AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 16
Three months later
Removing her light coat, Esther smiled in relief as she stepped back into her home. After being at the Cornish Coast, for the last three months, where she had celebrated her New Year with a handful of servants and her mother, she was happy to be home.
Life at the seaside during winter was a lovely one, and it was a vacation she would likely do again in years to come. Stepping into her room, she felt pleased to see that most of the heavy winter drapes were replaced with lighter, colourful spring ones. Her eyes dipped to her writing table and the stack of letters there.
Picking one up, she spun it to see the seal and instantly dropped it—it was from Felton. After a quick look, she realizes that they were all from him, and while she felt tempted to rip them to shreds, she took all seven and dropped them into her nightstand drawer, where his books and jewellery rested.
Divesting herself of her shawl and gloves, she forced herself to think of anything but him. Night after night, she had sobbed herself to sleep, trying—and failing—to exorcise the man from her heart. Now, she just held it to another experience in life, a love she could have had but lost.
“My Lady,” Margaret, now free from her travelling garb as well, greeted. On her hand was a tray with a steaming cup of tea, “Her Grace says its best for you to drink this.”
“Thank you, Margaret,” she looked over her shoulder to her faithful friend and reaching out for the cup. “I’m happy to be home.”
***
Later that night, Esther found herself in a position she had been months ago, when she had indulged in the titillating erotic book, and reached into her drawer and plucked out the stacks of letters. Trimming her lamp a little higher, she stacked them in the dates written under the seal and read them in that way.
The first letter was not long; Felton apologized for his harebrained scheme and that he hated how he had hurt her. Dropping that, she read the progressing letters, and with each one, he apologized for specific hurts; for getting her to trust him, forgetting her to put her faith in him, for how he had bought that erotic book as a part of his plan to get her malleable enough to seduce.
He apologized for carrying on the scheme long enough that she had found herself in love with him, and he stressed that he hated himself for not confessing it all before that; before she had given him her heart, not knowing that he was not worthy of it.
Esther dropped the letter and bit her lip—god. Why was she doing this to herself? Why had she done her best to put this man behind her and now, with these letters, had launched herself back into the torrid pools of her still present love for him.
“Please forgive me for playing upon your trust, please forgive me for thinking such an abominable act could right another wrong.”He had said.
The last letter tied her heart into strings—his handwriting was not as steady as the previous six, and he wrote how he had judged her wrongly. He wrote how he had acted over hurt pride, how he had been decisive in making her pay for her brother’s wrongs by seducing her and taking her virtue. He added how he had begun to waver in his decision when he had grown to know her, to kiss her, to love her.
Please forgive me for thinking that you were complicit with your brother to step over people and not care who you hurt. Please forgive me for thinking the worst of you when I know now that you are everything but.
Her hand trembled with the last sentence, “Over my time in the Navy, I saw women break engagements with men I worked with and how it cut them to their heart. When I arrived home, I came to know that your brother did the same to my sister. So, I took their hurt and my sister’s pain as just cause to try to right a wrong—only I used a wrong to do it. A thousand years will not remove my regret, and I hope you can find it in your heart, one that I damaged, to forgive me.”
“Please forgive me for lies, the deception, all of it.”
“Oh, Felton…” she whispered, feeling her heart throb. “Why are you doing this to me? Why can’t I let you go?”
***
As the days passed, a letter from Felton never failed to show up at her home. Some of them were just a note, wishing her well, and some were whimsical with a perfectly accurate drawing of the snowman they had made, lumps on the snowy ground and under it, a wish for them to make more. And some tugged at her heart; when he wrote how he loved her and how he knew that he would never love another.
She remembered how he had told her that he believed himself broken beyond repair and, in those moments, only wanted to reach out and touch him. It was a feeling that she carried with her while dressing for a spring ball at one of her brother’s associates.
The dress, a lovely pale peach silk with flared skirts and simple pearl jewels. Her hair, swept up in a curled up-do with a string of pearls threaded through it, matched her earrings and necklace.
“Ah,” John said from the doorway. “You’re certainly a vision, Esther.”
Smiling faintly, she reached of her thick white cashmere and draped it around her back, nestling the ends in the crook of her arms, “Thank you, John. Please, though, like I asked when you asked me to come, please don’t expect me to make more than acquaintances tonight.”
His mouth ticked down, “I wish you would.”
“Not tonight,” Esther sighed.
“Very well,” he extended his arm to her, “We’d better be going.”
***
Lady Yalewood’s ball was a curious merge of winter theme with the burgeoning spring season eating away at the ice. For every white backdrop, pots of lavender and sprigs of roses rested. The Lady had cleverly taken inspiration from the re-emerging flowers to show the guest how the winter was lessening.
