Blue Waltz (36 page)

At length, she looked into Stephen's eyes and found her pain reflected in their depths. For a moment she drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes, before she opened them again and whispered, "Papa's not coming back."

Stephen stared at her, his hard, dark features etched with pain as the bells of Arlington Street Church tolled the hour in the distance. "No, my love," he said, his voice strained, his tears mixing with the rain. "Your father's not coming back."

CHAPTER 27

It seemed a horrible replay of the night Stephen had found Belle in the park lying in the mud all those months ago. But tonight he carried her securely in his arms, his shoulder healed—because of her. So many things had changed in his life—all because of her. Sweet Belle. An angel with broken wings, who could no longer fly.

Unlike the last time, Stephen vowed there would be no improprieties. In some strange way it was as if he was being given a second chance to right his wrongs of the night he had acted without honor. His footsteps faltered in the snow when he remembered the party that raged on in her home. But the back door would do fine, and the back set of stairs would allow him to carry the wet and delirious Belle up to her room without being seen.

He banged his boot against the door at the back of the house. Hastings pulled it open in an instant.

"Good God, what's wrong?" the butler demanded.

"We'll need hot water and towels, and a fire."

Stephen didn't hand her away as he had before. He carried her up the servants' staircase, bypassing the ballroom, up to the top floor and her bed. But this time, as the servants scurried about, building up the banked fire and removing her clothes, Stephen not only stepped outside, but he sent Hastings to find a doctor.

Stephen paced the hallway as the doctor and servants saved Belle from the ravages of the cold. If only they

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could save her from the ravages of her past, he thought, his heavy footsteps echoing in the hall.

The music was still playing below when the doctor came out of Belle's room and joined Stephen in the hallway. "She's just wet and tired. She'll be fine."

"Is she awake?"

"Well, no. But don't worry, she's just resting."

Stephen went to her side. She lay beneath the bed covers. He sat next to her for hours, watching the shadows cast by the fireplace leap across her face. Eventually the music died down, and the guests departed, leaving the house with an eerie quiet, but Belle neither opened her eyes nor reached out to take his hand.

Finally, Stephen went home to change, his clothes still damp. When he returned, Belle lay much as he had left her, and his concern grew to worry.

The doctor returned in the morning. His brow furrowed as he felt her forehead and checked her pulse. Maeve stood next to Hastings in the room, worry creasing her brow.

"There's no reason for her not to be waking up," the doctor said, scratching his head. "Don't understand it. No, don't understand it at all."

Maeve whimpered. Hastings wrapped his arm around her shoulders and murmured something in her ear.

It was much the same for days—Belle never waking, Stephen growing more desperate and frantic by the moment.

"I love you, Belle. More than I dreamed possible." He held her hand to his lips. "Wake up and let me show you how much."

For a second he thought she stirred. But when he looked closer, her eyes were still closed, proving him wrong.

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She had told him he had saved her before, if only he could do it again. But how?

It was early on the fifth day when the bedroom door fell back on its hinges. Stephen turned to find Adam standing in the doorway, eyes bloodshot, hair disheveled, clothes badly rumpled, as if he had slept in them for weeks.

The brothers' eyes met and held, then Adam grumbled and looked away. He took unsteady steps forward, his gaze trained on Belle.

"Belle," Adam murmured, sitting on the side of the bed. "Don't do it."

"Do what?" Stephen demanded, his heart leaping into his throat.

Adam cast his brother a scathing look of disdain. "She's giving up."

"What?"

"She has no will to survive."

"How do you know that?" he snapped, his heart lodged. But even he knew the answer. The affinity they shared. Jealousy reared its ugly head.

Adam seemed to sober a bit. "I know it because I have eyes in my head, nothing special," he replied, his tone cold. "I have eyes in my head that allow me to see what people really are."

"Meaning?" Stephen asked, his body stiff, his voice ominous.

But Adam didn't seem to care. "You see what you want to see whether it's there or not. You think you're like Father, but you're not. I may have been young when he died, but I remember him, better than you obviously. He was kind and good, and not judgmental as you are. He didn't expect everyone around him to fit into a mold. He loved people for who they are. Just as he loved Mama."

Stephen's nostrils flared and his head jerked back as he remembered the times he had thought of his mother as being like Belle. He wanted to turn away, but his brother's words held him captive.

"She was kind and good," Adam continued, his eyes closed as if he could see her in his mind. "But she was outrageous. Everyone said so."

"How could you possibly know such a thing?!"

"Because she told me." Adam's voice softened. "She laughed and loved it. And so did Father."

As much as Stephen wanted to deny Adam's words, he couldn't. Until just recently, he had forgotten so much. So hard had he concentrated on being in control that he had nearly forgotten the fun and the laughter. But how to turn back—how to undo all that he had done?

Still, the answer eluded him.

Adam would know what to do, he thought unexpectedly.

The jealousy grew, but he tamped it down with effort. Just now, there was no room for jealousy.

"You said you wouldn't hurt Belle," Adam sneered. "Look at her. I saw her dash out of the house into the rain with you behind her. I don't know what happened, but I understand enough about you to know that you hurt her deeply, and now she's giving up."

What could he say? Stephen wondered. Could he explain? Blame her father? No. Stephen knew that for very different reasons, he was as guilty as Belle's father. "No matter what you think, I love her. You might share an affinity with Belle, but she is my life." His eyes implored his brother to believe. "And I'll save her, Adam. I will."

Adam's sneer turned to disdain, then he turned on

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his heel and left. Stephen watched him go. He started to pace the room, feeling impotent despair over the events he had brought to pass. His mind circled as he tried to come up with answers.

He spoke to her every day as if she were awake, as if she could actually hear him. Dropping down beside Belle, he took her hand in his, kneeling at her side. "How, Belle? How can I make things right?"

