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That was the sound of her heart breaking.
He shouldered into her room and lowered her onto the bed, bloody skirts and all. She kept her eyes closed. He pulled off her half-boots and wrapped a hand around her foot, and he couldn’t ignore the blood. He knew nothing about that kind of blood. He passed right over it to her chin, to fumble with the buttons on her pelisse but she pushed his hand away.
“No.” She kept her eyes closed. “Not you. Not you.”
The words winded him like a kick in the gut. His legs almost collapsed. That’s how severely he had broken them—even now, in her greatest need, she wanted him gone.
Well, too bad for her. He was her husband and he wasn’t leaving.
“You need to get undressed,” he said. “You’ve blood…”
His voice failed him. He didn’t know what to say; it wasn’t blood and they both knew it. He tried again to unbutton her pelisse, but the buttons shrank down and away, too small and slippery for his clumsy, shaking fingers.
And again she pushed his useless hands away. This time she did look at him: stared at him with wild eyes.
“No.” Her voice was forceful now. She raised her head, pushed him away. “Not you. You can’t. You mustn’t. No.”
“Cassandra. I need to help you. Tell me what to do. Oh, sweet mercy, just tell me what to do.”
“I want my mother.” She closed her eyes, dropped her head back on the pillow. Fat tears slid out from under her eyelids and ran down her cheeks. “I want my mother.”
He wiped away her tears with his useless, shaking hands, kissed her forehead, and left the room. He took three steps, stopped, unsure. It was wrong to leave her alone. She should not be alone. But she did not want him. She wanted her mother.
And somehow Lady Charles must have heard, for a moment later, she was there.
“Cassandra,” he said to her. She came forward. Stopped. Wavered. “She’s bleeding,” he said. What a stupid word. Bleeding was what happened when you cut yourself. “Our baby. The baby is…”
“Oh, the dear child.”
She surged forward, toward her daughter’s room, and then stopped. And wavered. He saw it then: her fear. The pain of losing her son was too much; she had let it break her. So she had left her husband and her family and retreated into a world where she was free of pain. He could not judge her; he had used a different method but he had done the same.
No more.
To turn away from his own pain was to turn away from Cassandra: This was what he had discovered in Birmingham. And the one thing he knew, with every inch of his miserable, useless being, was that he would never turn away from Cassandra again.
He wrapped his hands around his mother-in-law’s upper arms, held her steady, and studied her eyes. She was fully aware and present. She looked longingly toward her bedroom, toward the place she hid from her own failures, her shame, her guilt, her grief. She knew what was happening and she couldn’t bear it either.
Well, sod her. If Cassandra had to bear it, they’d all bloody well bear it.
“She needs you,” he said. “She needs you now.”
Lady Charles might well need her drug. She might well need to hide. He understood that. But he knew now it was no solution. It felt like a solution, but it wasn’t. And if he could do nothing else for the woman he loved, he would do this.
“Hold on for a few hours,” he said. He let go of her arms, took her hand. She still wore her wedding ring. “Just a few hours. You can do that. You can do that for her because she needs it and we love her.”
“I let her down.”
“That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she needs you now. Her mother. We’ve both let her down. We will not let her down again.”
He waited. He wanted to scream,Your daughter is alone in there; she does not want me but she must not be alone. But he must be patient. Cassandra would want him to be patient. He waited. And as he waited, Lady Charles took in a deep breath. She let it out. He saw her take control of herself. Her shoulders straightened, her chin rose. She pressed her lips together and nodded rapidly.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
She brushed past him and went into the room. Cassandra was no longer alone.
“Mama?” he heard.
“I’m here, Cassandra, my dear. I’m here.”
