she is my priority—as she should be yours. It was bad enough that neither of us was there for her because we were off together, but it would kill her if something happened between us and we were unable to coexist.”
“Nothing will happen between us.”
“You cannot see the future, Thomas!” The finality of the last syllable made his mouth snap shut. “Beth has already suffered for our neglect. We should have been with her…” Nora’s voice quavered and tears began to blur her vision.
She hated herself for withdrawing from Thomas.
She hated the crater widening in her chest with every word.
Most of all, she despised the fact that Beth had been injured during her last spell because she and Thomas had been reckless. Thoughtless. Selfish.
Beth was her best friend in the world, and she needed Nora; that day had made it impeccably clear. How could Nora abandon her for a man—even a man such as Thomas…even a man she loved and had loved for years?
“I love Beth,” Thomas began, low and slow. “And I know you love her, too. It is one of the reasons I—I adore you so.” She couldn’t meet his eyes, so she watched the twitching of his fingers. She could tell he ached to reach for her and hold her as badly as she did, he. “To neglect yourself for Beth’s benefit…that would break her heart if she knew—”
“I am not neglecting myself!” Nora reared back, tears finally spilling onto her cheeks. “Loving Beth is not neglecting myself.”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Then what did you mean?”
Thomas paused before replying. “That you can love more than one person at a time. Lord knows I do.”
The ensuing silence was as weighty as a boulder dropped into a silent lake, leaving behind its ever-expanding ripples and causing an unseen shift beneath the surface.
Love.
“I will marry you one day, Nora, if I haven’t yet made myself abundantly clear many times over.” She barely heard him over the pounding pulse in her ears; her lungs forgot theirfunction. “You have one of the biggest hearts I know, so surely there is enough room in there for both of us. Isn’t there?” She hadn’t realized her tears were flowing freely until Thomas’s blunt thumb gently swiped them from her cheeks. “I know what happened frightened you—I was afraid as well. But Beth is recovering. We can be there for her together.” His hand closed over hers and squeezed in the most reassuring hold Nora had ever experienced. She closed her eyes, absorbing the delicious warmth…savoring it…filing it away in her heart.
On the tail of the elation and blinding joy of the truth that Thomas intended to take her as his wife was the sobering realization of what that would mean for Beth.
Doctors had made it clear that it was not recommended that Beth marry or bear children. Her sentence as a spinster was signed from the moment she was diagnosed with the falling sickness. Her condition precluded her from activities such as long-distance travel, riding, and even rigorous dancing. Her world had been watered down and shrunk before she even had a chance to experience it. Of course, Beth was always cheerful. She refused to allow her condition to hinder her spirit. Nora, however, knew she could not make the chasm between Beth and normalcy any wider than it already was.
And that included Nora remaining by her side, no matter the cost.
Slowly, she pulled her hand from Thomas’s…and her heart broke with each inch of space she put between them.
