Page 57 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Forty-Four

“I know your wedding rehearsal is in a few hours, but I thought I’d find you here.”

Moria looked up to see a sun-limned wreath of gold curls, two altruistic dimples, and blue eyes.

Llewyn.

Moria finished snipping a few bulbs for propagation and placed them into a basket, smacking her hands together to shake off the dirt they’d accumulated. She’d needed a retreat, and sinking her ungloved hands into soil had been her first place of refuge.

“Don’t know that I’ve ever been findable, actually.”

Llewyn went “ha,” and then tilted his head to the side, searching for her eyes. Moria returned his gaze, gave him a tired smile.

“I don’t get a real smile?”

“There’s no faking anything with you, is there?” she sighed. “Suppose you’ll say it’s something to do with God.”

“Tell me,” he said, pushing up his sleeves, crossing his arms at his chest. He leaned against a workbench, legs crossed in front of him like he had all day to set her to rights.

Moria wished she could be like that, to have the kind of easy grace that she could offer to others that made things better instead of…

imploding things. She didn’t mean to do it.

But that’s what she did. She was always treading light-foot and somehow still messing the tidy, ordered rows of other people’s lives, leaving boot tracks and crumpling the stalks of all their hopes.

“I am a walking disaster,” she shrugged, turning to immerse herself in some mindless task. “You know this already.”

“You’re regretting your decision to marry the Duke?” No recrimination, barely any surprise, just an opening for her to divulge.

“I hope, or rather believe, God must be a little like…you, I guess. I have heard theologians and priests and vicars say that God judges our sins, and I know,” she looked up at him and locked eyes for emphasis.

“I have my share to atone for, but God sees all. And if God saw it all, then He surely saw the way…” she let out a breath for courage and rolled her shoulders.

“My heart has gone through a series of fractures and breaks and mending over the years. And surely, He can also see that I’m trying.

I’m a girl who’s been planted into a pot that I outgrew a long time ago,” Llewyn followed her gaze to the orchid she was pruning.

“And so, I replanted myself over and over but the conditions still weren’t right.

Not enough water, or too much water, or too much sunlight, or not enough.

I think maybe it’s me that simply can’t just thrive in the space where I was planted and make the most of it.

But I have seen glimmers, now and then, that He provided when I wasn’t looking for it, giving you to me as a friend, for example.

Bringing Devyn to me when I was lost, finding him when I was lost again.

But now, this is it. I’m a hothouse flower that has to decide this is my lot and stop wilting and trying to make new roots. ”

She shook her head as if to clear it then winced. “I got very metaphorical on you, you seem to pull those out of me.”

“I think you do yourself a disservice.”

A noise came from Moria’s throat. She could weather his sage advice and telling her to ‘make the best of things’, ‘never complain’, ‘soldier on’, all that nonsense. But if he complimented her in any way, she might lose it. And no, she was not going to ponder why that was.

Llewyn stood closer to her, taking the twine in her hands and propping up the orchid on the spindle to keep it from drooping.

“You are not a hothouse flower, none of this has to be your lot, and you have never wilted, even through the worst.” Llewyn met her gaze.

“But you’re a man of God, aren’t you going to tell me that I need to honor my commitments and that anything less than that is a sin, and that-”

“As my most loyal friend, I must ask you, what commitments have you not honored?”

Moria leveled him with a glare. Must he make her say it? Was this to be a confessional, then?

“I see. Well. There’s nothing for it then, the only way out is through.”

Moria heaved the heaviest sigh of many a woman headed before the altar… or the executioner’s block.

“You and God, you couldn’t give me, perhaps, some clearer advice than that?

Something along the lines of, “don’t marry a man you don’t love just because you’re supposed to do it,” or…

.” her lips turned downward and she gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Tell me the choice that would anger God the most? I don’t know if I can deal with any more of his punishment, to tell you the truth. ”

Llewyn’s face fell. “Is that what you think?”

Moria shrugged again. Words out of her reach.

“Look at me,” he waited until he had her eyes.

“God is just, but he is kind and loving. The trauma in your life is not because of you. What did you have to put yourself through to try and save Marcus’ life?

He gives beauty for ashes, that’s what He does.

All those people who followed your story and hung on your every word and read about you in the papers, it wasn’t some fleeting beauty they were looking at.

It was a girl who didn’t let anything break her; in fact, it all made her stronger.

And they didn’t know what to make of that.

And so,” he heaved his own great sigh of a sage, gearing up for his final bit of wisdom.

“You are promised to His Grace, the Duke; and Devyn is alive, that’s a testament to His goodness.

You saw none of this coming, but God is never surprised.

And frankly, neither am I. So make a choice you must, and I think you know which choice that is. ”