The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide (38 page)

“I would not have wished you be the instrument of her death, of course. But she achieved two great things before she died. The first is that she defended herself, something she was not able to do when she was thirteen years old. And the second is that she spoke. And when she spoke, she acknowledged your love for her. I think both of those things were very important to Rosy.”

A lump in his throat made it hard for Ewan to speak immediately. “Yes,” he said finally. “I see what you mean.”

“And now,” the monk continued, smiling at Ewan, “you must let her go. And you must forgive yourself.”

Ewan spun away and stared out the window at the darkening evening. “I think I do,” he said. “I feel . . . forgiven.”

“Good.” Armailhac waited, and Ewan knew why.

“You said once that there is no unforgivable sin,” he said, leaning his arm against the window and bracing his forehead against it.

“Yes.”

Ewan felt as if he were poised midway between the warm room with the glowing fire and the frigid, wintry outdoors. “I miss my wife,” he said, his voice stifled.

“You love her,” the priest said, his voice allowing no compromise.

“Love is not always enough,” Ewan tossed back at him. “God may forgive all sins, but humans are not so generous. Even if—” He took a breath. “Even if I begged her to come back to me, she would never be able to forgive me, inside, for not saving her.”

“But she saved herself,” Father Armailhac said.

“It is
I
who should have saved her. Apparently that man touched her . . . he
handled
her. I didn’t know; I didn’t see it happen. I didn’t help.” His voice shook with the rage he felt. If only he hadn’t already killed Nisbit, he could search him out and kill him slowly now.

“What were you doing while this happened to Annabel?”

He tried to think. All he’d thought about for months had been what Nisbit might have done to Annabel while he didn’t notice—what the man could have done that would scar her so quickly and so devastatingly. “I was talking to Black Haggis,” he said haltingly.

“For how long?”

“It didn’t seem long to me . . . I don’t know!”

“Tell me what you remember.”

So Ewan did. It was emblazoned in his memory, from the moment he entered the cottage, to the moment he shot Nisbit.

“That’s a matter of two minutes,” Armailhac said. “Two minutes, perhaps three. There was no time for Nisbit to do more than fumble at Annabel. And she saved herself from his groping, did she not?”

“She shouldn’t have had to,” Ewan said, swallowing audibly. “Her husband was there, and he didn’t even notice.”

“And you think that Annabel will never forgive you for focusing on Black Haggis, the man who, after all, was threatening both your lives?”

“How could she? You didn’t see her, Father. I came up behind her and she screamed. There was such terror in her scream . . . she slept curled up, as if she were fearful in her sleep.” His voice died in his throat. “What have I done to her?”

“You have once again underestimated love,” Father Armailhac said. “When your bullet killed Rosy, you decided that God’s mercy did not apply to you. That He no longer loved you. And then when you failed Annabel, you again decided that mercy was not a possibility. In essence, that Annabel did not love you.”

“If she loved me, she loves me no longer,” Ewan said.

“Did she tell you that?”

He was silent. He remembered exactly what Annabel had said. She had begged him not to shut her out. She had said he chose his principles over her, that he wouldn’t
have defended her if she hadn’t given him the pistol. And she had said that she loved him.

“No,” he said finally. “She said that she loved me, but that I only felt desire for her, and that was why I didn’t defend her. And she said my lack of love was why I wanted her to leave.”

“She was wrong,” the monk said serenely. “You love your wife very much, Ewan. Desire is a gift, as love is, and the two of you are lucky enough to experience both at the same time. But I think you decided at a very early age that the world would show you no mercy. I would guess this happened in response to your parents’ death.”

Ewan clenched his jaw.

“Which is odd,” Father Armailhac continued, meditatively, “because you were the one shown mercy. Your father saved you, out of love. And he did not save himself, out of that same love. You have been given tremendous love, Ewan Poley. You must stop discounting it.”

Ewan pressed his forehead hard against the cold glass. “She doesn’t want to see me. She thinks I only desire her.”

“Then you have a challenge before you,” the monk said, putting down his empty glass and rising. “I suggest you take it on tomorrow.”

Father Armailhac left without another word, with just a touch on Ewan’s shoulder that was enough to unman him.

