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‘You’ve no idea,’ she whispered.
‘Every day for the past fifteen years I’ve wished I had no idea what you’re feeling.’ He could never escape the things he rarely talked about because the memories were too painful. Rafe lifted the blanket he held and passed it to Lise. ‘I want to tell you a story about two brothers. But before I do, you need to be warm.’
His offering didn’t seem enough. Yet she wrapped the blanket, crocheted by his grandmother, round herself. The wool would prickle against her soft skin, but at least she wouldn’t sit there shivering, uncovered.
‘I’m not an only child. I had a brother once. He was a year younger than me.’ Rafe loathed talking about him in the past tense, because he carried Carl with him every day. ‘He died in an accident when I was sixteen.’
The pain of the memory impaled him. He draped his arm over the back of the couch. His hand lay tantalisingly close to the gentle curve of Lise’s neck. She chewed on her bottom lip, but there was a flicker of recognition on her face and something else. A spark of something brighter, like hope that there might be burdens they could share.
‘Carl?’
Rafe nodded, swallowing down the emotion at hearing Lise say his name.
‘When I went to the Kings’ Academy, all the sons of the aristocracy loathed me. Our family wasn’t poor, but our money came from physical work, not exalted inheritance. I sullied their hallowed halls.’ Teachers had told his parents he was destined for bigger and better things than a farming life but all he’d learned at that school was hatred and prejudice. ‘Bullying was rife and brutal, but I taught myself how to fight back. Then my life became less about the farm and more about studying, to be better.’
To beat them all. And he had. Topping every class. Then he’d met Lance and they’d become an unassailable force. The boys at that school had only hated him more. He hadn’t cared. In his last year he’d been dux of the school, had received an outstanding achievement award from the King himself.
‘Carl did not fare as well. He was a gentle, quiet boy. I think he liked the herd better than people.’ Even Rafe had taunted him about that, something he regretted to this day. ‘The bullying was relentless. Carl didn’t understand why the boys would never be friends with him. He failed his classes, begged to be sent home. My parents removed him from the school. If only he’d remained...’
Rafe hesitated, the pain blunting only a fraction, even after all these years. He glanced a Lise, a slight frown marring her brow. She reached over and squeezed his hand, that small comfort giving him the impetus to continue.
‘It was during term time. We’d lost two of our best milkers. Carl was going to hike the mountain pastures to try and find them. Night fell, and he didn’t come home...’
‘And nights on the mountain can be treacherous, even if you’re on a well-worn path,’ Lise said. He nodded.
‘I received a call at the school that night. Was sent home to join in the search.’ Rafe dropped his head. The memory of a crumpled body at the bottom of a steep slope would haunt him for ever.
‘We found him the next morning. Carl was taken to hospital and died a few days later without regaining consciousness. The damned cows made their way home themselves.
‘I wanted to leave school. My parents wouldn’t listen. If I’d protected him from the bullying. If he’d remained a student rather than returning home. If...’ Rafe dropped his head. Closed his eyes. Trying to ignore the burn that stung the back of his nose.
‘It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.’ Lise’s voice rang out firm and clear.
He knew that now. Back then, he’d believed that had he protected his brother, Carl would have lived. The truth lay somewhere in between. Carl had not been cut out for the Kings’ Academy, bullying or no, and the way he’d loved wandering the mountain pastures there had always been a chance he’d come to grief. Though in those years afterwards Rafe had blamed himself with a savagery that had almost torn him apart. Till his parents had hauled him aside, told him they loved him and that, with his grief and rage, they feared losing not one son, but two. From that point on he’d decided he couldn’t change the past, but he could try to change the future.
He cleared his throat of the emotion choked there. ‘Like your family. A mountain pass. A rock fall. So why blame yourself? Blame Security for allowing them to travel together.’
Lise trembled, the look on her face once again so bereft he thought she’d fall apart. No more of this distance. He couldn’t stand it, not when they both needed each other. He drew her into his arms. She came to him without resistance. He held her close as she curled into his chest, her skin cold against him. He wrapped the blanket tighter round her. Soothed his hands over her quaking body.
‘Ferdinand never got his chance,’ she said. ‘He was going to be married. Sara...’
She clung to him. What could he tell her—that her brother was a serial philanderer and that her best friend had had a lucky escape to be rid of him? No. He wouldn’t hurt her any more than she already was, he wasn’t that cruel. Better that she believe the illusion for now, that her brother and his fiancée were a grand love, fated to be rather than cursed from the beginning.
‘Sara’s a young woman with her whole life ahead of her to live and love.’Like you,but he didn’t voice those words. She wouldn’t appreciate the truth of them, that, whilst the pain wouldn’t disappear, shewouldcarry on. She had to come to the realisation herself. ‘All we have are these brief moments. Sometimes to remember. Other times to forget.’
He stroked his fingers along her jaw, rewarded by her parted lips and soft exhale as he did.
‘I can help you with the forgetting,’ he murmured, threading his fingers into her hair before he could think that it might not have been wise, considering her earlier reaction. Drawn to Lise in ways that defied logical thought. It was as if, after last night, he couldn’tnottouch her. Craving to ease her pain.
She pulled her head back and looked up at him with her cool blue eyes. What did she see when she did that? It was as if they opened the door to his soul, that celestial colour. Then she shook her head. Disentangled herself from him. Yet again he had to let her go when all of him shoutedno!That what she needed was closeness, not distance.
‘There’s never any forgetting, Rafe. Not for me. Your presence will always make me remember.’ She stood, holding her back straight, her head high. The crocheted blanket slid from her shoulders. Even in a scant slip of nightwear, looking pale and fragile, she still had the bearing of a queen. Lise turned and headed to the door of the room. As she reached it, she hesitated. ‘You should have realised. That’s precisely why I married you.’
As she left the room, he knew in those moments he’d been summarily dismissed. There were undercurrents here he couldn’t understand and needed to get to the bottom of. But an unshakeable knowledge spread over him with a bone-cracking chill.
She’d married him as part of her penalty for living.
CHAPTER SEVEN
