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He could see her pulse in the hollow of her elegant neck, but it didn’t appease him. He didn’t care if she was in the grip of the same emotions that buffeted him.
“No such displays are necessary,” she said, and this time, he did not attribute the sudden flush in her cheeks to the cold air outside. “I will let you see him.”
“You are too kind, Cecilia. Truly.”
“That snide tone of voice won’t do you any favors,” she retorted, her eyes flashing. “I don’t have to let you see him at all. And don’t get your hopes up. I’m not introducing you to him. Not yet. But as you say, you’ve been here a week. I expected you to be gone before morning, again. Instead, you stayed and you didn’t try to force your way into my cottage.”
“I didn’t realize I was expected to pass tests,” Pascal said icily. “Secret examinations to discover whether or not I’m a decent human being, it appears. I was unaware that was a subject for debate.”
“The woman who cares for him while I clean has them running around outside this morning, as it’s clear,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. But he knew she’d heard him just fine. “You can see him. And before you complain that it isn’t enough, you should be aware that my first instinct was to give you nothing at all.”
Pascal wasn’t sure he could trust himself to speak then, so he said nothing. He merely inclined his head toward the door, and watched as Cecilia wheeled around, then strode out. She looked stiff, her movements jerky—as if her very bones were protesting this.
It only made the dark thing in him solidify.
She kept treating him like he was that wounded soldier who could have died here, forgotten entirely. And he’d let her this whole week because that wounded soldier still lived in him. And because he’d forgotten that, and remembering it again felt like guilt.
But he wasn’t the one who had concealed a child for years. Then refused to let her see him.
He followed behind her, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his coat as she led him away from the abbey. He could feel her agitation kicking up all around her, so he stayed quiet. She was walking fast and almost ferociously as if she didn’t really want to do this. As if she was forcing herself. As if she was afraid that if she slowed down, she wouldn’t go through with it.
Pascal didn’t really care how this happened, as long as it did.
When they came to the edge of the field on the far side of Cecilia’s cottage, she stopped abruptly. There were three children out there, running in circles around a woman. They looked drunk, he thought. As heedless as puppies.
“He’s there,” Cecilia said, and nodded toward the group. “The one in the middle.”
And Pascal stood, stricken, as the two lighter-haired children seemed to fade there before him. Because all he could see was the dark-haired laughing boy between them. He didn’t notice his mother or the strange man watching them. He was too busy making circles and shouting out his joy and delight into the cold air.
But Pascal would have recognized him even without Cecilia. Because it was like looking into his own past. It was one of the few photographs he’d ever seen of himself as a child, brought to bright and happy life right there before his eyes.
It took his breath away.
He felt empty and full, and mad with it. Something slammed into him so hard he expected the mountains had come down around them, but nothing moved except the painful kick of his heart against his ribs.
My son.
Dante was sturdy. He ran fast, and joyfully.
He was like a bright light shining there on an otherwise barren field.
He was like a punch, deep into Pascal’s gut.
And for a moment Pascal just wanted…everything.
He’d spent a week here, fighting the seduction of this place. This happy, ethereal valley. The peace of it. The ease.
But he couldn’t fight the boy in front of him or the woman at his side.
And in an instant it was as if he could suddenly imagine the life he’d left behind when he’d left this place. Her pretty face the first thing he saw in the morning, if he’d stayed. The child they would have raised together. The odd jobs he might have taken, to keep them afloat here. Nothing like the life he had now. He could see it in a long, beautiful sweep of something like memory when it had never happened and couldn’t now, and it didn’t matter. He wanted it.
God, how he wanted it.
His woman and his little boy and happy, dizzy loops on a cold field.
All the riches in the world, all the power, the revenge on his own father—for a single, piercing moment all of that fell away.
And Pascal had the unsettling notion that he’d sidestepped into a different version of himself, where that fantasy was real. Where he’d never left.
Later he would come up with reasons and rationales. Right here, right now, all he wanted was as much of that everything as he could get, whatever it took.
“Cecilia,” he said, turning to look down at her, aware that there must have been some great emotion on his face. He did nothing to hide it. “You must marry me.”