The hot, empty grief he felt was his own doing, his own fault. He had taken his wife’s love and thrown it away as if it were worthless. He had undervalued Annabel’s
loving, generous nature in assuming that she would never forgive him. He had thrown away a pearl of great price, merely to hang on to a pebble.

He pushed himself away from the window and turned to ring for Mac.

If he failed, he failed.

He didn’t let himself imagine success.

It was midway through November and they were having an early snowstorm. Annabel lay on the chaise longue in her bedchamber, lazily looking out the window. At first the snow had danced from the sky, but now it was starting to hurtle down, darkening the window and weighing down the vines that climbed around her windows.

Perhaps it was time for a nap . . . Annabel curled on her side, her hand caressing her stomach.

She had felt her baby moving inside her, quickening into life as they called it. At the moment the babe felt as if it were dancing with the snowflakes. Smiling, Annabel pulled a light cover over herself and drifted off to sleep.

Ewan had a brief conversation with the butler and found himself in Lucius Felton’s study. Felton looked at him with his steady, calm eyes, showing no sign of resentment or anger. He put down his quill precisely on its stand. “I would gather that you’ve come to speak to Annabel.”

“Yes.” Ewan said. “I would like to see my wife.”

Felton looked at him for a moment longer. “She may be resting. I believe she is in her chambers. Second door on the right, top of the stairs.”

“Thank you,” Ewan said, his heart thumping so loudly that he scarcely heard Felton. Ewan closed the door behind him and ran up the stairs. Did Felton say second on the left? No, second on the right. Resting? Why would she be resting?

He paused outside the door and raked a few wet flakes of snow from his hair. It wasn’t too late—he could turn . . .

It was too late. It had been too late for him the moment that he saw Annabel surveying those great statues of an Egyptian god, looking so puzzled, intelligent, and altogether delectable. He reached out and turned the doorknob.

She was sleeping. She was lying on her side, facing him, her cheek resting peacefully on her hand. Her hair was bundled in a shining heap of curls on top of her head. She looked rosy . . . lovely.

He swallowed. She looked well. He had been imagining her wracked with grief and tense with horror, as she had been when he last saw her.

Now a million thoughts flooded his mind at once.

Perhaps she had found a lover, someone who made her look so happy and cared for. Perhaps the man was in an adjoining room. Perhaps the man just left her.

Ewan had seen her look so contented and happy, but only after they had made love.

His heart froze at the horror of it. What had he been thinking, staying in Scotland for so long? Even as he watched, her mouth curved into a smile that he’d seen only a few times. He looked away, as if he were desecrating her privacy.

Annabel was dreaming of Ewan. They were dancing around an empty ballroom, and music was playing, although there were no musicians to be seen. He was teasing her, asking her questions.

“What do you like for breakfast?” he asked.

And then, when she told him toast, he shook his head. “Not honest enough. You can’t have a kiss.”

“Do you like stewed mushrooms?”

But when she said no, he shook his head and said she was wrong, she loved stewed mushrooms and she ate them every day.

And he wouldn’t give her a kiss.

He was laughing at her, those beautiful green-flecked eyes were laughing, and so she pulled herself from his hands and stood in the middle of the empty ballroom, laughing back at him.

Then she put her hands on her breasts and smiled, a knife-edged, invitation of a smile. “What do I like best in bed?” she asked.

And when he said—

But she was losing the dream, just when she was finally going to be able to kiss him, her husband, her Ewan.

She opened her eyes and the familiar sense of aching loss filled her heart. Then she frowned.

Across her bedroom she could see a pair of legs. Male legs wearing wet boots. A man was in her room! It was the thought of a second, of an instant. Her hands shot into the air, flailing, and she opened her mouth to scream as loudly as she could—

And he was there. On his knees next to her. It was Ewan. His eyes weren’t laughing as they had in her dream. They were somber, panicked.

“Oh God, sweetheart,” he said, “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Forgive me.”

She stared at him, slowly coming back to herself. “What are you doing here?” she finally asked, whispering it.

Ewan couldn’t remember.

He got hold of her hands somehow and he brought them to his mouth.

And then finally, looking at her almond-shaped eyes, he remembered. “I came to ask you to forgive me,” he said hoarsely.

“Oh.” Her voice sounded flat and unforgiving to him.