Her closed eyes and silence seared him. He had driven a woman whom he loved to the brink of madness, and his brother to the brink of despair, all because he had tried to control everything around him.

He pressed the back of her hand to his cheek. "Please, Belle. You must survive."

Then suddenly he remembered something she had said to him long ago.

I know things about you, and I don't know why.

She had said that to him. Not to Adam. To him. At the time, he thought her foolish. But now he had to believe that they did share a bond, different from what she shared with Adam, but a bond—a bond that could help him save her.

Suddenly he understood the affinity Belle and Adam shared. There had never been a reason for him to be jealous. It was not a lover's affinity that they shared. Finding Adam in the arm's of another man should have dispelled that notion long ago. He should have realized that they shared a different kind of bond, a bond between two people who were two of a kind, two people whose lives, for reasons beyond their control, would never conform to society's standards. Stephen realized then, as well, that people who stand apart from the crowd are not necessarily insane or depraved.

Like his mother.

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Whom his father loved with all his heart.

Understanding struck hard and unyielding. But how, he still wondered, after this realization, could he right his grievous wrongs? Then it came to him in a blaze of light.

"I love you, Belle," he stated with conviction. "And I'm not going to let you give up."

Then he was gone, taking the stairs two at a time to the ground floor. Stephen raced out the front door and to his own house. He found Adam in the study, the decanter of brandy empty by his side, a gun on the table before him. A chill ran down Stephen's spine at the sight.

"I'd like to think the gun is there for decoration," Stephen said, paralyzed in the doorway.

Adam's head jerked back, and Stephen could tell he was trying to focus.

"Ah, brother," Adam said. "Decoration? In the end, perhaps. For now, however, I'm trying to gain the courage to kill myself."

Stephen stepped forward. "I've heard that it doesn't take courage to kill one's self. But it takes courage to live in a world where there are people like me who think they know best, judgmental people who want everyone to live the way they do to prove that their way is correct." He paused. "A better man doesn't need proof. A better man loves unconditionally." His throat ached. "I'd like to be a better man."

Adam looked at his brother, his eyes still trying to focus, but he didn't speak.

"I never told Mother that I loved her," Stephen said. "I won't make the same mistake with you."

"Ah, Stephen," Adam groaned, with a slow shake of his head. "You didn't make a mistake with Mama. She loved you."

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Stephen's throat tightened. "But she knew that I chose Father over her. She didn't know that I loved her."

Adam sighed. "Oh, Stephen. Of course she knew." His head dropped back against the chair, his eyes closed in memory. "Don't you think there were times when she wished I was more like Father? But that didn't mean she didn't love me. She loved us both, Stephen, for different reasons, but equally."

Stephen looked at his brother, his throat tight. "Can you ever forgive me?"

Tears surfaced in Adam's eyes.

Stephen dropped down onto his knee. "I'm sorry, Adam. I was wrong to treat you as I have all these years. Tell me what I can do, what I can say to make things right."

A moment passed, then Adam took a deep breath. "You already have," he said, offering his brother a slight smile.

Reaching out, Stephen grabbed Adam's shoulder. "Thank you."

"Enough of this. You need to get back to Belle."

Stephen pushed up and headed for the door, but stopped when Adam spoke again.

"Save her, Stephen."

Without turning back, Stephen pressed his eyes closed before he nodded his head. "I will."

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The day was trying to brighten, the sun attempting to shine through the billowing clouds in the sky as Stephen slipped into the belfry of Arlington Street Church. He climbed the stairs, up and around, higher and higher, checking his pocket watch every few steps. At the top he looked out over Boston, and while he stood there, the clouds finally parted and the sun came through. He turned toward the Public Gardens and the houses that stood so near, and the room at the top of one on Arlington Street where Belle lay.

He waited, hoping and praying as he had not done in years. She had to hear. And just when his watch showed eighteen minutes after three, he pulled on the thick bell rope as hard as his ample strength would allow.

CHAPTER 28

Belle stirred at the sound of the bells. She had woken before, off and on, but had never gained the energy to force herself out of bed.

Papa.

The memory of the week before came crashing back like an elevator falling back to earth.

She turned her head to the side, fighting back tears. Taking a deep breath, she tried to assimilate how her life had changed. Other memories, ones she had held securely at bay for so many years now, rushed over her. Her mother, her father, the farmer. Her leg. The gaping hole in the sequence of her life was finally filled.

She thought of the years she had lived with Farmer Braxton before he died. She didn't know if he had ever felt any guilt over what he had done. They had lived together for twelve long years, rarely speaking, she spending most of her time alone in the room with no windows. No friends, no one to talk to. Talking to herself instead, telling herself over and over again that her father would return for her. If she wasn't saying the words out loud, she was thinking them. She realized now that she had come to a point where fact and fiction had blurred. She had come to believe her father would return. She had come to depend on it, starting each day with the certainty that this day would be the one, ending each day with the hope that tomorrow would bring him back.

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But now the belief, and as a result, the hope—all hope—was gone, destroyed by the very man she had waited for all this time.

Papa.

Her foundation had crumbled, forcing her to accept the fact that her father had walked out of the farmyard to start a new life.

And another daughter had danced in his arms.

Belle pressed her eyes closed, searching for oblivion. But still the bells tolled in the distance, demanding her attention. When finally she opened her eyes and turned her head, the first thing she saw was the grandfather clock against the wall.

Eighteen minutes after three.

Her heart leaped in her chest.

"If you 're not stodgy, then prove it by climbing the belfry at Arlington Street Church and ringing the bells."

At eighteen minutes after three.

It seemed a lifetime ago that she had spoken those words to Stephen. Perhaps it was another life where cakes looked like birds and crystal chandeliers looked like teardrops. A time before she knew her father wasn't coming home.