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Chapter Eighteen
Rose twirled herself dizzy, her heart as full of delights as her hands, where she inhaled the heady aromas of the wildflowers of her bouquet. Even the night air was like a warm embrace: a salve for her soul. It had been years since she had felt this way, so carefree and at ease with her surroundings, as though nothing bad could penetrate the woodland sentinels that guarded this meadow.
She closed her eyes and pictured herself beneath the tree in the grounds of St. Pancras when she was much younger, where the cold rain had dripped down upon her, but the canopy and the trunk of that tree had kept her safe from her father’s calls and the fear of what lay beyond. The uncertainty of a life without her mother.
You should have been buried somewhere like this, Mama… I know you would’ve loved it here. Remember how you would pick flowers for me on your way home, and when I asked where you’d found them, you’d give me a wink? I often wonder how many gardens were sparser because you wanted to bring a smile to my face.It was a memory she had not thought of in a long while, and the sudden remembrance made her stop in her whirling.
“I miss you,” she whispered upward to the glittering constellations, in the hope that her mother might be among them somewhere, watching her in her momentary bliss.
“Pardon?” Lord Langston’s voice drew her back from her reverie.
She turned slowly, her damp eyes blinking at him. “I was just saying a prayer, My Lord, for my mother.”
“Oh… then please, do not let me disturb you,” he replied quietly, folding his arms behind his back.
She sank down onto the soft grass, surrounded by the wildflowers that she would have loved to see in the day.
“I’m done with my prayer,” she said, feeling sorry for the solitary, awkward figure standing by the tree line. Even in company, she noticed a loneliness about him that seemed ingrained into his very being. Yet, with her, little by little, she had seen the blockade around him begin to come down. On the walk here, for instance, he had been more talkative than she had ever seen him, confusing her once again as to how many sides this gentleman possessed.
“Very good.” He cleared his throat. “Would you like to return to the house?”
She shook her head. “Might we stay a while longer? I feel… peaceful here.” She realized she might have overstepped her boundaries somewhat and hastened to add: “Unless you are eager to return. In which case, I will leave with you at once.”
“No, we may stay for as long as you please,” he replied, making his way over to her. “This meadow makes me feel at peace, too. There are very few places that can achieve such a feat.”
He sat down beside her, keeping a polite distance between them, and tilted his head back to look up at the stars. She observed him out of the corner of her eye, taking in the muscular cords of his throat and the swell of his Adam’s apple, which bobbed as he swallowed. She had never realized before how vulnerable and intimate a neck could be, nor how compelling. As she looked at him, she had a sudden urge to place a kiss upon his throat to see if the skin was as smooth and the muscle as firm as she thought it must be.
“If your dream was to become a designer of attire, why did you not begin upon that path while you were working at the sewing house?” he said, suppressing her urge to kiss his throat at the very moment where she had almost given in to it. “I imagine they would have been in want of someone with a fashionable eye. You might have made that dream come true, on your own, had you been voracious in your pursuit.”
Rose frowned. “It is not so easy as that, My Lord. We sewed what we were told to; there was no room for expression.”
But how could you understand that?They could not have been more different. When his mother and father had died, he had gained Earldom. When her mother had died, it had devastated her father, and they had lost everything. He had toiled as a soldier, of course, which came with its own collection of hardships, but he had never had to hunch over a workbench and sew until his eyes were half-blind with exhaustion and his fingers were cramping in pain. He had never had to wonder where his next meal might come from. If he had a dream, he could buy it or use his wealth to make it happen. She had no such luxuries, especially being a woman in this world.
“Perhaps, but you might have tried.” He kept his gaze upward, his tone oddly cold. “If you truly want something in this life, you must pursue it to the bitter end and refuse to cease until you have gained what you desire.”
“That’s simple to say when you have the means to pursue a dream like that,” she replied curtly. “I had to work so I could eat and keep a roof over my head, and if I had tried to stir the pot in any way, I might’ve been cast out.” Anger rose through her like a geyser. “You don’t understand what it is to be alone and unprotected, with no choice but to accept what you have and be grateful you aren’t in a worse situation.”
Lord Langston looked at her, aghast. “I was not insinuating that—”
She cut him off before he could finish, unable to stop the momentum of her ire. “Nor do you understand what it’s like to see a successful businessman fail in his endeavors, through no real fault of his own, and witness the aftermath of losing everything. If you were to invest in a business, and it fell to pieces, you would still have your home and your estate and your staff and your wealth, albeit slightly diminished. It’s different for those of us who are not born to fortune, and it’s different still for a woman with impossible dreams.”
Their eyes met, her breath coming in sharp gasps as she panted away the heat of her anger. She tried to read his expression, to prepare for the worst outcome of speaking so outrageously to him, but she could only see a writhing mass of emotion crossing his handsome features: shock, sadness, anger, and confusion.
Suddenly, he lunged sideways, and she saw a flash of something metal— a blade. Before she knew what was happening, his body was pressed against hers, pushing her down into the thick grass, his face so close to hers that she could see the faint flecks of gold and brown that speckled his eyes of blue and green. His warm breath brushed against her cheek as fear held her rigid.
She stared up into his eyes, only to find herself intrigued by the presence of tears that beaded in the corners of those curious eyes. One trickled silently down the side of his nose, where it paused for a moment, before dripping down onto her lip. She tasted the salt of it as it ran into her mouth, bursting with the flavor of his unknown sadness.
The hand wielding the blade brought it down past her face and plunged it into the ground beside her head. “You must never forget that you live upon a knife’s edge. It does not matter where you hail from or how many advantages others have over you. You must live your life as you want to or die trying. Otherwise, what is the use, for you will only ever be existing, not living? You will be nothing more than a hollow shell if you merely drift through your days on this Earth—a living ghost who wishes their time might come to a close and put an end to their misery.”
Rose trembled with fright, but she could not turn her eyes away from his, not even with the blade in the dirt beside her.Do you wish your time on this Earth would end so soon? What has hurt you so much that you would want that?Her heart ached for him as another tear trickled down his nose and dropped upon her skin, this time, on the apple of her cheek, where it rolled down her face as though the tear was her own.
There were so many questions she wanted to ask him, but no words would come out, only the soft hiss of her scared breath. Instead, she made the boldest move of her life and lifted her hand to his cheek. With her thumb, she brushed away the tears that fell, wishing she could understand his pain.
He flinched at her initial touch but did not reel back or pull away as she continued to stroke away his tears. Quite the opposite, in fact. His hand moved up to cradle the side of her head, his fingertips smoothing back the wayward strands of her hair, while the hand that had rested upon the blade handle moved shakily to her neck, emulating the gesture he had carried her to safety in London.
His head dipped lower as though he meant to kiss her, his lips hovering less than a breath away from her mouth. She heard him swallow and searched his eyes in hope and apprehension, for if he kissed her now, she knew everything would change. It terrified her and thrilled her in equal measure, and she wondered if she ought to lift her head to meet his slightly parted lips. Was that what he was waiting for? A sign of her permission?
You have it, Lord Langston… Lord help me, for I might come to regret it, but you have it.