“I can’t forgive myself unless you forgive me. But if you can’t forgive me, I understand—I understand, Annabel. Because I can’t forgive myself, and I can’t forget. And”—his hands tightened—“merely the way you screamed when I entered shows me that you’ll never be able to forgive me for what I did. I’ll just—”

She blinked at him. “Ewan, what are you talking about?”

“I didn’t defend you,” he said, the raw ache of it sounding in his voice. “I let that man touch you and I didn’t rip him to pieces with my bare hands. But, oh God, Annabel, if I had seen it, I would have. I have no principles where someone like that is concerned, I swear it.”

“Ewan—”

But he swept on, all the fear and self-loathing in his heart coming to an articulate point. “You’ll likely never feel safe around me again. But if you could just forgive me, Annabel, that’s all I ask.” And then at her silence, “
Please
.”

That was all he could do. Beg. Silently he held on to her hands, hoping out of the darkness of his soul that she still loved him a little bit.

Annabel was still wondering if she was dreaming.

It felt like a dream, to have Ewan before her, to hear the tender anguish in his voice, to have him begging her to forgive him.

“Why did you come?” she whispered.

“I said—”

But she shook her head. “
Why
did you come here?”

Ewan swallowed hard. He wasn’t ready to answer that question.

No: he’d come all the way from Scotland to answer just that question.

He clung to her hands, searching her eyes until he read the truth in her eyes. She didn’t care about forgiveness; she only cared about one thing.

“Because I’m a fool,” he said, his voice harsh with the truth of it. “I love you, Annabel. I know you think I don’t. But I do. And yet when the worst happened, I threw you away. Because I don’t—” He swallowed and held her hands even tighter. “I don’t know how to love someone.”

There was a glimmer of tears in her eyes, and he knew that she understood. He would never be the husband whom she wanted. He’d failed her, and he’d failed their love.

“I can see that you—” He broke off. His voice grated with the pain of it. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Annabel. I’m no good at loving, and I deserted you when you most needed me. But I love you, and I always will.”

“People who love each other,” Annabel said, “don’t leave.”

“I lost my mind,” Ewan said simply. “I don’t have any excuses.”

“I’m the one who left.”

Ewan’s heart leapt. Was she smiling through her tears?

“I’m no better at being married than you are,” she said in an aching whisper. “I’ve kept thinking for the last month that I should have stayed there. I should have fought to be with you, locked you in a room with me and thrown the key out the window. Screamed at you until you remembered we were married.”

Ewan couldn’t bring himself to smile. “But would you ever feel the same about me?” he said, asking the question that he’d answered negatively so many times in the middle of the night. “I didn’t save you from those men, I—”

“Do you know why I love kissing you?” she whispered, her eyes searching his.

He shook his head. A tiny gleam of hope shone in his heart. She hadn’t put her feelings in the past tense.

“Because I always feel safe with your arms around me. Always.”

He swallowed.

“And do you know why I close my eyes when you make love to me?”

“No,” he said hoarsely.

“Because I am safe with you . . . I don’t need to
see
what happens. I can simply be . . . simply feel.”

He ran a hand over her cheek. “Do you . . . do you forgive me, Annabel?”

“There is something that I can’t forgive you for.”

His heart stopped. It had all been too easy, too much of a gift. He couldn’t bring himself to ask.

“You haven’t kissed me in months,” she said, her voice an aching whisper. “I haven’t felt safe in months.”

Slowly, slowly he bent his head to hers and their lips touched. It was like all their kisses: the sweetness was there, but the wildness too, the sense that they had only just stopped kissing and now they were continuing the same kiss they shared in May and then in June.

Two seconds later, he was devouring her, pouring his soul and his love and his unhappiness into the kiss.

And she was kissing him back . . . she was, she was.

“I only taste you, and I am hopelessly drunk,” he whispered finally, kissing her closed eyes.

They flew open. “You desire me?”

“Of course. And love you. Oh God, Annabel, ask me how much I love you.”

“How much do you love me?” She was smiling, a little.

“Honestly?” he said.

She nodded.

“So much I can’t add it, nor count it,” he said, his eyes searching hers. “No matter how I try not to, I simply love you more. If I am drunk with love for you, I will never be sober.”

