AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He gave a short nod, then turned on his heel and walked away. My throat constricted to watch him leave, but this was our life. This was our world.
“Have you thought about your dress?” Frenella asked, and I wasn’t the only one who could feel the forced joviality in the change of subject.
We made small talk about the wedding while we had breakfast. Nothing decisive, just ideas for flowers and music and colour schemes and themes. Nothing was said about where or when. I guessed that had a lot to do with the mothers knowing they’d have differing opinions and we women-folk were nothing if not good at maintaining the pretence that everything was lovely and wonderful and we all got along. Not that our mothers didn’t get along, but an argument about the location and date of the wedding surely would have ruined the image.
I spent the rest of the morning just with Mum. We rugged up and went for a walk in the grounds. I’d always loved the Callahan Estate in winter. Everything covered in a blanket of snow. So clean. So full of hidden promise. Like a blank canvas upon which you could write anything.
“Are you happy, sweetheart?” Mum asked me as we sat on one of the benches, her with her arm around me and me snuggled into her side like I was still small.
I nodded against her. “Of course.”
She sat me up and made me look at her. “Are you sure?” She searched my eyes like she was really asking.
I felt the tears threaten again. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But it doesn’t matter, does it?”
Mum hugged me. “It matters, Harlow. We can’t do anything about it. There’s a difference.”
I breathed deeply in an effort to keep the tears at bay. “I know what’s expected of me and I’ll do my duty.”
“A lot is riding on this contract,” she said, as though that was an answer. “Apollo’s not that bad, though, is he?”
I wasn’t quite sure what answer she wanted me to give her now. She seemed almost prepared for any.
Was he that bad? In many ways, yes. In others, no.
He’s been swept up in our relationship changing. He’d fallen for the ruse that had become something more but just not quite enough. Yet. He was still everything our world had made him. He was still the God of Saint Benedicts, ordering his Angels to kill with as much regularity as their fathers. He still – as far as I knew – kept appointments with Magdalens, even if it was barely once a week.
And yet, thingswerechanging. He was more attentive. He was sweeter. He’d taken me off that pedestal, like I was a real person again. We were closer than we’d been in years. We talked. Freely and openly with no barriers – real or imagined – between us, except when we had sex. There were more flashes of the boy I cherished growing up, of Frenella’s little boy, the one I’d vowed to keep safe.
“We’re…closer,” I said carefully. “But we’re just not…” I sighed deeply as the tears threatened again. I looked down at my ring. “I wasn’t ready for this. We weren’t ready for this.”
“He certainly thought you were.”
“I worry that Apollo hasn’t separated the expectations for us versus the reality of us. Not really. Things are going okay between us, but this wasn’t for us. This was for you and Frenella.”
Mum nodded. “I understand that.” She took my chin and made me look at her again. “But itwasfor you as well, sweetheart. There are worse men to be bound to than Apollo Callahan. He truly cares for you, even if your relationship isn’t quite as…normal as other people’s.”
“What would Dad do if I honestly didn’t want to – couldn’t – marry Apollo?” I hedged.
“Is there someone else?”
I dropped my eyes again and shook my head.
There wasn’t. Not really. There was the dream of another life. But even then, the man I’d choose wasn’t the sort of man to give me that other life. And, if he was, then he wouldn’t be him and I might not have wanted him anymore.
“No, there isn’t. But what if there was?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, like she was actually considering it. “I don’t know that it would make a difference, unfortunately. Are you that unhappy?”
“I’m not unhappy,” I assured her. “I’m just not sure that I’m happy either. I think I could be though, with time. I think Apollo and I can be truly happy together.”
With time.
“It’s better than nothing,” Mum pointed out.
I nodded. After all, I’d spent so many years believing that my future was going to be completely miserable. Probable happiness was a huge step up from that. And I did love Apollo. No matter how much I longed for Valen, I loved Apollo. And I wasn’t opposed to our engagement in theory. It was the fact that it had felt so theatrical.
That fact and that I didn’t know what it meant for Valen and me now.
