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‘Nothing...?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think that,’ he said, rising from the bench. His fingers reached to the chain he wore around his neck at all times—the chain that held the key to the gate in front of him. He pushed open the old wooden door, framed by winter roses, and held out his hand once more for her to take.
Mason wasn’t sure she wanted to see behind the door, but she knew that if she didn’t she’d always wonder. Always want to know. She placed trembling fingers in his palm and drew strength from the warmth of his skin.
She stepped into the large round garden and stopped.
Everything stopped.
Her breath, her heart... Tall eucalyptus trees stood proudly around the circular centre, the musty smell of mint and honey seeping into her pores and soothing the aches and hurts of her heart. Wild winter roses covered the stone walls, adding little bursts of colour to the tangle of greens and brick-red that met her.
In the centre of the garden stood a tall, head-height statue of a knight. The chess piece that had brought them together, that would have been the name of their little boy. The detail of the stone carving was so real, so lifelike. She walked towards it, her feet on a stone pathway that Danyl must have taken many times over the years. She reached up to the long face of the horse, her hands cupping its firm stone cheek as if it were alive. Her soft fingers grazed the roughly hewn stone, dancing over the details in wonder.
She took a sudden breath, an inward reflection of a sob, and greedily tasted the eucalyptus scent on her tongue. Eucalyptus and a large stone knight. Part him, part her.
‘We can remember him,’ Danyl said quietly. ‘We can honour him by talking about him. By loving him still. But not by ignoring our pain and letting our grief outweigh our love. I loved him. You loved him. And he’s here with us every day and to deny that, to make it dark and painful, undermines that.’
‘You did all this?’ she asked.
‘It was the first thing I did when I came back to Ter’harn from America. I needed to...have something with me, somewhere I could go to, to remember him. To remember you.’
It was a beautiful, magical place. Vines and winter roses grew around the worn stone knight. The sun’s first rays were just beginning to poke their fingers over the horizon, painting the small garden in beautiful soft yellows, the flowers just beginning to open under its touch. Perhaps Danyl was right. What if, in all this time, she’d only swallowed her grief, stifled her love? Her love for their child, and her love for him?
‘When did you get so wise?’ she asked, tentatively tasting the soft mockery on her tongue.
‘I’ve always been wise, Mason.’
She smiled softly at the return of his...no, not arrogance. Self-assurance. Wasn’t that what she’d first loved so much abou
t him?
‘But you never gave me the chance to share this with you. You retreated. You left me.’
His softly spoken accusation hurt, knowing that it was more painful because he was right.
‘I couldn’t... I couldn’t open those gates, I couldn’t share my feelings, because I thought if I did, if I said them out loud, I’d never be able to stop. That the grief was so overwhelming, I thought it might never end. It was too much, too soon and too powerful,’ she finished, wondering if she was still talking about her grief, or had somehow begun to talk of her love for him.
‘He would have been beautiful,’ Mason said, looking up at the statue.
‘He was.’
‘But he should never have been the reason we were together.’
‘He wasn’t,’ Danyl said. ‘Not for me.’
The tears ran freely then, cascading from her cheeks, plunging into the dress and sparkling amongst the crystal beads. Each tear a regret, a sorrow, a hurt. Each one leaving her allowing her grief to morph into love, to recognise and embrace her feelings for their son. Danyl’s arms wrapped around her then, holding her while she cried. Doing the very thing she’d refused to allow herself all those years ago. To allow him to provide comfort, support and love... To find peace with the man who had once stolen her heart, the man who had now given it back to her.
CHAPTER TEN
December, present day
DANYL LED MASON through the quiet halls of the Summer Palace, something fiery burning in his lungs. He’d thought that speaking with Mason, sharing their grief and talking of the past would help. He’d thought he’d finally be rid of this...this... He searched his usually eloquent mind for a word that would cover all the emotions, all the physical feelings of what he was experiencing.
Wordlessly he showed Mason to a bathroom in the royal suites. Leaving her there and returning to the lounge, he crossed the large open-plan lounge to the bar and poured himself a whisky, damning the early hour of the day.
Usually this was his time, the time he felt he owned, rather than the hours that duty chipped away at, that responsibilities stole. But, as the sun’s early-morning rays reached out to touch the sandstone walls of the palace, it failed to calm him as it usually did.
She had cried. And for a moment he’d feared, just as she’d predicted, that she might not stop. For the first time since deciding to pursue this goal, this final resolution over the past, he’d wondered if he’d made the greatest mistake of his life. Her grief had struck against the walls he’d built around his heart, had made a mockery of his own. The tears she had shed before him shamed the ones he could only give alone.
He bit back the curse that clogged his throat. He was a fool.