“But you desire me too?”

Her eyes still looked unconvinced, so Ewan took the kiss he earned by answering her question. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her with all the pent-up longing of the last months, with all the longing he always felt for her, and always would.

“And Rosy?” she whispered, when he lifted his mouth.

He traced her crimson lips with a finger. “She is with God,” he said simply.

“And you?”

He knew what she meant. “And I. Although I shall take more care in the future not to turn my back on His gifts.”

Annabel smiled but she had that little frown again. “What is it, sweetheart?” he whispered, kissing her eyebrows.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

His heart sank, but he put his arms around her. “I’m here,” he said fiercely. “I swear by everything sacred that I will never take my eyes off you, Annabel. And I will kill anyone who touches you again in cold blood.”

“Not that!” she protested. “It’s—do you still desire me, now?”

Surprised, he pulled back and looked at her. His wife had a face like a delicate triangle, arched eyebrows, tip-tilted blue eyes, lips that looked kissable even when she was scowling at him.

She was the most desirable, beautiful woman in the world. “Of course I do,” he said, tilting her face so that his lips could touch hers. “How can you doubt it?”

But Annabel had to say it.

“What if I told you that I didn’t want to make love for three months? That you couldn’t share my bed? What if I became unattractive and—and utterly unappealing?”

He grinned at that. “Impossible!”

“But what if I did? And I want an honest answer,” she added. “What if I were sick and had to keep to my bed for months? Or I came out all in spots? Or I contacted some sort of plague?”

“I would miss making love to you. I dreamed of it every night in the past five months. But what I truly missed had nothing to do with our bodies joining. What made me wake, aching, in the middle of the night was my
heart
, not any other part of my body.”

Tears rose to her eyes. “Are you quite sure?” she whispered.

“If you don’t want to make love to me ever again, I understand,” Ewan said. “If that experience in the cottage gave you a revulsion for men that can’t be overcome, we’ll live with it. You needn’t be afraid of me, not ever.”

“It’s not that!” Annabel said, almost laughing when she realized what he thought. “It’s—it’s
this
.” She pulled off the cover that had been tucked up to her breasts.

He looked at her face, puzzled.

“Dunce,” she said to him lovingly. Then she took his hand and put it on her great, hard tummy.

He reeled and almost fell back. “God almighty, Annabel!”

“Father Armailhac would not like to hear you use the Lord’s name in vain.” She giggled.

He had both hands spread over her now.

“February,” she said, knowing his question before he asked it. “I think that we must have made a child on our first night together, Ewan.”

A slow smile spread across his face. “Our wedding night. ’Twas a beautiful night, Annabel.”

She nodded.

“Do you know what gave me hope again?” he asked, his hands spread on her stomach. “I was in one of the fields and a little seed-blossom blew into my hand, Annabel. It blew straight into my hand, and it was so beautiful, so fragile, and so precious that I realized I’d been an idiot.”

“Oh,” Annabel breathed.

“But I didn’t really understand, did I?” Ewan said, his voice breaking with the strength of it. “God sent me a gift so beautiful that I couldn’t even grasp it at first.”

She put her hands on top of his. “’Tis a delicate, precious thing.”

Ewan’s eyes were unashamedly brilliant with tears. “
You
are that to me.” He kissed her. “My wife. My heart. My beloved.”

After they stopped kissing, he drew back again. “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed. “Look at your breasts, Annabel!” His hands hovered, uncertain.

“I won’t break.” She giggled, joy welling up inside her like a flood.

A moment later her head had fallen against the back of the couch. Her heart was beating in her ears; his hands were shaping her into fire.

She opened her eyes and saw that his eyes had gone pitch black. “Who knew that women became so beautiful during this time?” he said hoarsely. “We’re going to have to sleep in different rooms, Annabel, if you don’t want me to touch you.”

He rubbed a thumb across her nipple and she moaned, her hips involuntarily flexing. He pulled his hands away and actually stumbled as he rose. “’Twill be a trial,” he said, dragging his hair back from his forehead. “A challenge.”

Annabel stretched. She hadn’t felt so good in months. Nor so—so beautiful. Nor certainly so desirable. “It will be like our first trip to Scotland together,” she suggested. “Perhaps we could play the kissing game again.”