Page 73 of Atone, Adonis

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They left London the next afternoon, while the sun was shining brightly overhead. It was warm, finally, and the inside of the carriage felt cozy. The long, cold winter blast that had blanketed Dorset for far too long seemed to have finally eased. Although the melting snow left plenty of mud and muck to contend with.

Fred watched Julianna lean her temple against the windowpane as the carriage rocked steadily southward, the landscape around them changing from crowded streets and chimney stacks to rolling hills and hedgerows. Soon enough, the air would begin to smell like Dorset, that peculiar blend of earth and sea, and she would be home. He felt as if he should be at ease, especially with the small smile tilting up her lips, but he wasn’t. He was filled with worry instead.

“Fred?” Julianna asked and he hadn’t realized she’d stopped looking out the window to stare at him.

“Yes, dearheart?”

“Are you alright?”

“Of course.”

She tilted her head. “Your knee has been bouncing for the last twenty minutes.”

He looked down at his offending limb. It was bouncing. He stopped it immediately.

“Thank you,” she said, “but I’m more concerned about what has you worried than a little fidgeting. If you’d like to share it with me.”

He let his gaze sweep over the wet, brown landscape. He didn’t know exactly how to tell her the fears that had been circling in his mind. What if they arrived back in Dorset and lost this precious, lovely thing they’d found in London? What if she wasn’t free and easy any longer, laughing and smiling and eating roasted beef off his fork?

What if he was different too? Shriveled back into himself, becoming cold and hard and ugly again? He didn’t want to be the sneering, angry man anymore but he wasn’t certain he knew how to stop him, especially not here in Dorset.

She leaned forward and placed her hand on his thigh. “You can tell me, you know, whatever it is.”

“If I told you I was thinking how much I would like to go riding when we’re back in Dorset, would you believe me?”

Her dark eyes studied him for a moment and he thought she was going to refuse that patently obvious obfuscation. But instead she said, “If you asked me to, then yes I would.”

He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. “Well—I did think that—but only in passing. I’m afraid that….well, once we are back in Dorset, what if we aren’t able to—”

He stuttered to a stop. This was why he had Chester, damn it. It was too difficult to get the words out otherwise. He took a deep breath. “What if it’s different? Than it was in London, I mean.” He was making a hash of this. “What if you decide—”

To leave. That you hate me. That’s I’m not enough and never have been.

He didn’t finish the sentence but he didn’t have to. She understood him well enough. “We won’t suddenly resume fighting when we cross the Dorsetshire county line.”

Relief swept through him and he found himself leaning forward, words he couldn’t utter a moment before gushing out of his mouth now.

“But will you be happy there? I couldn’t stand it, Jules, if we returned to Dorset and you weren’t happy. With me. If you decided to leave.”

He knew in some distant part of his mind he shouldn’t say things like that, that they were too much. That they made him too vulnerable but couldn’t stop himself now that he’d started. And what’s more, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

Because despite his heart thumping frantically in his chest and the faint film of sweat he could now feel beneath his superfine wool coat, he also felt something in the realm of relief to have said what was on his mind. To have been at least a little brave.

Her smile softened into something wistful before she said, “I cannot promise you to always be happy, Fred. No one can promise that. And that’s not—it’s not what life is. No one knows that better than you and I.”

She stood and repositioned herself beside him instead of on the squab opposite and leaned against him. “But Fred, sweetheart, I am happy that you are my husband. That you are the man I get to spend the rest of my life with. Keep being that man and we will be well. I won’t leave you.”

He gathered her into his arms then and pressed his face into her neck, just as he’d done when he was making love to her. As eager now to be enveloped in her scent, to have her hair brushing his cheeks, as he had been then.

“Thank you, Jules.”

He’d never, not once in his entire life, made anyone happy. The prospect of being able to do it with Jules was nearly more than he could bear. He had to blink away a sheen of tears in his eyes that was…frankly…unconscionable.

“Will you go riding with me when the roads are better?” he asked because he needed to say something, anything else. And because he did, quite desperately, want to be back on his horse and could think of no better companion for it than his wife. “Hunter will adore you.”

“Who is Hunter?”