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His voice is ragged, his gaze holding mine. How I could fall into those eyes and never come out. “I’m asking you to marry me.”
I suck in my breath. Instantly the fire glows brighter in the grate, the lamps flicker happily. I don’t know how it’s possible, but he really does want me. My heart soars and then immediately plummets again. Which will make it all the harder to tell him what I must tell him now.
He looks at me with warm, expectant eyes, though there is a quiver of uncertainty around the corners of his lips. He drops his arms and gets to his feet. “Oh,” he says quickly, his face coloring. “Forgive me, I thought—”
There’s a sinking realization in his eyes that twists my heart. “You misunderstand me.” I stumble to my feet, the blanket slipping away and with it all of his lingering warmth. “I—I want to be with you too. You have no idea how much.” My cheeks are flaming and my tongue thick as I try to get my words out. “But I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Yet you just said that you don’t love him. If you think your father won’t give his permission, I—”
“No, it’s not that. I don’t, I...” I can’t stand the hurt in his face, even worse, knowing that I caused it. I can feel my resolve crumbling. Tears are bubbling up, my emotions already rubbed raw from a long day of travel and finding my mother on her deathbed.
He tilts my chin up in his hand so that I have no choice but to look into his questioning eyes. He couldn’t be making this harder for me if he tried. “Lydia, you can tell me anything.”
I’m so close. It would be so easy for it to all just well up and spill out of me. But if I tell him, that soft look that’s melting my heart will harden in disgust. He would want nothing to do with me. So instead of words that come tumbling out, for the second time today, it’s a deluge of tears.
32
“I’M SORRY.” Iwipe my eyes with the back of my sleeve, desperate to pull myself together. I can’t help myself, I care what he thinks of me, and right now he must think I’m a madwoman. Forcing a smile, I take a step back from his arms and stand up straighter. “I’m fine, really. I don’t know what came over me.”
There’s a dark patch on his vest where the brunt of my tears fell, and a stray hiccup escapes my lips. Mr. Barrett doesn’t look so convinced. “Lydia, sit down.”
“I told you, I’m fine. I just—”
But he’s already installing me back in the chair, his movements brisk and brooking no argument. “Now. Will you be all right for a few minutes? I’m going to make you some tea.”
I gracelessly snuffle back the last of my tears. “Tea?”
He gives me a long look, seems like he wants to say something and then changes his mind. “I’ll be right back.”
I let my head loll back against the chair, listening to the sounds of Mr. Barrett trying to find his way around the kitchen. What would Mother think if she knew I was downstairs alone with a man in the middle of the night? I laugh to myself. If only that were my biggest concern right now.
He returns a few minutes later with a wobbly tray of tea. The water is scalding, but I take a few polite sips under his apprehensive gaze before giving him back my cup.
“Now,” he says, crouching down beside me, “do you want to tell me what that was all about?” His eyes are tired, his face ravished, but despite everything he offers me the hint of a weak smile.
Snip is lying in his basket beside the fire, snoring softly without a care in the world. Outside the wind wraps itself around the house in a crushing embrace.
I shake my head. “I... I can’t tell you. I promised I wouldn’t.” Even if I hadn’t promised Catherine, how could I tell him that those vile rumors he heard about us were true? He would be disgusted, walk away from me without a second look back. How do I tell him that Cyrus is exploiting us, that I have no choice but to marry him, lest he expose everything to the world? How do I tell him that I’m not even what I seem?
Mr. Barrett tents his fingers as he considers this. “Here’s the short of it, Lydia. I love you. I have ever since that day I called to find you hiding behind your book. You glowed when I asked you what you were reading. I wanted you to go on forever. I... I think before that even. The first day I saw you, in the woods.” He takes my hands in his, looking at me with heartbreaking earnestness. “Am I wrong in thinking that you might love me too?”
My fingers tighten around his. “No,” I whisper. “You’re not wrong.”
He squeezes back, raising my hand to his lips, imparting a soft kiss on the tender skin of my wrist. “Then what?”
I think of Catherine upstairs, running herself ragged to take care of Mother. She may be my sister in name only, but there is still some primal part of me that grows protective when I think of her in trouble. Maybe I can still protect her where I failed to protect Emeline. “It’s not my secret to tell.”
“I see.” He rocks back on his heels, pressing his lips in thought. “Whoever’s secret you’re keeping is very lucky to have you as a confidante and friend.”
I don’t say anything.
“I won’t ask you to betray this person’s trust, but you must see how it pains me to hear that you love me, but can’t be with me.” He reaches up from his position below me and grazes my cheek with his fingertips. “I wish you would let me help you.”
Do I still owe Catherine some allegiance even after everything she’s done? I squirm a little as it comes to me that I’m not keeping her secret because I care about her, so much as that I don’t want Mr. Barrett to be disgusted with me by association. I was the one who carried her baby through the woods at night, the one who bundled it with stones and tossed it into the pond like a piece of rubbish. I’m the one who twisted Tommy Bishop’s legs round ’til he couldn’t stand, the one that put a mark on him with my mind so that his luck would run bad for the rest of his days. I might have forgotten about the way I saw his legs snap in my mind before it happened it front of my eyes, or the black cloud I envisioned circling him, if not for Catherine’s and Cyrus’s reminders that have brought everything back with sickening clarity.
“It’s not just that it’s a secret, it’s...” I take a deep breath, choosing my words carefully. “I’ve done bad things. They were for good reasons—or so I thought—but I did them all the same. I’m afraid that if you knew who—what—I was, you wouldn’t...” I look down at his concerned face, the high planes and Roman nose illuminated in the flickering candlelight. How can a man so beautiful, so kind, really feel that way about me?
He stands up and motions me to move over. It’s a big chair but when he sits down the cushion dips, and my head falls against his chest. He wraps his arm around my shoulders, holding me. I close my eyes. A comfortable silence envelops us as I listen to the steady beating of his heart beneath my ear, and feel his warm breath against my hair. No matter how loud the wind whistles outside, no matter all the things that stand between us, as he pulls me closer to him, in this moment we are safe. We are together.